10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 16
1. Is Audrey The Dreamer?
As Audrey danced Audrey's Dance, or an unsettling impression of it, a man entered the floor screaming "Monique! Monique! That's my wife, a**hole." He then smashed a beer bottle over the head of the man in her embrace. This jolted Audrey from her trance. She desperately ran over to Charlie, stricken with fear, and implored him to get her out of there.
It was at this point that an electrical hum throbbed into a new location in which Audrey, free of make-up, her trademark mole and 1950s-inspired haircut, stared into a mirror. The background was pure white, with no borders, suggesting a metaphysical realm; she wore white, the brief flash of which suggesting a medical institution of some kind. It was as if Lynch and Frost anticipated both the coma and purgatory theories and provided no indication either way. "What? What? What?" Audrey said, a proxy for the viewer. Then, we went back into the Roadhouse, in which the band, perhaps tellingly, replayed the theme backwards, suggesting the Black Lodge more than Shutter Island.
This all but confirms that Audrey's world is a manifestation of her mind. But that world was echoed by several unnamed patrons of the Roadhouse, who also spoke of Billy, of Tina, of bleeding mouths and noses. Is Audrey in the nuthouse referenced in Part 14, or are realities bleeding into each other in straight sci-fi style? Is Audrey the dreamer? Is this St. Elsewhere? Dallas?
In an hour predicated on reassurance, we must afford Lynch and Frost the benefit in spite of doubt...