10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 6
6. Carl Rodd Now Goes Places
Carl Rodd was introduced in Fire Walk With Me - the almost comically lazy Fat Trout Trailer Park caretaker unmoved by the prospect of physically moving anywhere ("that's just more sh*t I gotta do now!").
He is reintroduced in Part 6. It is a new Carl. We learn that he visits the town of Twin Peaks daily, "damn near" by the minute. He seems far less oppressed by the Black Lodge forces he was heavily alluded to have been haunted by all those years ago. "I've been smoking for seventy-five years - every f*ckin' day," he laughs. He seems to revel in the fact that he has cheated death and that he is ever closer to it.
Why Rodd chooses to enter the town is suggested before and after the centrepiece sequence. His psychic connection with the Lodge was expanded upon in The Secret History of Twin Peaks, in which it is confirmed that he disappeared in the woods as a young boy. As he takes a seat on a park bench, he is drawn to a rustling in the trees, his eyes cast upwards in a weary glance.
He has a premonition or instinct of the young boy's accident, following him to the scene of his demise. It is also suggested that the Black Lodge engineered it; the boy's soul ascends to and is trapped within the power lines erected above. That is another continuation of the mythology developed in Fire Walk With Me. Rodd, like Cooper, has the ability to see the electrical machinations of the Lodge unfolding in the material world.
Is he gifted, or is he damned?