Agent Cooper Has Always Been ‘Evil’
Theory: If Leland Palmer was possessed by Bob as a young boy, wouldn’t it stand to reason that Agent Cooper might also have been possessed before arriving in Twin Peaks? Clearly, Leland was able to mask his ‘evil occupier’ during his daily life – thus fooling those around him – so why couldn’t the same be true for Agent Cooper? If this were the case, then that would imply that Cooper had, in fact, sent Windom Earle mad by murdering Earle’s wife, Caroline, and that Earle was therefore stalking him because he knows the truth about Cooper’s link to the Lodge, rather than for the crime of falling in love with his wife. It would also explain why Cooper believed that Earle killed Caroline because, as Leland explained in the series, “When he was gone, I couldn’t remember.”
Furthermore, it would provide an explanation for the scene in the prequel movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, in which FBI Agent Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie) suddenly resurfaces in the office of Gordon Cole, having been missing on assignment for some time. He asks Gordon Cole (David Lynch) and Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) who they see when they look at Agent Cooper – the suggestion being that if Jeffries is either gifted or damned, he would be seeing the true face of an ‘evil spirit,’ were Cooper already possessed.
Is it likely? I doubt it. Firstly, this would take a central tenet of the entire Twin Peaks story and flip it on its head – and while that’s an astonishing twist, it’s not really something that befits this type of tale. Nor is it in keeping with the style of David Lynch and Mark Frost. Certainly, the way in which Agent Cooper enters the Lodges at the end of season 2 does not preclude this theory from being true, and nor does the fact that Agent Cooper’s ‘Shadow Self’ is the being that leaves the Lodge at the end.
When Phillip Jeffries questions the true identity of Agent Cooper in the prequel movie, it’s because he’s just spent time in the Lodges, which exist in another dimension – outside the realm of time. When he returns from the Lodges – confused, as Major Briggs (Don Davis) repeatedly was in the series – he has prior knowledge of what’s to come, but is unsure of which point in time it’s to which he has returned. He seeks to clarify from Gordon and Albert, “Who is it you see, there?” not because he sees someone that’s not Agent Cooper, but because he wants to check reality with the others, because he’s neither gifted, nor damned.
Having established the fact that the Lodges are a secret, and the ‘spirits’ wish to avoid exposure, it seems highly unlikely that Cooper’s investigation would have progressed so quickly if he himself were already possessed. Such a twist would also beg the question as to why Cooper has been in the presence of other characters in the series – both gifted and damned – and not been exposed as secretly harbouring an ‘evil’ spirit. Furthermore, if Agent Cooper has been ‘evil’ throughout the story, then nothing’s really changed at the end of season 2.