Twin Peaks: Red Room Origins & Meaning Explained

What are the origins of Twin Peaks’ famous Red Room, and what does it symbolize? Twin Peaks debuted in 1990, with the mystery series centering on the murder of teenager Laura Palmer in the isolated, titular town. FBI agent Dale Cooper is called in to investigate, and his look into Laura’s death starts to expose the dark underbelly of the town. The show was co-created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, and it brought a whole new level of cinematic storytelling to television.

There simply wasn’t anything quite like Twin Peaks on TV before, and its quirky characters, enthralling mystery and stylish cinematography and music made it a cultural smash. Sadly, network – and audience – impatience with solving the mystery of who killed Laura saw Lynch and Frost forced to answer the question early in season 2. With its central mystery solved, the show felt directionless and increasingly began to rely on silly plotlines and guest appearances from the likes of Billy Zane. Its ratings and popularity nosedived and it was canceled following season 2, with 1992 prequel movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me also being a critical and commercial dud.

The latter movie has since been reappraised as one of Lynch’s most underrated, while Twin Peaks: The Return – a 2017 miniseries revival – was heralded as one of the best shows of the decade. There’s much about Twin Peaks and its characters that became iconic, from Cooper’s love of “coffee and cherry pie” to the Log Lady of The Man From Another Place. Another is the Red Room, an eerie, interdimensional place located in Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge. The origin of the Red Room itself is classic Lynch.

While filming the pilot of Twin Peaks, Lynch and Frost were forced to shoot an alternate ending that solved Laura’s murder so if it didn’t make it to series, it could be sold as a TV movie. This hasty conclusion sees Cooper and the sheriff confront the killer BOB in the basement of the hospital, where he’s shot dead by Mike. The International Pilot then ends with Coopers’ dream encounter with The Man From Another Place and Laura in the Red Room. Lynch later recounted the image of the room suddenly came to him out of nowhere when he leaned against a hot car one day.

He was so taken with the image that he later reused footage of the Red Room from the International Pilot for the show itself, and it first appeared in Twin Peaks’ second episode. As the mythology of the town was expanded upon the room is revealed to be inside of the Black Lodge, a place where evil spirits reside and the mirror of the White Lodge; the former requires fear to enter while the latter needs love. The most famous Red Room is the waiting room – where Cooper first found himself in the dream – though the lodge itself gleefully defies time, space and logic, as it seems to be a series of endless, identical rooms with the same red curtain and black and white floor design.

Twin Peaks: The Return sawCooper finally escaping the room after being trapped there for 25 years, with The Arm sending him crashing through the floor into a vast, purple sea. Given Lynch’s famous reluctance to explain the meaning behind some of the more cryptic elements of his work, there’s no set meaning behind the Red Room. It’s a place where evil resides and is known to have existed since at least the 1800s, and the symbolism of the room – where evil hides behind literal curtains – suggests the spirits there are behind the scenes on most of the bad things which happen in Twin Peaks itself and feed off the misery they cause.

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Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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