Twin Peaks: the Woodsmen

This new season of Twin Peaks brought new light on old mysteries, while leaving open hundreds of new ones. I will try to avoid crazy speculation and just use more then I can concrete facts but there will be a lot of SPOILERS regarding Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me. I will talk about one specific character, a member of the Black Lodge before almost mute and without any background: the Woodsman.

He first appeared in the Room Above the Convenience Store in the movie Fire Walk With Me. All the names I will use are the original ones used in the original scripts of the movie or in the credits at the end of the episode.

One of them is close to an electrical device producing lights and he is almost devoid of any dialogue. However, there is one strange things about this secondary character. Whoever could do this super secondary role, but David Lynch decided to gave it to a famous actor: Jurgen Prochnow, famous for other roles like in Dune. So, why use a famous actor for such a minor role? Because 25 years after, the Woodsmen are back and now they are one of the most cryptic, creepy and important character of the new Twin Peaks.

Before the episode 3X08, the Woodsmen rarely appeared as dirty and dark figures close to some key characters, like William Hasting, acting as a sort of spies. But in the episode 3X08 all starts to change.

Where to start? Let’s say something: Bob was apparently born from a nuclear explosion in 1945. No jokes, no theories, the date is exactly reported and the scene is very cryptic, in best Lynch style, but also self explanatory. Bob is not so as old as we could imagine, and seems to be younger than “the beginning of time” as reported by is official trading card as birth date.

Before the birth of Bob, the Woodsman is born, or Woodsmen, since they are a multitude. They seem strictly bound to Bob, not only because they born with him but also because they helped him when he was killed in the body of Agent Cooper at the beginning of the episode. The Woodsmen seems to be able to resurrect Bob with a strange ritual involving blood. This event happened twice in the serie, also in the episode 3×17.

But let’s go back in the past. It is 1956, eleven years since the atomic explosion and the birth of Bob. I will avoid theories on what is the frog/cockroach that is born in the desert (maybe Bob?) to focus on the Woodsmen. They are all black and dirty, but this time they are far more creepier and dangerous than the previous season.

There are two main Woodsmen in the new Twin Peaks. One is big and fat, and apparently he is only able to moan and roar like an animal. The other is the most important one and he looks like a creepy and dirty version of Abraham Lincoln.

He also has more lines of dialogues than the other Woodsmen: “Got a light?”. He is scaring everybody in the town asking, with a deep metallic voice, if they have a light for his cigarette. This before becoming violent, assaulting a radio station and smashing the head of two people with his own hands.

While at the radio station, he starts to spread a weird message:

“This is the water and this is the well.

Drink full and descend.

The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.”

All people listening to this message fall in a sort of sleep or coma. This allows to the frog/cockroach creature to enter in the mouth of a girl sleeping. This is the last duty of the Woodsman, that for now disappears.

We can see the fat Woodsman again when will stealthy crush William Hasting to death, without almost nobody even realize of his presence.

The Woodsmen seems to live in the old gas station, connected to a different level of reality. They also work as a sort of “Keepers of the Thresholds”, protecting the passages to different realities, for example to the Zone, when Gordon was almost caught by a Woodsman when the vortex passage was opening.

The Woodsmen seem to be a sort of minions of the Black Lodge, or of Bob. They are a multitude and they have multiple functions, from controlling people important for Bob to bring him back to life. They also act as a sort of army of the Lodge, attacking and killing humans quickly and without regrets.