The Twin Peaks audience needed Laura to die. Not to stop BoB. Not to avoid possession. She died so that the audience could remember Laura the way they wanted. Carrie Page was the antidote to Laura. She is old, ugly and poor and she messes up the audience’s sick fantasies.
Many believe Twin Peaks ended with a scream and an electricity shutdown. But it ended with Dark Space Low and a sad realisation that the show was dead.
Carrie Page is Dark Space Low. She is the reality of what Laura would have become if she had lived beyond 18 years of age. She is prematurely aged, a criminal, unsophisticated and poor. Carrie has none of the charm, beauty or intelligence of Laura. That is why Laura originally died. Her death was not to avoid possession by BoB. It was actually to save the viewer the sight of her eventual ugliness. This ugliness was overlooked by her mystery and beauty.
Laura was loved, but the First Season of Twin Peaks and the movie Fire Walk with Me establish that she is not a nice person at all. She is showing the signs that the trauma she is suffering is burning bridges among those close to her. If she had lived, her mean-spiritedness would have taken over and none of her charm and beauty would have given way to this.
Everyone loved Laura. Bobby loved her, Dr. Hayward loved her and the audience loved her. It was young, charming and beautiful Laura that was loved but nobody loved Carrie Page. She is what Laura would have turned into. That is why Laura had to die. Not for the force of good, for balance, to put light on darkness or anything more spiritual. It was for us. It was so the audience would never see Laura turn from a sweetheart into a tedious old bag.
David Lynch knew what we liked about Laura. And he vomited up Carrie Page into the final episode as a message. It was the message that you only loved a beautiful Laura and she had to die to preserve that image. If you see Carrie Page, you see the nasty woman she grows up to be. That is the mistake Cooper made in episode 17. He saved Laura from our fate and broke reality. This same reality was the illusion that we wanted Laura to live. No, we didn’t. Not really. Laura had to die so we could preserve our happy memories of her. If Laura lived, the trauma she suffered, combined with her substance abuse and criminality in Fire Walk with Me would have turned her into a Twin Peaks version of Aileen Wournos. We don’t want that much reality and that is exactly why David Lynch produced Carrie Page. We were excited by the third season but when we saw Carrie, we knew we wished for something we weren’t careful about. Then we got the long drive with Cooper and that horrible end on the street.
The death of young people creates a myth about what might have been. Marilyn Monroe would have become old and tedious and would have married another three or four times before dying early (but not early enough to avoid being ugly). John Keat’s poetry probably would have become mediocre as he got older and his passion and love gave way to an older man’s yearnings. You can buy figurines of Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic. It’s a sick idea turned into pop culture commercialism. But it is also a glimpse into our minds. The audience preferred a young and dead Laura to an older and alive Carrie Page.
Laura died for all of his so she would not be Carrie Page. But we wanted a Season 3 and we were shown what we wished for. I don’t think figurines of Carrie will sell as well as young Laura in plastic.
Our fixation on Laura exposes the dark heart of the Twin Peaks audience and our unnatural worship of the beautiful people who die young.