Cheryl Lee latter
We’ve all heard a lot about Audrey this season, sometimes too much. Audrey die-hards expected her to be a huge part of The Return. The fact that she was withheld until so far into the season left everyone wondering just how she was going to fit into the main storyline. As it turns out, she didn’t.
Audrey’s scenes were like a standalone mini-film with no connection to the main players at all. The only thing that at all ties her into any other scenes are mentions of the Roadhouse, Billy and Tina (but this is Twin Peaks, so there may be several Billys and Tinas).
Meeting Sherilyn at the Twin Peaks UK Festival last weekend felt the same as meeting Audrey. We talked about what it’s like to be the token weird girls who never quite fit in. She told me that the lines of Audrey’s I related to so much as a teenager were things that she had actually said to David and he put them in the script. I got the feeling that Sherilyn and Audrey are very much interchangeable.
Young Audrey had everything a successful person could need – beauty, brains, money, a social standing. On paper, a child like her could go very far in life. But young Audrey was extremely alone. She doesn’t seem to have any friends at all, and her family are cold and distant. Her life is the warm wood walls of the Great Northern or the safe routine of school. Beyond that, she has nothing but her music and the escapism it provides her.
She immediately latches onto Cooper because he is a good person. He would never be hurtful, or reject her cruelly as others have. Audrey has intelligence and ambition, and needs the mental stimulation a murder-mystery provides.
As her character develops, she does become far more likable than the troublesome girl we saw in the first few episodes. As she builds relationships with her father and with Bobby, and begins to find her place in the world, she does blossom. But her life is still very much located within the safe and familiar walls of the hotel.
We still don’t know for sure what happened in the 25 years after the bank explosion, or just how damaged her mind became. Hopefully, the Final Dossier will fill in some of those gaps for us. It seems sad to think that Audrey’s good deed and good intentions in protesting at the bank that morning ensured that all her hopes and dreams were snuffed out in one violent moment.
And so the questions abound. Is Audrey still in a coma? Is Audrey ‘the dreamer’ (excuse me while I roll my eyes)? Or, as is more likely, is she in some kind of psychiatric institution? Is Charlie actually her doctor, facilitating this fantasy world, which is why he threatens to end it when she misbehaves?
Sherilyn was asked what she believed the season 3 mirror scene actually meant. She said she has no more information than we do and that her belief is purely her own take on it. She went on to say that the world is a very scary and dangerous place these days, and it is sometimes nice to go somewhere that is a safe and warm place.
I think it’s clear that Audrey’s life with Charlie isn’t a reality. Charlie makes it difficult for her to leave the house, as though she is using him as an excuse not to leave those safe walls, even while arguing and resisting and retaining her old headstrong spirit.
When they do make it to the Roadhouse, Charlie is nice to her, everyone is nice to her. She is the most important person there. They even play her tune, just for her. It is worth remembering that in Audrey’s world, the song would probably not have been called that on the records she plays. She renamed it Audrey’s Dance in her fantasy because it is her song, her moment, her safe, warm place. She can once more be the girl she was before the explosion, before the coma, before the demon son.
No matter what your opinion on Audrey, she really didn’t deserve the life she had. The girl with all the opportunities and potential in the world was eventually broken by it, and the walls she now lives inside are white, clinical and unchanging. There was never any support or affection for Audrey in her real life, and there still isn’t. Her reality and her dreams are cold, loveless and unfulfilled.
In the town of Twin Peaks, where darkness and violence are loud and crashing, Audrey’s tragedy has unfolded quietly, seemingly forgotten, seemingly unseen. The Little Girl Who Lived Down the lane has faded gently into nothing but a dream, with the bright girl she once was still sleeping soundly inside her.
Great synopsis of the character and her role in The Return! The question still remains: is Billy the guy in the jail cell? Is he real? If so, is Audrey somehow tapping into reality when she dreams?
I don’t believe he is Billy. When discussing his prosthetics this week, the makeup artist said he was just ‘the drunk’.
I liked your post. I would add this question: if Audrey is trapped in a self-infantilizing dream world, where her own innocence seduces and traps her, then the moment when she looks in the mirror and sees her older and less “innocent” self is a good thing, yes? Tough, scary, and painful as it is, it is Audrey’s moment of confronting her illusions and truly looking in the mirror. It’s the beginning of understanding and healing.
Matt, I completely agree with you! She snapped back to reality, harsh as it is.
Nice read. I’m starting to think that Audrey in the resturn is the spectator, us watching at home. The escapism you discussshe endulges in ours also. When the dream is broken we like Audrey are left shocked and frightened wondering like Cooper and Laura/Carrie alike where we are.
i really still think she was in a coma but somehow working her way out of it. her first scene she barely moved, we saw no way out of the room besides the door that Charlie was blocking. He is the personification of her coma. in the next scene when he threatens to end her story he is threatening her with a downturn. but in that scene we can see out of the room into a hallway and there’s a window. next time we see them she’s almost to the door. then finally at the roadhouse, which at the time made me think i was wrong about the coma and that she and Charlie were somehow just having a very tedious real life marriage. then the mirror thing happened. i think a real coma can only go for so long before its effects are irreversible but this could be a lodge dimension induced coma or some other hybrid. i guess we’ll never know for sure, though.
I hesitate to refer to or draw any conclusions based on things outside of the TPTR film itself, but this week I read on Twitter that an Italian newspaper published an interview with Sherilyn Fenn in which she commented that the scenes with Audrey were written after she refused to do the one scene that was originally scripted for her. According to what I have read, Audrey was going to be in only one scene, the scene that we saw in which Richard robbed Sylvia! In other words, in the original script Richard roughed up and robbed Audrey! According to the story I read, Fenn cried when she read the scene and refused to do it and insisted that Lynch and Frost write new scenes for her. When I originally watched her scenes with Charlie I almost got the sense that Charlie was a stand-in for or represented a scriptwriter or a director, all in a very “meta” kind of way… especially with his references to “ending her story” and “Existentialism 101”. I cannot read Italian, so I cannot verify whether the article actually says these things. And I have no way of knowing with any certainty whether this is mere rumor.
Your interpretation of Audrey Season 3 veers closest to my own, while fracturing the light across facets I hadn’t even considered. I am a Twin Peaks original 90s viewers and named my daughter after my favorite fictional character, Audrey Horne. You have captured the troubling and mysterious aspects of Audrey 25 years later. Is her mirror image her doppelganger, her inverse, her soul trapped in the black lodge? Does she exist in real life or only in her own mind? Or is she trapped 25 years later, in Twin Peaks, with a husband and a son, living a life she never wanted for herself? Is she trapped in Twin Peaks forever, like Laura, never to escape?