Who was Killer Bob in ‘Twin Peaks’?
The seminal early 1990s TV show Twin Peaks paved the way for complex, big-budget television thrillers like The Sopranos, Lost and Breaking Bad, and the golden age of the film-style limited TV series ushered in by streaming platforms. Although Mark Frost and David Lynch’s series was cancelled after just two seasons, it left a lasting influence and developed one of the largest cult followings in television history.
Twin Peaks also left its viewers scratching their heads about a myriad of bizarre plot points that seemed to remain unresolved at the end of its second season. A revival of the show for one more spectacular season in 2017 answered some questions but then created others.
One of the abiding mysteries of the series surrounds the character Bob, also known as Killer Bob. It isn’t certain that we can even describe him as a character in the true sense. Rather, he could simply be a version of other characters in the show.
However we describe him, Bob plays the role of the main antagonist in Twin Peaks, being chiefly responsible for the evils that befall the town where the series is set. But how exactly is he responsible, and what are his motives for evil doings? To answer these questions properly, we have to understand who – or what – Bob is.
First up: What is Bob?
One reason we have trouble describing Bob as a character as such is because, as is revealed in the third episode of the series, Bob is a malevolent spirit from another dimension. Detective Dale Cooper, the show’s protagonist, dreams of himself in this other dimension, where another spirit, Mike, tells him about Bob.
Cooper later connects his dream with the horrifying vision experienced by the mother of murdered teen Laura Palmer, who saw a man with long, grey hair glaring at her from the end of Laura’s bed. This connection makes all the more sense given that, in Cooper’s vision, Mike describes Bob as a former rapist and serial killer in the real-world dimension who preyed on young girls.
Bob later appears in the visions of other characters, one of whom dreams of him killing Laura Palmer. This vision appears to solve the central mystery of the series. But when we see it, we are still left wondering how the supernatural (and otherwise) deceased Bob was able to attack Laura in the real world.
Did Bob really kill Laura Palmer?
Although it seems clear from the visions of various characters in the series that Bob is the murderous villain of Twin Peaks, it turns out later in the series that things are not so simple. The means by which Bob assaults and kills his victims is by possessing the bodies of real people.
In fact, the real person possessed by Bob, who carries out the killings central to the show’s plot, is revealed to be none other than Laura’s father, Leland Palmer. Leland met Bob in real life when he was a child, as Bob was a neighbour of his grandfather’s.
The evil spirit Bob would go on to abuse and possess Leland, forcing him, in turn, to abuse and kill his own daughter, as well as prostitute Teresa Banks. In his dying moments, Leland realises in horror what he has done, and Detective Cooper remembers what Laura Palmer told him when she also appeared in his initial vision while dreaming: “My father killed me”.
The case of Laura’s death seems to be an open-and-shut case, then. Her own father physically enacted her murder, whatever demonic visions may have suggested otherwise.
It’s even possible to speculate that Bob may simply have been a visual representation of a psychiatric disorder which led Leland to commit such horrific acts. Perhaps Bob was indeed a neighbour of his grandfather, whose real-world assault of Leland as a young boy perpetuated an awful cycle of sexual abuse that culminated in Laura’s death.
However, this explanation, which avoids the apparently supernatural elements in the series, fails to explain Cooper’s vision of Mike and Laura or what happens after Leland dies. In fact, Cooper himself becomes a victim of Bob’s possession, as Bob traps him in the Black Lodge – the other dimension introduced in his original dream vision – and enters the real world as his doppelgänger.
There is no way around the role of the supernatural in the plot of Twin Peaks, regardless of the extent to which we believe Bob to be an embodiment of real-world evils. Nevertheless, it’s still possible to accept the series as a work of fantasy horror at the same time as taking Bob to be a metaphor for the darkness within real sexual and domestic abusers. And for the sickness and childhood trauma that typically motivate their actions.
How was the character Bob created?
In the world of the series itself, we learn during its third season that Bob came into being as a by-product of the first atomic bomb test in 1945. As such, he can be viewed as the embodiment not only of the evils done to women by men but of the evils arising from humanity’s creation of a device capable of wiping out our species.
As for how the character was created by Frost and Lynch during the development of the series, Killer Bob came about as a happy (or rather, terrifying) accident after filming had already begun. Lynch has described how Frank Silva, the actor who ended up playing Bob, was simply a set decorator during the initial stages of production.
After spotting Silva moving furniture around the set of Laura Palmer’s bedroom, Lynch asked Silva if he was also an actor. Silva replied that he was, after which Lynch filmed a shot of him staring at the camera from the end of the bed. The vision of Bob is something that Palmer’s mother would later experience.
Later, while filming the scene of the mother’s vision, without knowing what it would be, Lynch’s cinematographer “captured the scream” she let out “perfectly”. The cinematographer complained that it wasn’t actually perfect because someone was visible in the mirror on the wall in the shot. That someone was Frank Silva, soon to be known around the world as Killer Bob.
“And that’s when I knew,” Lynch concluded, “that Frank was part of the scene.” And Bob became an integral part of Twin Peaks from that moment.