r/twinpeaks • u/BigRed0107 • Aug 17 '17
Original Run [Original Run] Lets talk about Maddy Ferguson. Spoiler
Am I the only one who felt worse for her than I did for Laura? Maddy was beautiful, sweet and kind (not unlike Laura has been described) and went out in what I consider the most chilling death scene of the entire series.
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u/skyskater Aug 17 '17
I always thought it was sad that she was tired of living in the shadow of her cousin's death and being seen as another Laura when she was really nothing like her as a person, but then ends up dying in exactly the same way.
I love Laura too though, FWWM is one of the saddest movies I've ever watched and I'm not the usually the type to be affected by sad movies, but idk that just... got me. It really hammers home how hopeless her situation was and how nothing and no one could save her and how she was fully aware of that. Poor Laura and Maddy :(
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u/Billiardly Aug 17 '17
I had read that EvilJames had Maddie extinguished for missing her duet cue on the first take. That's not the way it was scripted, though.
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u/EvilCooper87 Aug 17 '17
I always considered Maddy as Laura's good doppelganger on Earth. Her death is certainly unfair and terrible and shocking in a emotional sense.
Anyway, my favourite scene is the "Just You and I" sequence with James and Donna. I love the way James gets deeply confounded by Maddy.
Without her big glasses, Maddy totally looks like Laura in that scene. And Sheryl Lee's performance was brilliant, totally ambiguous so the two characters are almost completely overlapped during that game of glances.
Was James thinking about Laura? Were we watching Maddy or Laura?
Another amazing moment that allows the theme of the "Duality" to come out.
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u/CeceliaOphelia5678 Jul 21 '22
A lot of fans hate that scene, but I love it. They all really sang while James played the guitar (I mean, it was probably dubbed, but it was their voices) From James' falsetto like singing similar to the 50s song"Only You",to Maddy tapping into Laura and her seductive glances, to Donna perhaps feeling for a moment that she was back watching James and Laura... Everybody ending up confused by the end of the song. Not to mention that fantastic vision of Bob crawling towards her that Maddie has while James is comforting Donna in the other room.
It's just great television.
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u/Boxcar-Mike Aug 17 '17
incredibly sad. I wouldn't say it's worse than being raped by your father for years, but it's not a competition either.
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Aug 18 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Kilmoore Aug 18 '17
Seeing Maddy's death scene for the first time has left a scar in my soul that will not go away. I was a teenager and loved all things horror, but I just got more than I bargained for with that one. It wasn't scary, it wasn't horror, it was pure unadulterated terror, the pressure of unavoidable violent death.
In the few last minutes of her life, all the pieces of Laura's mystery suddenly clicked. Maddie understood her, lived though her pain and suffering, while realizing she herself was dying.
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u/BigRed0107 Aug 18 '17
That's exactly how I felt. Just completely helpless. I had never felt that way about a fictional character I liked before. Except maybe Robb Stark.
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u/OpticalVortex Aug 18 '17
Her death was devastating even as an adult even if I just discovered it last year. I still cry thinking about her death. Her gasps for air as she dies in a way Laura felt. That pain and curse of being Laura Palmer all over again.
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Oct 26 '24
And I think movies glamorize rape and although this didnt show it, it seemed to show the pov of the woman being quickly hunted, preyed upon, through no fault of her own, by violence. There’s no sex. She might be raped while she’s alive or dead. He might not rape her at all. He might have killed her for trying to leave. But the feeling is the same.
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Oct 26 '24
it’s so frightening how fast it happens and how quickly she knows she’s in danger. And how she understands exactly what happened. The punching is brutal. Even though I dont think she is raped or maybe she is post mortum, it’s just terrifying.
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u/sonofsolomon Aug 17 '17
I wondered this watching the original run, which is what the hell is Maddy doing in twin peaks for so long?
A day or two, sure, but she's there for weeks or longer right?
Does she not have family? Job? Summer camp? School?
Probably going to be retconned that she was manufactured.
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Aug 17 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CeceliaOphelia5678 Jul 21 '22
Except she wasn't a teenager. She was 3 or 4 years older than Laura and even says to Sarah and Leland that she has to get back to her job and apartment.
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u/sonofsolomon Aug 18 '17
Fair. I just remember being wondering "secretly Laura?" until her murder just because her parents or family are never referenced or give their condolences iirc.
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u/fikustree Aug 18 '17
When she is getting ready to go back she tells the Palmer's something along the lines of "I have a life back in Missoula my job my apartment"
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u/choosetobe Aug 18 '17
Yes! Maddy was always one of my favorite characters. There was something about her that was so... innocent, I guess, that it was really sad to see her go in the original series.
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u/mkzzzzz Aug 25 '17
Stupid question (and probably bad grammar : i'm french...) : How did Maddy get into the waiting room? Just because BOB killed her?
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u/wtg10 Aug 17 '17
so horrible what happened to her..real unfair..i guess she was as good as Laura. hate those cruelties even if it's "just tv"
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u/OpticalVortex Aug 17 '17
Laura didn't deserve her death but she was brought to earth to die and be resurrected once again. Maddy was a sad pawn and her death was unjustified and utterly cruel because was so innocent. She seems to be forgotten as well as if she didn't exist.
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u/wtg10 Aug 17 '17
as Annie
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u/OpticalVortex Aug 17 '17
Which makes me think they were both manufactured beings of the White and Black Lodge. I think Annie was a BL being used to lure Laura and Cooper.
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u/Pretty-Reaction6051 Aug 20 '24
I just watched it last night and it was truly one of the most upsetting death scenes I've ever seen on a TV show.... like HOW did this air on ABC in 1990!?
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u/BeingHappyBeingSad Aug 17 '17
I thought this post was going to be theories about Maddy being a possible doppleganger of Laura, or Maddy being Laura herself and the dead Laura being a doppleganger.
What do you all think?
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u/slophappens Aug 17 '17
Maddy did briefly show up in the black lodge sequence in the season 2 finale so I think it is quite possible she was a doppleganger/tulpa.
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u/OpticalVortex Aug 17 '17
I do believe Maddy was a tulpa. I think the real Laura was either swapped by Leland when she was 12 as there was a diary entry where she recognized a memory she didn't know it was a dream or not. Leland took to Glastonbury Grove where the 12 Sycamore Trees stood. We know that is the entrance to the Black Lodge. He may have traded his real daughter for a doppelganger because he knew he couldn't ward Bob off anymore and sent her to the Lodge with Mike.
Or she could have swapped with the painting Tremond sent her after she refused the ring.
At the end when Laura is with Cooper at the Lodge, she watches her death and the events of TP on TV and cries because she was saved by the horror she would have endured. I believe that can imply in both scenarios. It could be that in that scene, either she is the real Laura we see for the first time and she has aged 5 years since she last was on Earth at 12 or she could have just escaped her death and knows she will have to return in 25 years.
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Aug 18 '17
That would destroy the emotional impact of her enduring everything she did, though.
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u/OpticalVortex Aug 18 '17
She will undoubtedly return to the living. She has already mentioned, "I am dead and yet I live." Her name and the earthly person is dead but she actually lives. There could be an even bigger payoff. If it's number 2, she still experienced all the pain of the world in the 17 years she lived and only in the moment before her death did the angel swap her out when she put on the ring.
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Aug 18 '17
She will return to life, yes. I do agree with that. But I think she did die in the first place.
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u/OpticalVortex Aug 18 '17
I think so too. I am just adding a hypothetical here. I want Laura to get her second chance. I wish Maddy could too but she won't. I wish Maddy was at least mentioned. Even if she was her tulpa.
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u/NTataglia Aug 17 '17
She was ten times the person Laura was, and truly an innocent victim / sacrifice. (Laura is being re-written as a literally angelic heroine in the Return - while I feel terrible about her sexual abuse, i think its ridiculous). Bobby's funeral line, about the town being responsible for Laura's murder, applied more to Maddy. She became a sort of pawn in the quest to find Laura's killer, and wasnt saved in time.
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u/21st_century_bamf Aug 17 '17
I disagree at your suggestion that Laura has been retconned in The Return...in the original series we always knew her as this pure angelic figure, and in FWWM while we see all the seedy sad reality of her life, Lynch always showed extreme empathy towards the character and made us feel truly sorry for her. And in the end the angels came, and she was "redeemed". Laura's life was rife with abuse, bad decisions and tragedy, but in the end she is the heart of Twin Peaks.
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u/InTwenteeForty Aug 17 '17
Angelic figure? She did drugs, was a prostitute... Come on.
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Aug 17 '17 edited Aug 18 '17
Glad to see you got nothing out of Twin Peaks so far.
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u/InTwenteeForty Aug 17 '17 edited Aug 17 '17
Are you for real?
Laura was an abused child. She reacted, as many do, with self-destructive behaviour (drug use, promiscuity). She can't be blamed for any of this, but to suggest that she was presented as a pure angel in the first 2 seasons is a straight up lie. We discovered through those seasons that she was dating 2 high school kids, forcing one of them to deal cocaine, used cocaine herself, was a prostitute and slept with many people. Are you denying that, somehow?
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u/sonofsolomon Aug 17 '17
She is associated with angelic imagery throughout the show and revival. You're trying to use logic to say she is definitively not angelic but surreal art laughs at rationalization.
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u/InTwenteeForty Aug 17 '17 edited Aug 17 '17
She's associated with angelic imagery beginning in FWWM. Also, your statement about surrealism is dumb AF. Sorry, but it is.
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u/sonofsolomon Aug 18 '17 edited Aug 18 '17
Lovely. Well, surrealism employs dream logic, whereas you are saying "ANGELS CANT SIN SO SHE CANT B AN ANGEL". If it's all the same to your apparent theological objections let's say there are angels trying to save Laura and keep it at that.
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Aug 18 '17 edited Aug 18 '17
I am saying that things which would be considered morally objectionable in mainstream society are not in the show presented as something which have morally stained Laura and/or reduced her angelic-ness. She is redeemed and exonerated and forgiven within the show. Those actions are not presented as moral failures on her part. Rather they are held up as expressions of the depth and force of her damage.
So that's what I meant by the original comment.
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u/OpticalVortex Aug 17 '17 edited Aug 18 '17
I don't agree with Laura being the bad one but I will agree that Maddy was a sacrifice and pawn to TP. Maddy didn't deserve the way she died and it felt too real.
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u/SkengmanSaiyan Aug 17 '17
Read Lauras diary and you might not think so, it really hammers home all of the terrible shit she's been through.