What was the Purpose of the Glass Box in Twin Peaks?

 

Credit to Vacant Peaks — The Glass Box | TWIN PEAKS BLOG

Twin Peaks: The Return begins with a man named Sam, that is told to watch a glass box, that is owned by a billionaire. Sam catches the interest of a woman named Tracey, who is in charge of bringing Sam his coffee. She asks if she can check out the glass box with Sam, but the security guard informs Tracey that she is not allowed to. Sam agrees, and Tracey looks disappointed, but reluctantly leaves. 

Shortly after their first meeting, Tracey asks Sam again if she can check out the glass box with him. Since the security guard wasn’t present, Sam lets her tag along. They sit down on the couch in the room with the glass box, and the two of them begin to make out, eventually leading to a moment of passion. 

A figure appears in the glass box at that very moment, and the duo watch in horror as the monster is floating in the box. It proceeds to attack Sam and Tracey, mutilating the two of them. 

The glass box is shown again in the show, and this time around, we see Dale Cooper appear in the glass box, after he is forcefully kicked out of the Red Room. He does fall out of the glass box, and gets sent to a different part of the world. 

So…what the hell is the purpose of the glass box?

I have my own theory as to why this glass box was somehow connected to the Black Lodge. 

From the information that we know, a billionaire that we never see is the one who owned this glass box. I believe that Mr. C, Cooper’s evil doppelganger from the Red Room who had taken his place at the end of season 2 of Twin Peaks, was involved somehow. 

I think he personally knew a rich person who owned this glass box, and maybe he told this person to watch out for entities from the Red Room who could be coming for him. Mr. C was supposed to return back to the Black Lodge, but he refused to ever return. The glass box could have been some sort of alarm system, that captured entities from the Black Lodge or the Red Room who were searching for him. 

The glass box was eventually activated when Sam and Tracey elicited an intimate moment, and this makes sense why an entity had finally appeared. The Black Lodge is associated with evil, and it took a sin for an entity to appear within this device, and perhaps this thing was so pissed off, that it led to the deaths of Sam and Tracey. 

It also makes sense why Dale Cooper had found himself in the glass box for a couple of seconds. Since he had been in the Red Room for more than two decades, perhaps the glass box had assumed he was an entity himself. 

Another thing that I should mention…is that Sam claimed to Tracey he knew another employee who had seen something in the glass box. This surprised me, because surely this other mystery guy should have also been killed? Unless he had gotten lucky with an entity that didn’t want to hurt him, like say, someone from the Red Room like the Giant? He didn’t seem like an entity that wanted to hurt anyone, so good entities did exist. 

I’m so curious how this guy had triggered the box in the past, but man, he was damn lucky he hadn’t been killed. 

The deaths of Sam and Tracey is one of the scariest scenes in the entirety of Twin Peaks. 

We even get a photo of how their bodies looked like afterwards from the FBI. Man, it looked like this entity had removed their brains entirely. 

Moments like this in the show was so scary, but the worst part was that we never really had all the answers to the mystery of the glass box. 

And that is one of the reasons is why Twin Peaks will remain a cult horror classic.