There's reason to believe David Bowie could make a 'Twin Peaks' cameo

Maybe this is harmless wishful thinking, and more likely it's utter hogwash, but I am still holding out hope that David Bowie might just show up for that second Twin Peaks cameo after all.

Bowie played FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in a brief, mostly nonsensical appearance in the 1992 prequel film Fire Walk With Me. Though that two- to three-minute sequence seemed inconsequential, his character has already been referenced multiple times -- and presumed alive! -- in Twin Peaks: The Return.

Though Bowie died in January of 2016, the timeline of David Lynch's eight-month production is compatible with this faint hope of mine that he got in some shooting days in and is going to show up somewhere at the end of this season. (Showtime, for its part, had no comment, and can you blame 'em.)

It all started when Harry Goaz -- the character actor who plays the hapless Deputy Andy Brennan -- told the Dallas Morning News that Bowie had been scheduled for a day on set, but was unable to make it. That could be for any number of reasons; Bowie kept his illness a secret to most, so it's possible he wasn't feeling well enough film that day.

But he could also have been simply too busy. In his final days, Bowie was recording and racing to finish his album Blackstar, the kind of a project that requires at least as much stamina as a light day of shooting. If he could do one, he could reasonably do the another -- and Bowie proved to be nothing if not a completist.

For his friend David Lynch, he could easily have found another, more optimal time, and the rest of the cast would have been none the wiser.

As for that timeline: Twin Peaks: Revisited was shot over eight months, starting in September 2015 and wrapping by April 2016. Bowie was still with us for the first five of those months, ample time to get Lynch whatever he needed to make an appearance work.

And Lynch had already scrambled to get Catherine Coulson's scenes shot before her battle with cancer made that impossible. The Log Lady died in September 2015, just as production on Twin Peaks was starting, and four months before Bowie.

Kyle Maclachlan, David Bowie, Miguel Ferrer in 'Fire Walk With Me' Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

Let's look at the log

The strongest signals that this could happen are coming from Twin Peaks: The Return itself, which has been liberally referencing Jeffries in two of its four episodes. Apart from when do we get Agent Cooper back, the biggest mystery seems to be not the murder of a librarian, but where Jeffries is and whether he's coming back.

At the end of Episode 2, Bob Cooper (what I call Agent Dale Cooper's evil doppleganger under Bob's thrall), has just committed a disturbing and violent crime. He goes into another room where an open suitcase of communications equipment is waiting to be used, establishes a connection, and begins a conversation.

Cooper thinks it's Phillip Jeffries -- and carries on as if it were. But at some point Jeffries says something that Bob Cooper begins to question. Is it what he said? His voice? Bob Cooper is suddenly suspicious and asks: "This is Phillip Jeffries, isn't it?"

The conversation ends without clarity -- but we're left feeling that was not Jeffries. And whoever the voice was, it certainly wasn't Bowie's.

Bowie affected a high-pitched Southern drawl for his Jeffries voice -- get your head around that for a minute -- that distinctly had Bowie's undertones. The voice Bob Cooper was suitcase-Skyping with was distinctly a New York City accent, and this was certainly not the Thin White Duke, who spent nearly all of his Fire Walk With Me appearance screeching gibberish at Gordon Cole about where he'd spent his lost time.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

One could easily see that as a one-off, red-herring Jeffries reference that won't go anywhere. But he comes up again: In the fourth episode of The Return -- the last of what we've seen so far -- Jeffries plays heavily in the final scene, establishing an episode cliffhanger typical of Lynch.

Gordon Cole (still played by Lynch himself, of course) has traveled to the fictional Buckhorn. S.D., to speak with a man the FBI believes to be the long-lost Agent Cooper. But it's his long-haired doppleganger, who now sits in a state penitentiary following a car accident.

Here, his old boss is greeting him for the first time in 25 years -- but there's something wrong with Cooper's voice and delivery. He recognizes Cole, but he is not himself.

"Where have you been all these years?" Cole asks.

"I've been working undercover all these years," Cooper replies. "Working primarily with our colleague Phillip Jeffries."

Cole is stunned.

"Phillip Jeffries?"

"I need to be debriefed by you about his work, Gordon," Cooper says in a strange monotone. "I will tell you the hole story, all its twists and turns."

Outside, Albert (Miguel Ferrer) and Cole agree that something was off about Cooper in there. And that's when Albert admits to Cooper that he'd been in touch with Jeffries.

"I authorized Phillip to get Cooper some information," he says -- information that led to someone being killed.

Cole is flabbergasted. "Phillip's been off the radar for years."

OK, OK. This surely is all just wishful thinking I was talking about, right?

But if anyone could pull it off, it'd be the two Davids -- Lynch and Bowie -- both of whom know a thing or two about keeping secrets and springing surprises.