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I realize that there's been extensive theorizing done on the green-jeweled ring, so I apologize if this has been brought up before. All the same, I'd like to put forth my own theory about the ring. The Ring: Bob and Mike
To me, the ring is less of a symbol of a pact made between LMFAP and BOB, it actually has a more abstract meaning. In Twin Peaks, a place where forces both good and bad have the capacity to physically manifest themselves, I believe other things that are otherwise intangible also have the capacity to similarly manifest themselves. To me, the pact between LMFAP and BOB to be a sort of symbolic union: if BOB and his actions represents the incohate urge to fullfil primal desires inherent in people, and LMFAP represents the calculated capcity of mankind to perpetuate evil for their own self serving purposes, then the "marriage" between the two take on a different overtone. It's the kind of commonplace evil that has existed since the dawn of man, if not since the dawn of time. There always has been, and always will be, the urge to promulgate pain and sorrow among some members of the human race. The Ring and Victims
The ring indeed marks victims, but not in a way that implies total agency held by the Black Lodge members. The ring is another kind of manifestation that is otherwise entirely commonplace in the rest of the world. The ring is almost like the mark OF the victim, rather than performing as a beacon to guide the killer to the victim, and the transference of the ring is less of a curse and more of a natural progression in society of social bonds deteriorating and being damaged. The victims volunteer themselves, and the predation practiced upon them is both fantastic and totally mundane. It is fantastic in that evil has the capacity here to show itself in some physical form, but mundane in that it isn't these forces of evil that are doing these actions. It's people. People have always preyed upon each other, either due to insanity, or lack of impulse control, or sheer malevolence, but it remains that it is the actions of people all the same. Again, I would like to state that the ring is a convention to reveal the status of a victim, rather than being an in-universe marker for BOB to murder. Of course, there are numerous types of victims within the universe, but it doesn't mean that the ring needs to appear to all of them in order for people to be victims, or for various types of evil to befall them. Again, I would like to state that due to Twin Peak's unique features, it has the capacity to manifest these struggles, and we see only a select portion of them. This is hinted at in a few ways, but the first one I am going to bring up is Cooper's perception of the ring as an agent of death, and entreating Laura in her dream not to take it. Cooper is well meaning, because he doesn't want to see yet another young girl being victimized, because he has understood the link of the ring to untimely deaths and disappearances. Laura
Laura is in a fairly unique place among the victims. She can either choose to become like her father, or die before it happens. If we understand BOB to be the side of humanity that practices impulsive evil, the kind that is more closely related to mental illnesses, then we can understand him as a kind of representation of it. In my understanding, Leland is in fact a mentally ill person who unwittingly preys upon his daughter, tolerated by a terrified wife and daughter. BOB's presence within Leland is a sort of token for the audience to understand Leland's unstable and deeply deranged nature, something we will only grasp as clues keep falling into place. Leland is less being possessed by BOB and more possessed by his own trauma and mental illness; BOB functions as a manifestation of someone who is a perpetrator by circumstance rather than choice.
Given Laura's mother's own sort of "powers", we can understand her as someone who has a keen ability to sense the capacity for evil in another person, rather than having psychic visions. In a way, I think Laura's mother has always known about her husband's longtime predation upon her daughter, but has traumatically suppressd it. Her vision of BOB behind her daughter's bed was more of a traumatic flash of her knowledge of her husband's illness and his victimizing of their child, rather than a psychic vision of BOB as an evil entity.This also account for Sarah's further mental degrading, as the presence of BOB is so very terrifying in that it has been her own husband all along.
In my reading, both Leland and Sarah Palmer are mentally unstable, leading to a fragmented home life, and that environment made Laura spiral. Laura's symbolic choice of the ring, rather than continued predation by her father, shows she chose rather to die than allow the mental instability rampant in her family to continue in herself. Again, if we understand BOB to be a kind of manifestation of chaotic evil, and Laura's current state of activities to be a kind of gateway to allow BOB access to her and therefore further devolution of her sanity and morality, then we can understand Laura's action to take the ring as a kind of suicide. The ring therefore, represents the status of a victim rather than of a perpetrator. Laura chose to retain whatever innocence and dignity she had left by allowing herself succumb as a victim, rather than survive as a perpetrator of the same kind of abuses her father enacted. Between these two choices, as a paragon for impulsive and innate evil, or as a victim of her own circumstances, Laura chose the latter. Desmond
So let's examine a few more instances of the ring as a representation of a victim. For example, let's take Desmond. Directly before his disappearance, we see him crouching below the Chalfont's trailer to pick up the ring. It is unclear the exact nature of what happened to him, but I myself espouse that Mike, in whatever form, abducted or murdered Desmond. In whatever way, Desmond became an unwitting victim. Again, it's not like the ring assigned the status of a victim to Desmond, it was going to happen anyway. It's a cue to allow viewers to realize Desmond is gonna get it. In this case, Mike, not BOB, enacted some sort of violence upon Desmond. This is hinted at in the bizarre Indian whoop/electrical signal sound prevalent during his previous visit to the trailer park, as well as the "Let's Rock" epitaph. Similarly, the hostile Deputy Cliff Howard lives at the trailer park; if Mike were to possess Cliff Howard, either as a calculated action to get rid of the feds messing up their town, or as a calculated desire for revenge, it would still fit within Mike's own methods, as well as Howard's motives. Mike, representing mankind's concerted desire to kill other men, and more insidious than BOB, is an aspect of people's desire to do evil for thought-out purposes. We understand this through various cues that we can stitch together throughout the series and the film, and then link him to his presence during Desmond's moment of becoming a victim. The film decides to leave the audience with the importance of Desmond's status as a victim, rather than the evil that will be perpetrated upon him. In this case, it's showing us that evil can happen to anyone, even capable, strong FBI agents, and not just vulnerable high school girls. Jeffries
This is again hinted at with Phillip Jeffries. In his frenzied and jumbled recounting of his encounter with the denizens of the Black Lodge, he says how he had found something-- the ring-- and then that "they" were there. Again, we can understand this to be a type of symbolic transferrance of status of victim upon Jeffries when he connects his encounter with the manifestations of evil to to his discovery of the ring. Jeffries, on his own case at the time, no doubt similarly fell a victim to some kind of evil. This is heavily implied when we see his entrance as a disheveled, limping figure with a bloodied lip and unsteady voice. Again, a capable, strong man, storied in the FBI, disappears as easily as though he were any other victim. He implies he had seen one of their meetings, but whether this is due to his possession of the ring, or whether the meeting led to the possession of the ring is unclear, and lends to the cyclical nature that is recurrent in Twin Peaks. At any rate, Jeffries was indeed a victim, his presence announced as such by the ring. Why these people?
Finally, the question remains: why these certain people? There are a few possibilities. One It didn't have to be anybody in particular, it just happened to be these certain people who fell victim. This lends to the idea that anyone can be a victim, and anyone can be a perpetrator, the specific of identity of whom being unimportant. It is the larger struggle that is in the spotlight, the fight to keep people safe from the people who would do them harm, as signified by the interplay between the ring and the denizens. Two
A second possibility is that only certain people's circumstances could reap the garmanbozia sufficient to keep the pain and sorrow that is needed to propagate further pain and sorrow. A sort of "violence begets violence" scenario. The Palmer family, with their history of abuse and mental illness, would have been rife with the possibility of perpetuating pain and sorrow. The ring's presence among lower class, disenfranchised girls also points to the higher amount of victimization inherent in their position as both poor and female, another group full of pain and sorrow. Finally, with the FBI agents, their daily matter is to deal with the kind of pain and sorrow society inflicts upon each other, and it is a simple thing to succumb to either the pain and sorrow, or the evil actions. As Nietzsche said, "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." Again, because of their choice in line of work, they are also faced with the dichotomy of becoming a victim or a perpetrator, much as Laura had Evil will always be mysterious and incomprehensible. People will always hurt and kill other people, and it will always be something that will baffle and wound us all. The manifestation of the various spirits in the Black Lodge are just one of the ways of showing that fact. If only the rest of the world came equipped with green rings. Maybe in that way, a good deal of that evil could be averted.
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