Lost Girl

The Lost Girl (Karolina Gruszka) lived in old world Poland. After cheating on her husband, she became imprisoned in a sort of limbo (depicted as a hotel room). Her affair and its consequences resonated through future generations, with Nikki/Sue as the "Lost Girl" surrogate in the most recent version. The Lost Girl's TV in her hotel room appears to be near-omniscient, displaying past, present and possibly even future events. The Lost Girl does not appear to have any control over the content she is shown, however.

Poland
The Lost Girl was married to a man who was, or became, the Phantom. He was physically abusive to her, and brutally beat her on at least one occasion. She was having an affair with a married man. One night, the Lost Girl ran into the Phantom on the street. She said he looked upset. He responded, “I think you don’t recognize me…my manner.” She said he did seem different, and he responded that she did, too: he was used to seeing her in their home, not on the street at night. He then told her there had been a murder, and he thought she knew the person. He didn’t know the name, but he had seen her with this person. Both of them were aware of the unspoken truth: her lover was dead.

The Room
Picking up directly from the ending of ''[http://inland-empire.wikia.com/wiki/Axxon_N. Axxon N.]'', the Lost Girl sits crying on her bed in the hotel room, naked and holding a blanket over her. She watches static on TV, which turns to sped-up footage of Rabbits, then sped-up footage of Visitor #1 approaching Nikki’s house. It goes back to static, then returns to Rabbits.

Using Axxon N. as a sort of portal, the Lost Girl speaks to Sue (in English):"Do you want to see? You have to be wearing the watch. You light a cigarette. You push and turn right through the silk. You fold the silk over and then you look through the hole."This advice allows Sue to learn about the Lost Girl's past, and ultimately save her.

In the hotel room, the Lost Girl cries as she watches footage of her lover waiting for her the night she was beaten by her husband, and later as she watches his corpse lying in a pool of blood.

Sue sees the Lost Girl in a ketchup stain on Smithy's shirt, praying in Polish over candles in a black veil: "Cast out this wicked dream that has seized my heart."

Three Polish men (incarnations of the Rabbits) hold a séance summoning the Lost Girl. She sits at the table with her head in her hands. She says, in Polish, “There’s someone there.” Janek and Smithy (an incarnation of her lover) enter. One of the men, Marek, tells Smithy that the Lost Girl sent for him, but Smithy cannot see her. The Lost Girl says she doesn’t know where she is. Smithy now hears her, but still can’t see her. Marek tells Smithy that the Lost Girl spoke of the person Smithy works for, and then he hands Smithy a pistol. After Smithy takes the gun and exits, the Lost Girl disappears.

After dying as Sue, Nikki seems to have gained the ability to look through the Lost Girl's television to see her.

After Nikki kills the Phantom, the Lost Girl sees Lanni and Lori running joyously down the hall outside her hotel room on the TV. Then, she sees herself on the TV for the first time. Nikki enters and kisses the Lost Girl, then Nikki disappears. The Lost Girl leaves the room. She enters the hallway, and goes downstairs...

Home
...and enters the Smithy's House set. She reunites with her lover, who just returned home with their son. They ecstatically embrace.

More Things That Happened (Deleted Scenes)
The Lost Girl's longest scene was left on the cutting room floor, and strangely, seems to take place in the present day (based on the clothing of extras), with her not trapped in the hotel room.

The scene takes place at a party in a candle-lit mansion. A painting shows a naked woman on a cliff side reaching upward toward an angel holding a sword. The Phantom sits below the painting on a cushion on the floor.

All the other party-goers strangely stare at the Lost Girl. She ultimately decides to sit by the Phantom, but claims she does not speak Polish. He switches to English, and offers to sell her a watch. She says that she has heard about the watches: they are magic and bring good luck. “They tell time,” responds the Phantom. “What more do you want from watch?” However, he then adds that they bring good luck if you "give something." He tells her to give him $25 and to hold his hand for two seconds. She is uneasy. He promises to “look over” her. She says that things aren’t going so good for her, and she needs some luck, but he is creeping her out. He ultimately convinces her by telling her that the other who bought the watches have what they wanted. She takes money out of her shoe and hands it to him. He takes her hand, with the watch and the money inside, and strokes it. Above them is the painting of the naked woman reaching to heaven: the woman’s bloody, feet are on a cliff side, with the devil's clawed hand grasping nearby, climbing out of hell.

Trivia

 * The motif of the Lost Girl crying in the hotel room originated from a short on David Lynch's website called The Darkened Room.


 * The Lost Girl's prayer, "Cast out this wicked dream that has seized my heart," has two origins. Lynch intended the moment as a tribute to one of his all-time favorite films, Sunset Boulevard. In that film, an early silent film of character Norma Desmond is shown which includes the quote and nearly identical footage. However, the footage in Sunset Boulevard was actually borrowed from an earlier film starring the actress who played Norma, Gloria Swanson: Queen Kelly, a 1929 film which was directed by Erich von Stroheim, who played Norma's butler and former director in Sunset Boulevard. Lynch has also paid tribute to Sunset Boulevard by naming the Twin Peaks character he plays, Gordon Cole, after a minor character from the film. Season 3 of Twin Peaks acknowledges this connection by showing a clip from the film at a key moment in Part 15.
 * In the Lynch documentary, Lynch can be seen directing the scene where the Phantom tells the Lost Girl that her lover is dead. He tells the actors to play the scene as if they have entered into a dream, like they have "seen it before" - not casual conversation, but rather "very adult, proper, solid."