The Giant appears to FBI agent Dale Cooper in visions, first right after Cooper has been shot in his hotel room. The Giant provides Cooper with clues about the murder of Laura Palmer, alerts Cooper that Laura's killer is in the process of murdering Maddy Ferguson and later confirms the identity of the murderer during a vision in the Roadhouse. Later on, he also warns Cooper that his love-interest Annie Blackburn should not enter the Miss Twin Peaks pageant. The Giant apparently inhabits an elderly Room Service Waiter of the Great Northern Hotel. Also, the Giant wears a similar outfit to the Waiter. In the final episode, when Cooper has entered the Black Lodge, both the Waiter and the Giant appear and the latter confirms their identity, stating: "One and the same". Though the Giant's actions seem to be benevolent, he seems to be part of the evil Black Lodge, as he appears alongside of the Man from Another Place in the Lodge's waiting room. However, some have opined that the waiting room actually is a neutral location between the Black and the White Lodge. In his first appearance, the Giant refused Cooper's question of his whereabouts.
2017 revival
Struycken reappears in the 2017 revival series as an unidentified character listed in the ending credits as ???????. His character is later identified as The Fireman, leaving it ambiguous if he is the same entity as the Giant. As in the original series, this character provides cryptic clues to Cooper and appears to have benevolent intentions. Unlike the Giant, however, he does not appear in the natural realm, instead bringing individuals into his own realm, which is depicted as being predominantly without color. The Fireman's earliest known activity was in 1945 when he created an orb bearing the face of Laura Palmer and had it sent to Earth in response to the Experiment's creation of an orb bearing the face of Killer BOB. Sometime before 2014, he brought Freddie Sykes into his realm, where he told Freddie to buy a gardening glove that would enhance his strength and travel to Twin Peaks. When Sheriff Frank Truman and Deputies Bobby Briggs, Tommy "Hawk" Hill, and Andy Brennan investigate a clue left behind by Major Garland Briggs in 2014, Andy is transported into the Fireman's realm and provided information on important events. Upon being brought to a set of coordinates, Dale Cooper's doppelganger is transported to the White Lodge, where the Fireman then shifts a teleportation destination from the Palmer House to the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department, transporting Cooper to the front of the building.
Cultural references
The Finnish doom metal band Swallow the Sun's song "The Giant" refers to this character. Their album Ghosts of Loss also mentions Laura Palmer in another song.
"Transmission 3", the final track on DJ Shadow's 1996 album Endtroducing..... samples the voice of the Giant, saying "It is happening again."
The Giant's words to Cooper in the hotel bedroom are sampled on the ambient album Substrata by Biosphere. The phrase "Sorry to wake you... I forgot to tell you something... The things I tell you will not be wrong..." appears in the song "The Things I Tell You".
In The Simpsons episode "Lisa's Sax", Homer Simpson is seen watching Twin Peaks in which The Giant is dancing with a white horse. Homer remarks, "Brilliant! I have absolutely no idea what's going on."
