Visionary director David Lynch died on Thursday at the age of 78. Though renowned for crafting darkly surreal films, like his homoerotic 1984 adaptation of the sci-fi epic Dune and the 2001 lesbian noir Mulholland Drive, his beloved drama series Twin Peaks helped popularize the slogan, “Fix your hearts or die!” a phrase that has since become an empowering pro-transgender cry against bigotry.

In 1991, during the second season of his groundbreaking and supernatural-horror TV drama series Twin Peaks, Lynch featured cisgender actor David Duchovny playing the role of transgender FBI Agent Denise Bryson — one of the first trans women ever to be portrayed on TV. Her appearance was all the more notable because Twin Peaks was one of the top-rated prime-time TV series on a major broadcast network in an era of sparse LGBTQ+ representation.

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The series’ lead character, FBI special agent Dale Cooper, initially expresses surprise at Bryson’s appearance, since he first knew her before her transition. But he treats her with respect nonetheless, even as the local sheriff’s department jokes about her “surprise” appearance and fashionable choice of color.

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Lynch portrayed Bryson heroically. She helps clear Cooper’s name when the FBI suspends him for drug trafficking accusations. Bryson learns Cooper was framed, and when Cooper is taken captive in a hostage standoff at a farm by the men who framed him, Bryson walks to the farmhouse posing as a waitress who has brought the men food. Once inside, she reveals a revolver in her stocking that Cooper then uses to escape his captors.

Lynch brought her character back in 2017 for the fourth episode of the show’s third season, entitled Twin Peaks: The Return.

At this point, Bryson had become the FBI’s chief of staff. While talking to FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole (a character played by Lynch himself), Cole informs her that he stood up for her after her transition.

“Before you were Denise, and you were Dennis, and I was your boss, when I had you working undercover at the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency], you were a confused and wild thing sometimes,” Cole says as Bryson nods her head, smiles and lets out a small chuckle.

“I had enough dirt on you to fill the Grand Canyon,” Cole continues, “and I never used a spoonful because you were and are a great agent. And when you became Denise, I told all of your colleagues, those clown comics, to fix their hearts or die.”

Hearing his words, Bryson says she has told Cole many times that she can never repay him for his kindness. She then approves of an operation to retrieve Cooper from a South Dakota federal prison after he goes missing for 25 years.

Bryson’s depiction isn’t perfect. She first recognizes her trans identity while cross-dressing during a sting operation, and her secret firearm reveal in season two potentially reinforces harmful stereotypes of trans women as deceptive and dangerous. Over the last decade, trans TV characters have become much more numerous and nuanced.

However, the phrase “Fix your hearts or die” has since been remembered as both a life philosophy delivered by Lynch personally as well as a slogan for trans empowerment. The phrase appeared on numerous social media posts noting Lynch’s groundbreaking TV character, on a badge sold to raise money for the National Center for Transgender Equality, and has been repeated by some trans people as a defiant motto against bigotry.

In a 2020 essay, trans British horror writer Alison Rumfitt mentioned the motto’s personal significance, writing (emphasis hers), “Is there any better phrase to say to a bigot than fix your hearts or die? That’s what I wanted to shout at the writer I saw on the street, the one I knew to be horrifically transphobic. It’s what I wanted to tell my Mum when she was crying, asking me what was I doing and why was I doing it to her. Fix your heart or die. Fix your f**king heart.”

In a recent essay for Them, trans writer Lex McMenamin wrote, “The line has become a trans rallying cry circulating on social media every few months since it aired — an increasingly necessary injunction as state governments seek to legislate us out of existence.”

“‘Fix your heart or die’ was the reminder I needed: that for a just outcome, we eventually have to tell some people to either get with the program or go to hell. The scene hadn’t yet ended when I decided to get the line tattooed,” McMenamin added. “What a perfectly succinct reminder how to respond to the fascists, to the TERFs and homophobes and reactionaries, to those who would let our world end rather than change for the better.”

In a 2017 essay Zach Vasquez called the phrase one of “startling empathy,” writing, “His films and his art… — often ugly, brutal, frightful; always strange and wonderful — are large enough to encapsulate the experiences of thousands of people that he has never even met. We should all strive to discover and inhabit such spaces within ourselves, even if, especially if, the price of admission is that we must either fix our hearts, or die.”

In a Thursday social media post commemorating Lynch’s passing, Jane Schoenbrun — the trans director behind the haunting 2024 coming-of-age allegory I Saw the TV Glow — wrote, “Like [existential absurdist writer Franz] Kafka, like [grotesque modern painter Francis] Bacon, [Lynch] dedicated his life to opening a portal. He was the first to show me another world, a beautiful one of love and danger I sensed but had never seen outside sleep. Thank you David your gift will reverberate for the rest of my life.”