10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Premiere
7. South Dakota Echoes
Among several eyebrow-raising additions to the cast was one Matthew Lillard - best remembered as gurning comic foil in several 1990s teen flicks and latterly as Shaggy in the reviled live action Scooby Doo franchise.
His performance here is acted with the ambiguity of a master, in which he anchors an intriguing subplot set in South Dakota. Lillard is arrested for the murder of a beheaded woman, but has no recollection of the act. On the surface, he is oblivious - chipper, even. But upon interrogation, you can practically see his psyche crumbling within him.
He discloses to his wife that he recollects the murder he is suspected as committing, but only in a dream. Much like Leland Palmer was in the series, he is portrayed, ambiguously, as an unwitting patsy. This is a key development of the mythology, muddied by the grimy waters of Fire Walk With Me. To what extent is the relationship between the material and spirit worlds symbiotic, complicit? The subplot raises almost as many tantalising questions as the New York scenes. What was that blackened, anachronistically-fashioned, disappearing figure in the adjacent jail cell?
The South Dakota scenes act as an echo to the events in the Pacific Northwest 25 years prior, seemingly masterminded by DoppelCoop for reasons that aren't yet clear.
Even less apparent is what is going on in Las Vegas, to which we also paid a fleeting visit.