10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 6
8. We Know Of A New Villain
Balthazar Getty's Red was introduced in the final scene of the premiere. Though his distant interaction with Shelly was unassuming and thus difficult to gauge, it was played with just enough finger-cocking menace to convey danger.
In Part 6, we learned that he is trouble; he is the puppet master orchestrating the movements of despicable thug Richard Horne, and it is suggested his is a more otherworldly power than the grotesque psychopathy of his underling. Red flipped a coin which both spun in the air for an impossible amount of time and replicated in Horne's mouth. The scene was typically interpretative; like near everything else in The Return thus far, it was unclear whether Red's magic is a continuation of the mythology introduced by the Tremonds in the original series, or a hallucination experienced by Horne, his mind altered by what might have been misunderstood by Frank Truman as "Chinese designer drugs" in Part 4. The "sparkle" of which Red spoke is something he might conjure, as well as distribute.
It is expert casting by Lynch. The word for Getty is eccentric; a trait magnified by his character, with his ludicrous obsession with his own hands. On the surface, it was farcical, but in trademark Lynch fashion, the exaggerated posturing was undercut with a demoniac threat.
"Remember this, kid: I will saw your head open and eat your brains if you f*ck me over," he said. The least graphic word in that impossibly violent threat might yet prove the most important.