10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 9
5. R.I.P. Johnny Horne?
"Harry, what are you doing?" marks the first verbal appearance of Jan D'Arcy's Sylvia Horne.
Lynch's camera trains on the wooden rafters of an undisclosed locale at the onset of what, in virtually any other show, would mark act two. "Who let him out?" the voice wails - "him" being Johnny Horne, played by a third different actor in Eric Rondell.
We then see him scream across the second storey decked out in blue pyjamas, the rushed, cartoonish pitter patter of his feet a macabre use of sound design given his seeming fate - an atmosphere doubled down upon with a shrill, OTT "Where is he?!" and a histrionic "Johnny!" His whereabouts is soon confirmed. Again, the action here isn't shown. We see only a flash of light and hear a sickening thud and shatter. Lynch then cuts to a hole in the wall opened by Johnny's head, blood oozing down from under it. In an echo of the pilot, the camera descends downwards to discover his presumably dead body, his left eye obliterated it another continuation of The Return's grisly corpse motif. If it isn't self-evident enough that this is the end for a minor recurring character, this sequence subverts and caps his introduction, in which he sombrely thudded his head against a dollhouse.
In a series in which such bookends are common, and which deals in the blackest shade of comedy, somebody had to buy the farm when we first entered it.