10 Things We Learned From Twin Peaks: The Return Part 9
3. Matthew Lillard Is An Acting Powerhouse...
The FBI pay a visit to William Hastings, reduced to a shredded, blubbering nerve trapped behind bars and memories.
Like much of Part 9, the scene is very heavy on exposition - both conspicuous in itself and in direct comparison to the surreal masterclass that was Part 8. Still, Lillard evokes so much emotion in it that the info dump is excused and, to be a little more generous, warranted by the very nature of it. It's framed as an interrogation. What better (if easy) narrative method of drip feeding information to viewers?
It begins with a matter of fact "...different things" to a line of questioning re: Hastings' The Search For The Zone internet journal. Hastings wrote in it that he found and entered a different dimension, in which he met Major Briggs, who it is confirmed "hibernated" there to evade the threat of Dale Cooper's doppelgänger. Briggs supplied Hastings with the coordinates Cooper wants. Hastings then described Briggs' ascension in an echo of ???????'s in Part 8. This, and Briggs' similar way with prophecy, might suggest that ??????? was a doppelgänger of Briggs or his Earth-bound familiar.
Hastings' final rant - "We were going to go to the Bahamas! We were going to scuba dive and drink mixed drinks on the beach!" - is a tour de force of line delivering, trapping the viewer in a vortex of emotion from pity to compulsive, guilty laughter,
Credit, too, must go to Chrysta Bell's unfairly maligned Special Agent Tammie Preston, who projects authority and grounds Lillard's scenery chewing with an empathetic air.