A new, comprehensive feature in Variety about Showtime’s Twin Peaks revival yielded some of the most significant revelations about what to expect from the David-Lynch-directed, 18-episode series to date. Featuring quotes from Lynch and co-stars Kyle MacLachlan and newcomer Laura Dern, among others, Maureen Dowd’s piece explores the genesis of the revival from an unwieldy 400-page script finished by Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost in 2014 into a segmented 18-episode series.
The piece reveals the inspiration for the new series came from Frost and Lynch talking in 2012, a crucial year in the Twin Peaks timeline. MacLachlan’s Agent Cooper is 25 years older in the famous “Red Room” dream scenes in the first show, and in 2012, Cooper would have reached that age in real life. Showtime CEO David Nevins also noted that Fire Walk With Me, the polarizing Twin Peaks followup film, will factor into the third season’s mythology in an important way. (Fans might have registered this after seeing the movie-only character Carl Rodd, played by Harry Dean Stanton, surface in the series’ most recent trailer.) Nevins also hints that David Lynch’s own character in the series, the near-deaf FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole, will return in the series “pretty prominent[ly].”
Perhaps the most illustrative tidbit about the new series, though, is that Lynch’s new Twin Peaks universe is significantly more broad-scale that the original series: that is to say, it doesn’t all take place in the show’s titular town, by a long shot. Nevins, ever the beans-spiller, mentions that the series features “different threads in different parts of the U.S.” that eventually converge. It does not go outside the U.S., but it is in multiple locations in the U.S.” Dowd clarifies that “though [the show] returned to Snoqualmie, Wash., for some filming, certain storylines in the new season take place outside the Pacific Northwest, and the bulk of the new season was shot in Southern California.”
All of this sounds like a recipe for what Nevins recently called, in a recent interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, a “pure, heroin version of David Lynch.” If these details aren’t enough proof, there’s also this amazing quote from Laura Dern: “Kyle and I had several scenes, particularly in the car, when we’re talking about the robins.” The birds are still not what they seem, and it’s time to get excited.
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Read the full Variety feature here. Twin Peaks premieres on Showtime on May 21.
