Twin Peaks is leaving Washington, and other clues to the new season

With less than two weeks before it happens again on Showtime, this morning Variety published a lengthy piece featuring interviews with Twin Peaks director David Lynch, returning star Kyle MacLachlan, and Laura Dern, a new addition to Twin Peaks but certainly not to the David Lynch cinematic universe. There’s been speculation that Dern will be playing Diane, the unseen colleague to whom Special Agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) addresses his tape-recorded dispatches from Twin Peaks. Dern won’t confirm that, of course, but she does hint at a callback to not only the original series, but a scene she and MacLachlan shared in 1986’s Blue Velvet: “Kyle and I had several scenes, particularly in the car, when we’re talking about the robins,” she says. “There’s this very beautiful, hopeful poetry amidst this hellish world they’ve entered.”