'What The Hell Am I Watching?' Here Are the First Reactions to 'Twin Peaks' Premiere

One thing's for sure, though: this is not your typical nostalgic '90s reboot.

The first two hours of the "Twin Peaks" revival from director David Lynch and writer Mark Frost premiered on Sunday, pulling viewers back into the unsettling story that began in 1990 with the murder of Laura Palmer in a strange mountain town.

It's hard to sum up exactly what's going on more than 25 years later -- FBI Agent Cooper stuck in the red-curtained, alternate dimension Black Lodge while an evil doppleganger takes his place, a glass box in New York City under constant supervision, Hawk searching through Cooper's files in the town of Twin Peaks after getting a message from the Log Lady, a murder investigation in South Dakota -- but fans of the show are intensely interested in whether the new episodes will live up to the original.

NYT's James Poniewozik said that "even after nearly three decades, Mr. Lynch's visual imagination remains inimitable" and the director "still has his penchant for dualities and eerie beauty."

He continues, "The original 'Twin Peaks' was powered by two questions: 'Who killed Laura Palmer?' and 'What the hell am I watching?' The reincarnation doesn't have the first. But it still knows how to get you to ask the second."

Daniel D'Addario from TIME Magazine wasn't as satisfied:

"It's not just that the few returning characters we see are (with fitting surrealism) 26 years more wrinkled than when last we saw them. The show, which derived its power from the aftermath of trauma in a small community, has chosen to tell a story that's odder and bigger—so big, in fact, that it has so far choked off what made Twin Peaks work all along."

From Liz Shannon Miller at IndieWire:

"The acting across the cast is especially impressive given their production circumstances: As it's been publicly revealed, all actors were only given their own lines, and no knowledge of the full story. Those are insane circumstances for any actor — though Lynch is so beloved by his cast that he can get away with it. And fortunately, the actors proved up to the challenge, delivering on the show's idiosyncratic rhythms in a way that makes Season 3 feel very much of a piece with the show that came over 20 years before."

Daniel Fienberg from the Hollywood Reporter summed it up this way: "Through its first two hours, David Lynch's new 'Twin peaks' is unsettling, weird, funny and basically impossible to review."

Meanwhile on Twitter, "Twin Peaks" fans have basically been reduced to a pile of awe and suspense as they wait for the next episodes: