When I saw images of Scooby-Doo in the Red Room from Twin Peaks I assumed it was fan art. Mark Frost and David Lynch’s [insert literally any genre here] series is my favourite TV show so when I discovered my assumption was incorrect, that Scooby and the gang do indeed find themselves in the Red Room, I had to track down the series it was from.
Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated ran for two seasons between 2010 and 2013 and, plainly, is the show in the franchise that adults can watch without feeling the least bit embarrassed. Having just watched all 52 episodes, I can confirm it’s a wonderful series. Suitable for kids, of course, yet so many of its jokes and serialised storylines are clearly geared towards an older audience. This is true for the show’s many pop culture references, featuring everything from The Velvet Underground to Hellraiser. Yes, it’s an animated children’s show featuring Cenobite sex demons.
After a few episodes I thought I had worked out what to expect from the Twin Peaks scene. Much like the show recreating the famous bathroom scene from The Shining, it’ll be a fun easter egg, a few seconds of screentime. Wrong. It’s no mere reference. The Red Room plays a huge role in the show’s serialised plot, revealing vital details to the overarching narrative. Nor is it contained to one scene, or even one episode. The Red Room appears in multiple episodes. I was shocked and so very happy.
It’s not just the visuals of the Red Room but the room/dimensional realm itself. Anyone can include some red curtains and a black-and-white chevron floor. There’s no other word for it: it’s a crossover between the two shows. The Red Room, part of or connected to the Black Lodge (some people use the names of those places interchangeably but I see them as different), is lore accurate to what we experience in Twin Peaks. I doubt they asked for permission and I’m shocked the makers of Mystery Incorporated managed to get away with it without being sued.
Scooby enters the Red Room, or Sitting Room as it’s called in the show (a play on it’s alternate Twin Peaks name of the Waiting Room) during a dream, consisting of the same endless curtained corridors, the same chairs and statue, and even a dancing man. The SAME dancing man. Michael J. Anderson reprises his role as The Man From Another Place and gets more to do here than he did in Twin Peaks. Although sadly I don’t think he’s actually speaking backwards in Mystery Incorporated and they just put a weird effect on his voice instead.
We never saw that character, also known as The Arm, outside of the otherworldly realm in the show, besides visions of him in the similar room above the convenience store and briefly dancing on the bed after Josie’s death. Mystery Incorporated gives him a full character, the part of him trapped in the room and the part of him walking free. After Anderson refused to return for Twin Peaks: The Return, and said some awful bitter things about Lynch which suggests some mental health issues, this Scooby-Doo role acts as a fun, fitting return and finale for the character (not counting his eventual evolution into an electric tree with a potato head).
A couple of episodes after Scooby’s Dale Cooper-esque dream, the entire gang undergo hypnosis to enter the Red Room, spending the majority of an episode there. Scooby’s girlfriend Nova (don’t worry, she’s also a dog) acts as the Laura Palmer substitute, appearing through undefined means and spouting cryptic clues. The episode even features duality and doppelgängers, with good versions of the villains we’ve seen throughout the show trapped in the Sitting Room while their evil versions run free.
It’s not just filler for Twin Peaks fans but key discoveries about Mystery Incorporated’s serialised narrative are revealed, with the Red Room the key to so much storytelling. It’s here where the show’s elaborate lore (featuring real supernatural monsters as well as men in masks) mixing Babylonian Anunnaki mythology and classic sci-fi ideas are ‘explained’. Even this has Twin Peaks connections, with Judy being some mythic evil being and the Black Lodge denizens also being connected to space, planetary alignments, and even UFOs (read Mark Frost’s The Secret History of Twin Peaks for all that weird meaty goodness). Upon learning these revelations, Velma is distressed how nothing makes sense. The show’s writers clearly take joy in doing a crazy Lynchian dream logic episode within an otherwise logical, formulaic franchise.
A Scooby-Doo/Twin Peaks crossover, featuring a quote from The Godfather Part III for good measure. God, I love Mystery Incorporated. It’s a brilliant show. Plus it features Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, who went on to appear in the modern season of Twin Peaks, delivering a great performance. And now anytime I watch Twin Peaks I’ll half expect Cooper to say “let’s see who the killer really is” and pull Leland’s mask off to reveal Bob underneath. Although this all begs the question: when are we getting Mystery Incorporated: The Return? Hopefully it won’t take 25 years.
