The thing about all these posts is they all seam to read some kind of demeaning attitude towards the audience in the film/television-making of Lynch, which absolutely doesn't fit at all with how I watch Lynch. I've always seen the opposite; in all his previous works Lynch presents his ideas with complete confidence and he trusts that his audience are able to in some way analyze the work for themselves.

I re-watched Mulholland Drive just the other day, and nowhere in it does the movie go "ha, you thought this was real? Now let me show you what really is going on". Instead he trusts that his audience can recognize the artifice of the first "half" by using obviously cheap tropes to prime his audience for whats to come. The second half is more of a reward for the alert viewer then a pointed finger at the viewer who doesn't pay that much attention.

I still think it's too early to make any broad statements about the themes of The Return seeing as we don't have the full picture yet, in the same way that strictly analyzing the first 2/3 of Mulholland Drive would yield a completely stunted understanding of the work as a whole.