Sydney actor Eamon Farren says he's still processing the controversial finale. "I think I'll be processing it for a while, just like everybody else," he says over the phone from "some weird passageway in Paris". "Like all good Lynchian things, it leaves you in this state of complete alertness but also in a dreamlike place. We got a little deeper but we were left hanging with some stuff. That's kind of the way it's meant to be." The Sydney actor, a regular fixture on the boards at Sydney Theatre Company, made his auspicious entry to the series back in episode five, as jumpy slimeball Richard Horne who viciously assaults an admiring bar patron at the Roadhouse. After killing a child and roughing up his own grandma, he made a similarly dramatic exit just ahead of Monday's finale, electroshocked to smithereens at the insistence of his dear old pa, evil Dale Cooper.

Farren as Twin Peaks villain Richard Horne. Lynch's creative fancies meant Farren was as blind to the series' revelations, even his own character's, as the rest of us. "On the plane over I was aware of maybe the first couple of scenes featuring my character," he says. "I only got the sides for my last scene a couple of days before we shot it. By that point, I'd learned that you don't need to think too far ahead, you just do the scene. Kyle MacLachlan as Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks Credit:Suzanne Tenner/Showtime "Lynch only gives direction when he feels he needs to. He's an intuitive person – a direction could be something traditional like 'this is what we need from this scene' and other times they were wonderful moments where he'd say a word and you'd just interpret it and run with it.

"It was a lovely way of entering into it. It's exciting and freeing and you can just trust yourself. Because of the way David works, we all got to be in the moment. We didn't talk about back-story. And even shooting those scenes where there were big reveals, everything was still beautifully ambiguous." While the show received uniformly glowing reviews from critics, it also suffered some early misconceptions from viewers seeking "damn good coffee" catchphrases. Its measured pace and off-kilter performances saw the show's viewership numbers sputter quickly despite pre-premiere hype. For Farren, Lynch's skewed whims were its appeal. "Speaking from my generation of television watching, we've been conditioned to things that move quickly, where you're either ahead of it or riding along with it," says Farren. "But the pace, I revelled in that. It's what gives [Twin Peaks] that creepiness, the humour, the suspense. "I loved those moments of pure narrative, where it was smart storytelling and just good television. But I also loved those moments of nothingness, like the bartender sweeping the floor for minutes on end."

The TV-jamming was also there in Lynch's awkward character interactions, like Farren's early scene opposite crime boss Balthazar Getty, with its twitchy back-and-forth and unexpected beats. "I met Balthazar about three seconds before we started shooting that scene. That awkward pausing just lived in itself. The audience is getting the construct of what we were creating, but it's also just what the interaction was like on the night," laughs Farren. "I don't know about you but I have those awkward moments in my life constantly, and to just show that and sit with that in a long-running TV series is really valuable." For Farren, the series has been a stark entry to Stateside screens, with US publications praising his villainous turn – and Peaks fans stopping him on the street for those ever-elusive answers. "For someone that does a lot of work in Australia, particularly onstage, this is a job that's been a beautiful entree into that world. The response has been great and there's lots of work that maybe will stem from that," he says of his Hollywood foray.

"The fan engagement on this thing has been amazing. What I love about Twin Peaks fans is they understand the fun of the show is to speculate, to decipher all those possibilities. That's what's kept the series alive, and that's the genius of Lynch. He writes stories with so many layers." And as for the admittedly unlikely prospect of more episodes? "I have no idea," he says. "Within this world and the multiple storylines of Twin Peaks, the possibilities are endless. I don't think anyone ever feels like it's enough. But my own personal response is what we got is what we got.

"Episode eight for me is just a really defining piece of television that I think everyone agrees came out of some special space of genius and creativity. To watch an artist of Lynch's body of work throw down 18 episodes of his complete worth is such a special thing, and I think we were lucky to experience it."

The full series of Twin Peaks: The Return is available to stream on Stan