After a successful transfusion of energy from Bill Paxton last season, Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD has decided to draft someone else who has been better known for ‘80s and 90s performances. Kyle MacLachlan has joined the cast in a pivotal role.

Part of the big mystery – if we’re brutally honest, one of the less compelling parts – of the first year’s shows was the identity of hacker Skye’s (Chloe Bennet) parents. It has slowly been revealed that she comes from a less-than-ordinary background and in the Season One finale, the character of Rainer was shown handing a photo of Skye to an unseen man saying she’d found his daughter. It now seems that that father figure will be MacLachlan's role.

So now there will be a reunion – happy or otherwise, and we’d guess troubled – in Season Two. There is no information on how long MacLachlan will be on the show, or for how many episodes his character will stick around, but his offbeat energy should help the show maintain the higher entertainment value kick-started by the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier earlier this year.

With Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, B.J. Britt and Brett Dalton among the regulars, SHIELD will be back on US screens on September 23, which means it’ll likely return to Channel 4 shortly after that.