35 Years Ago, Twin Peaks Ended Its First Season Without Revealing Its Biggest Mystery

The first season of Twin Peaks became a pop culture obsession with the airing of its eight-episode first installment, which unfolded on ABC across April and May 1990. It included a feature-length pilot—which ran as an even longer standalone TV movie in Europe—as well as a season finale that left fans on an absolutely dizzying array of cliffhangers.

It’s hard to reconstruct what that summer of 1990 was like for devoted viewers who were waiting for season two’s September arrival. These days, the worst part about missing a new episode of the latest must-see show is having to avoid spoilers until you can carve out time to stream it. Once you’ve watched the episode, the experience doesn’t end there; you can read recaps to rehash every last detail, learn more about the story and its creation thanks to interviews with cast and crew, and dive down rabbit holes on X and Reddit to explore wild and intriguing fan theories.

But 35 years ago, if you weren’t on your couch to watch Twin Peaks at the precise time it aired on ABC—or if you forgot to set your VCR to record it—you had to ask your friends who did watch it for a play-by-play. Sure, you could read more about the show in magazines or chuckle at its instant-classic Saturday Night Live parody, but otherwise you had to watch when it was on, and pay close attention.

That ephemeral quality is perhaps partially why the show’s mystery grabbed ahold of so many fans, especially in Twin Peaks’ first season. David Lynch and Mark Frost created what was essentially a classic nighttime soap opera, but with dashes of cosmic weirdness flavoring its edges—that weirdness got more intense in season two—as well as a filming style and distinctive aesthetic that felt completely new and different in a TV format, even to people who were already fans of Lynch’s big-screen work.

The show’s eighth episode, “The Last Evening,” brings season one to an end that in no way delivers narrative closure on any of its many storylines—in fact it makes a seemingly deliberate effort to leave as many dangling threads as possible. The question on every Twin Peaks viewer’s lips that spring was “Who killed Laura Palmer?” The finale, written and directed by Frost, leaves it tantalizingly unanswered.

On top of that, it brought forth many additional questions, some (but not all) circling around Laura’s death, rooted in the idea that the town of Twin Peaks has a lot more going on beneath the surface than anyone—even the unusually intuitive FBI Agent Dale Cooper—ever realized. 

The list of suspects had narrowed somewhat by “The Last Evening,” but Laura’s murder—her body is discovered in the pilot—had barely inched any closer to being solved. Dr. Jacoby, her psychiatrist, was cleared; yes, he was eccentric, but he loved her too much to be the one to end her life. His own life is dangling in the balance, however, after suffering a heart attack in the wake of a brutal beating that was administered by an unseen assailant… after Jacoby was tricked into thinking he saw Laura alive.

It wasn’t her, of course—Twin Peaks is a soap opera, after all, and therefore it’s not weird that Laura has a lookalike cousin—but the moment of confusion gave Laura’s high school boyfriend Bobby the chance to stash a bag of cocaine in the motorcycle of Laura’s secret high school boyfriend, James.

When Bobby, pretending to be local scumbag Leo Johnson (more on him in a moment), calls in a tip to the police, James is busted by Sheriff Harry S. Truman and Cooper. Though you can’t believe the cops will fall for the ruse, James’ fate at the end of the season looks a lot like a jail cell.

Speaking of the town’s underground drug trade, Twin Peaks reveals that Laura—a homecoming queen with a not-so-wholesome hidden life—was mixed up in it, and heavily suggests that local dealer Leo and his associate Jacques Renault, who works across the Canadian border at brothel and gambling den One-Eyed Jack’s, may have had a hand in her death. 

But the clues don’t lead to a solid case against those two, just a lot of grimy connective tissue.

It’s a lot! And that’s without even mentioning that Leo gets shot (his fate is unknown at the end of the episode) through his own window while he’s attacking Bobby, who’s been having an affair with Leo’s wife, Shelly. Leo’s assailant is yet another local scumbag, Hank Jennings.

For his part, Hank is tying up loose ends ahead of an insurance-fraud scheme involving an entirely separate set of players, as well as some Leo-engineered arson at Twin Peaks’ resident sawmill. Leo has already set up the incendiary device (and tied up a helpless Shelly next to it) before Hank takes aim.

Meanwhile, Leo’s partner Jacques gets arrested after a sting at One-Eyed Jack’s. He’s injured while being taken into custody, then left unattended in his hospital bed long enough to be suffocated by yet another character in this complex melodrama: Laura’s grieving and apparently vengeful father, Leland.

That last point becomes important, as Twin Peaks fans know now, but it wasn’t until well into season two that viewers discovered who really killed Laura Palmer. In late May 1990, however, it was still a burning question, along with a zillion more piled on top of it.

Who killed Laura? Well, how about, did Shelly and sawmill owner Catherine (and Pete, Catherine’s husband, their would-be rescuer) escape the inferno? Did Leo survive his gunshot wound? Will Jacoby pull through after his heart attack? Will James get railroaded on that drug charge?

And how about some characters we haven’t even mentioned yet—like, will Nadine survive her suicide attempt? Will Andy and Lucy reconcile now that he knows she’s pregnant? How is Audrey going to escape having to sleep with her own father her first night on the job at One-Eyed Jacks?

And, for the love of David Lynch, who shot Agent Cooper?

You can’t blame viewers for feeling exactly the way Coop did in that final scene of “The Last Evening,” which sees him open his door at the Great Northern Hotel, expecting room service bringing a nice glass of warm milk… only to be blasted with close-range shots from an unknown assailant.

Thud to the floor, and think back on everything you just witnessed—then begin the agonizing wait for season two. It was a genius move in hindsight, because the frenzy over the show only increased in the intervening months. Lucky for all Twin Peaks‘ 21st century fans, you can skip that part. The entire series is now streaming on Paramount+.

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