Twin Peaks on MUBI: read this before watching

Twin Peaks was born on April 8, 1990, when ABC aired its pilot episode and forever changed how television was made. In just eight episodes, Lynch and Frost created a global phenomenon: a strange, hypnotic, and deeply addictive series that marked the start of "television as art" long before the rise of streaming, platforms, and binge-watching.

As David Lynch himself said: “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay on the shore; but if you want big fish, you have to dive deeper.”

Fun fact: Twin Peaks pioneered serialized storytelling with multiple layers that demanded active engagement and almost detective-like reading from viewers—a revolutionary approach for TV at the time.

It all begins with the body of a young woman, Laura Palmer, wrapped in plastic. But that crime is just a gateway. What follows is not a traditional investigation but a journey into a world where the emotional, surreal, absurd, and metaphysical intertwine without asking permission. The murder is only the starting point. What matters is the atmosphere, what’s left unsaid, what vibrates in the silences. There’s something disturbing, almost hypnotic, in this mix of genres that shouldn’t work—but it does. And how.

Fun fact: everything happens in a small town called Twin Peaks, Washington. This place is a character itself, a fundamental part of the series, full of dark secrets and strange people.

Just eight episodes are enough to cast the spell: nothing is clear, everything matters. What starts as a police investigation (finding the body of a seemingly perfect young woman living a secretive life) quickly dissolves into symbols, double meanings, women crying in slow motion, and an evil that cannot be named. The crime is there, but it’s only the door to something deeper, disturbing, and dreamlike.

The unresolved doesn’t frustrate: it envelops you. Like in dreams, there are no answers, but atmospheres that stick to your skin.

Without social media amplifying the phenomenon and with only one season, Twin Peaks did the unthinkable: redefined television, made weirdness part of the mainstream, and proved that darkness and strangeness could be part of pop culture.

Fun fact: after the pilot, each episode was shot in just seven days—a feat given its aesthetic ambition. Although exteriors were filmed in Washington State, much of the magic was born in an old warehouse converted into a studio in Venice, California. There, among fake walls and dim lights, the heart of Twin Peaks was built.

An FBI agent who meditates, follows dreams, talks to a tape recorder, and professes absolute love for coffee—things David Lynch himself adored. Dale Cooper is not just the man investigating Laura Palmer’s murder: he’s the heart, the moral and emotional compass of Twin Peaks.

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Played by the magnetic Kyle MacLachlan, Cooper is an atypical FBI hero: intuitive, sensitive, with a mystical side that breaks all classic detective stereotypes. Where others look for clues, he listens to silences. Where others interrogate, he dreams. Twin Peaks would be impossible without him. Cooper doesn’t just solve a mystery; he elevates the protagonist’s role to another level.

Fun fact: Cooper’s visions and dreams are his secret compass, his direct path to the hidden and inexplicable in Twin Peaks. For him, dreams aren’t mere subconscious reflections but doors to another reality where the supernatural and psychological converge.

The forest of Twin Peaks is a dark heart, a living metaphor of the evil lurking beneath the town’s calm surface. A trap for restless souls where reality shatters and rules dissolve, as if this territory collided with a hell bigger than itself.

There, things happen that aren’t spoken aloud: secrets whispered between trees, wrapped in a fog that chills to the bone. It’s in that forest that Laura Palmer appears, shrouded in violence and mystery, and where doors open to dimensions that twist logic and time. Among the shadows dwells BOB, a dark presence tied to the enigmatic Black Lodge, a secret that haunts and turns the everyday into something terrifying.

Fun fact: the forest is where the tangible and invisible intersect. An uncomfortable place full of truths no one wants to face. And like in the best stories, understanding what happens there means accepting some questions have no answers. The shadow never fully reveals itself.

In Twin Peaks, music doesn’t decorate; it speaks, cries, senses. It’s another voice, another narrative plane. Angelo Badalamenti composed a score you don’t just hear—you breathe it. Every synth and piano note feels like it comes from a place that no longer exists, or exists only there, behind red curtains and whispered secrets.

That melody feels like a forgotten dream that returns again and again, as if someone played it in a closed room years ago, just for you. It’s like a needle skipping on an old vinyl—not an insistent loop, but a broken plea that traps the story in an endless spiral, suspended between memory and mystery.

Fun fact: Laura Palmer’s Theme, the lament running through the series, was born in a single take. David Lynch gave emotional cues: “now love,” “now fear,” “now despair,” and Badalamenti improvised on the piano without stopping. Thus, one of television’s most iconic and emotional pieces was born—a sound that stays with you.

The second season continues Laura Palmer’s death investigation but broadens the story well beyond the crime: new subplots emerge exploring the town’s secrets and characters ranging from endearing to deeply disturbing. With 22 episodes, this phase grows in ambition and complexity, though it also wanders through eccentric storylines and unexpected twists that may confuse.

David Lynch, busy promoting Wild at Heart (1990), directed only three key episodes—the first, the seventh, and the finale—the latter crucial to understanding the show’s dark and symbolic core. As an essential complement, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), both a prequel and sequel film, dives into Laura Palmer’s last days and connects to Teresa Banks’s murder, offering vital clues to the mythology and Cooper’s fate.

Fun fact: The Secret History of Twin Peaks (Planeta Publishing, 2016), written by Mark Frost, anticipates central themes of TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES and expands the universe with fictional files and documents.

In Twin Peaks, nothing is decorative. Every face, every corner, every object holds a clue, a crack, an echo. Audrey Horne is not just a cryptic teenager: she’s a key that never fully unlocks. The Arm (“the man from another place”), with his reversed voice and impossible gestures, seems pulled from a Dalí nightmare. And the Log Lady, a shamanic figure, translates messages from another plane through her inseparable log.

Even secondary characters uphold the mystery: the lumberjack who appears as a bad omen, Dr. Jacoby with his bicolored glasses and psychedelic obsessions. They all embody parts of the town—shadows or light. Nothing is random. Some characters double, split, have doppelgängers. Some aren’t alive. Or never fully were.

And places don’t lag behind. The famous Red Room, with its zigzag floor and velvet curtains, isn’t just a visual icon: it’s an interdimensional space where time warps. It acts as a threshold between two planes: the White Lodge and the Black Lodge, representing the forces of good and evil.

Fun fact: David Duchovny (Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files) appears as DEA agent Denise Bryson, a character that broke molds in the ’90s.

David Lynch and Mark Frost bring pure, unfiltered surrealism back to television. TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES (2017) is not a traditional continuation: it’s a sensory, philosophical, and unclassifiable experience. Lynch, without restrictions, delivers 18 episodes that begin 25 years after the end of the second season, with Agent Dale Cooper still trapped in the Black Lodge. The narrative expands like a parallel dimension: there’s supernatural thriller, social critique, science fiction, uncomfortable humor, and scenes that feel like they came out of a contemporary art gallery. New characters join, and many from the original cast return, always from disorienting angles.

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The everyday becomes strange, and the fantastic, routine. Lynch directs and edits each episode with total freedom, breaking any TV logic. It’s not a linear or easy season: it’s a labyrinth that demands patience and surrender. But in return, it offers sublime moments. TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES redefines what a series can be in the 21st century. It doesn’t aim to please you: it wants you to get lost. And if you surrender, you won’t come out the same.

Fun fact: Naomi Watts revealed that when she received the script for her role as Janey-E Jones, she was only given her own lines. The rest was blacked out. Lynch kept total secrecy to preserve the mystery even on set.

Twin Peaks is something you feel, something you inhabit. The key is to surrender. It doesn’t hand you anything on a silver platter. It doesn’t try to please or explain. It’s a strange terrain, a ground that demands interpretation.

The town—with its snow-capped peaks, boiling coffee, and broken teenagers—always holds a secret. The viewer senses it, feels it close, but doesn’t leave. They stay. Because part of the spell is giving in to the mystery.

More than answers, Twin Peaks offers a sensory experience, where the subjective outweighs logic. Watching (or rewatching) means spotting clues, reading between the lines, and connecting symbols. Lynch doesn’t try to explain anything: he wants you to feel it. And even if you’ve already seen it, you’ll find something new. Because we’re not the same anymore, either. The wisdom lies in looking again. And getting a little more lost.

Fun fact: when asked if Twin Peaks had a clear meaning, Lynch replied: “A lot of things in life don’t make sense. That’s the beautiful thing.”