Is Twin Peaks Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Yes, 5 out of 10. It's a small-town mystery with a few nightmare sequences mixed in.
Ruling: It is a murder mystery with a few nightmares, so watch the dream sequences with the lights on.
Twin Peaks begins with a body wrapped in plastic on a riverbank and an FBI agent who treats his dreams as evidence. It runs for three seasons spread across twenty-five years, and it gets steadily weirder.
The premise, briefly
An FBI agent investigates the murder of a homecoming queen in a Washington logging town, where nearly everyone is hiding something and the agent's dreams keep supplying clues.
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
Leland Palmer, possessed by a spirit called Bob, killed Laura and dies in custody. Twenty-five years later Cooper's evil double is shot and burns in the Black Lodge, and Cooper drives a woman who resembles Laura back to Twin Peaks, where the series stops on a scream and the house lights going out.
Early in season two, after Leland kills Laura's cousin Maddy, he cruises around town in high spirits with her corpse stuffed in a golf bag. The reveal of the killer follows soon after.
No dog dies in Twin Peaks. A talking pet bird is shot by Leo in season one.
Twin Peaks is a slow mystery that turns into a story about possession and a red-curtained room, and the part that stays with people is the killer's identity, which you now know.
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
A body in plastic and a dwarf who speaks in code
In 1989 a logger named Pete Martell finds the naked body of Laura Palmer, a high school senior and homecoming queen, wrapped in plastic on a riverbank outside Twin Peaks, Washington. A second girl, Ronette Pulaski, is found injured across the state line. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper arrives, finds a tiny typed letter R under Laura's fingernail, and tells the town that the killer has struck before and may live among them. Laura's diaries reveal a double life: she was seeing both Bobby Briggs and James Hurley, using cocaine, and working as a prostitute with help from Leo Johnson and Jacques Renault. Cooper then dreams of a one-armed man named Mike, who names the killer as Bob, a feral man with long gray hair, and of a dwarf in a red suit who speaks in code. The clues lead to Renault, who is shot while escaping arrest. Laura's father Leland sneaks into the hospital and smothers him. That same night Ben Horne orders the lumber mill burned, Leo is gunned down, and Cooper is shot in his hotel room.
Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.
A very cheerful man with a golf bag
Wounded, Cooper has a vision of a giant who gives him three riddles and takes his ring until he solves them. Leo survives but is brain-damaged, and Catherine Martell is presumed dead in the mill fire. Cooper learns that Mike lives inside the body of Phillip Gerard, that Bob once killed alongside him, and that Bob is living inside a man in town. Laura's secret diary shows that Bob, who knew her father, had been abusing her since she was a child. The scene people dread is the reveal that follows, early in season two: Leland, whose hair turned white overnight, is Bob's host. He kills Laura's cousin Maddy, then cruises around town in high spirits with her corpse stuffed in a golf bag. Cooper gathers his suspects and the Giant confirms that Leland is the killer of both girls. In custody, Bob admits to a string of other murders and forces Leland to take his own life. As he dies, Leland is himself again and begs forgiveness, and Bob's spirit slips into the woods as an owl.
A chess game with a body count
With the Laura case closed, Jean Renault frames Cooper for drug trafficking and gets him suspended from the FBI, until Jean dies in a shootout and Cooper is cleared. Then Windom Earle, Cooper's former mentor, escapes from a mental institution and challenges him to a chess game in which every captured piece means a real murder. Cooper learns about the White Lodge and the Black Lodge, two realms whose entrances lie somewhere in the woods. Josie Packard turns out to be the person who shot Cooper, and she dies mysteriously while Truman and Cooper try to arrest her. Cooper falls for Annie Blackburn, and when Earle abducts her and hauls her to the entrance of the Black Lodge, Cooper follows. He finds the red-curtained room from his dream, meets the Dwarf, the Giant and Laura, and runs into doppelgängers of people he knows. Bob takes Earle's soul and then turns on Cooper, and a double of Cooper chases him through the lodge. Cooper and Annie reappear in the woods, but the man who emerges is that double, who smashes his head into a mirror and laughs.
Twenty-five years of Cooper being someone else
Season three jumps ahead twenty-five years. The real Cooper is still stuck in the Black Lodge, while his evil double has lived in his place and is trying to avoid going back in. Elsewhere, a librarian is murdered in Buckhorn, South Dakota, and the Log Lady's message prompts the sheriff's department to reopen the Laura Palmer case. Cooper leaves the Lodge through a portal, while a second, manufactured double named Dougie Jones is drawn into it and dissolves into a golden seed. Cooper ends up living Dougie's life, near-catatonic, wins thirty jackpots at a casino, and tries to settle in with Dougie's wife Janey-E and her gambling debts. Mike warns him that either he or his double must die. A flashback in part eight shows the first atomic bomb going off in 1945, woodsmen occupying a convenience store, and the Fireman's companion sending an orb carrying Laura Palmer's face down to Earth.
The wrong Cooper meets the sheriff's department
The later parts of season three are crowded. Richard Horne attacks a schoolteacher who saw his hit-and-run. Gordon Cole and Albert bring in Tammy and put Diane on the Blue Rose task force as a deputy. The double reaches Montana, wins an arm-wrestling match, kills the gang leader, and forces Ray to hand over coordinates before shooting him. Cooper, still living as Dougie, reacts to Gordon's name on television and sticks a fork into an electrical socket, which knocks him out. He wakes from a coma with his memory restored, and Mike hands him the Owl Cave ring. The double sends Richard to a coordinates site, where Richard is electrocuted, and calls him his son. Following the last coordinates to Jack Rabbit's Palace, the double ends up in the sheriff's department, where he is mistaken for the real Cooper, until he pulls a gun and Lucy shoots him. Cooper, the FBI and the Mitchums arrive, and woodsmen tear at the double's body, releasing Bob's orb.
The ending, explained
In the last part, the double burns in the Black Lodge, and Mike creates another Dougie, who goes home to Janey-E and Sonny Jim. Cooper leads Laura through the woods, she vanishes, and a woman screams. He meets Diane in the woods, and they drive 430 miles, pass through an electrical field, and end up at a motel. The next morning she is gone and has left a note addressed to Richard from Linda. At Judy's Diner in Odessa, Texas, Cooper helps a waitress and gets the address of Carrie Page, a woman who looks like Laura Palmer. Convinced she is Laura, he takes her home to Twin Peaks, but strangers now live in the Palmer house. Cooper asks Carrie what year it is, the wind rises, Carrie hears Sarah's voice calling for Laura, and she screams, and the house goes dark. The final shot echoes the moment Laura whispers to Cooper in the Red Room.
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed whether there is a scene after the credits.
Questions people ask at 1am
The whole plot of Twin Peaks is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You don't need to sit through three seasons and a twenty-five year gap to find out who did it. Install Scaredy Cat and it will blur the rest of the internet's horror for you.
Get Scaredy Cat, free 🐱