Who killed Laura Palmer in ‘Twin Peaks’?
Following the release of his underground cult classic Eraserhead, David Lynch spent the 1980s making feature films, ranging from the incredible Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man to the poorly received Dune. Despite the latter’s lukewarm reception, Lynch had enough examples of his directing talents under his belt to secure a deal with ABC to create a television series.
The result was Twin Peaks, now regarded as one of the greatest television shows of all time. A pilot episode the length of a feature-length film opened the show, introducing viewers to a bizarre cast of characters from the small town of Twin Peaks. A further seven episodes followed before a second season aired a few months later, which consisted of 22 more instalments. By 1991, Lynch and his co-creator Mark Frost had made a series that would go down as one of the director’s most beloved creations, praised for its blend of mystery, humour, drama and surrealism.
Twin Peaks stars Kyle MacLachlan as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who is sent to the not-so-quaint town to investigate the murder of prom queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). Washed up on the shore and wrapped in plastic, Laura is the image of beauty and girlhood destroyed, and Dale and his colleagues, such as Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean), must figure out who orchestrated her demise.
Quickly, we learn that all is not what it seems in the picturesque town. Despite the smell of fresh-cooked pies and pine trees practically radiating from the screen, Twin Peaks is host to many criminals and oddballs, including Benjamin Horne, who runs a brothel and hires high-school girls such as Laura to become prostitutes.
We learn about Laura in flashbacks and through stories as the show unravels, revealing the character’s troubled life. The perfect-looking Laura is actually a drug-addicted sex worker, using substance abuse as a form of coping mechanism to deal with her trauma. In Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, a prequel film, Lynch explores this trauma in detail, tracing the last week in his protagonist’s tragic life.
The ongoing trauma Laura faces is revealed to be sexual abuse at the hands of her father, Leland (Ray Wise). She sees her attacker as the terrifying BOB, who we later discover would possess Leland when he carried out his abuse. The show reveals that as a child, Leland encountered a man named Robertson (BOB), who teased him and eventually possessed his soul. Leland’s first victim is Teresa Banks, another drug-addicted prostitute that Laura associated with.
Whether BOB completely took hold of Leland and forced him to commit his crimes or if he simply encouraged Leland to show his darker side is never explicitly explained. Regardless, a possessed Leland is ultimately responsible for Laura’s death, which we witness in Fire Walk With Me. Due to BOB’s presence inside Leland, it was only a matter of time before BOB reached Leland’s only daughter, Laura, wearing her down so she could become his new host.
Leland/BOB abuses Laura and her friend Ronette Pulaski in a train car on the night that Laura is eventually murdered. During the emotional scene, Mike, a good spirit that can inhabit human bodies, appears to save Laura from being possessed by BOB. Although he hands her a ring to prevent Laura’s soul from being taken over, Leland/BOB kills her in a rage, with Ronette narrowly escaping the ordeal.
In season two, Dale figures out that Leland is responsible for the crimes following his murderous outbursts in the wake of his grief, which includes killing Laura’s identical cousin, Maddy. In jail, BOB spurs Leland to frantically bash his head until he slowly dies in the arms of Dale. It’s one of the show’s most profound moments, with Dale telling him, “Look to the light Leland. Find the light.” In his dying moments, Leland seems to realise everything he’s done wrong, which is truly heartbreaking.
At a screening of Fire Walk With Me, Wise revealed that he was initially horrified to discover he would be the killer because, having a two-year-old daughter of his own, he didn’t feel comfortable portraying the abuser and murderer of his child. However, he explained that once Lynch had talked him through Leland’s moving death scene, he felt “relieved,” stating that the director made the decision “somehow palatable for me.”
Twin Peaks remains a cult favourite, with Lynch even reviving the show 25 years later for Twin Peaks: The Return, which featured more strange goings-on and delved deeper into the backstory of BOB. The discovery that Leland killed Laura remains one of the most devastating moments in television history, yet Lynch never failed to sensationalise the show’s dark themes. Instead, Lynch created a nuanced and tragic depiction of evil, unearthing the worm lurking inside the apple of American society.
