The Big Picture

• Studio interference led to the premature cancelation of Twin Peaks, a beloved and influential TV show.
• The battle between David Lynch and Bob Iger over revealing Laura Palmer's killer ruined the show's direction and caused ratings to plummet.
• The Twin Peaks saga showcases the struggle between creative vision and corporate greed in the entertainment industry.

The meddling studio executive has existed since the dawn of the moving image. Art vs. commerce has been and always will be an endless battle. One of the most well-known examples of a studio ruining a great thing because they need to make more money — or, even worse, because they seem to know better than the people who actually make TV and movies — is the battle David Lynch had over Twin Peaks. Lynch, one of the most beloved and iconic American filmmakers ever, engaged in a debate with CEO Bob Iger over one specific question: Who killed Laura Palmer? Said battle would not only change the path of Twin Peaks but of Lynch's entire career, but also provide a deep insight into the 2023 WGA Strike in which Iger and the major studios once again attempted to drown out writers' voices.

Solving Laura Palmer's Murder Is the Crux of David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks'

Twin Peaks is a show that needs no introduction. It is arguably David Lynch's most iconic and enduring work, with new fans popping up every day, social media accounts dedicated to posting stills from the show, constant re-watchings of all three seasons, and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. For such a successful show, one would expect it to have more than three seasons. This was certainly the plan. However, that did not come to fruition.

Twin Peaks is a complex show. It's about murder, trauma, pie, secret romances, shady business deals, loveless marriages, and nuclear bombs, among many other things. These plotlines all branch out from one question: Who killed Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee)? Laura is the key to the entire show. Her death is what sets the plot in motion. It starts the conflict, brings Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) into town, and establishes new romances; everything you could think of. The show, even without Laura Palmer appearing in it — save from old footage, pictures, and as a dead body — is all about her and her death. When that question is answered, the show is over. To answer it before that would be incredibly shortsighted, and ruin the rest of Twin Peaks.

Lynch, and his co-creator, Mark Frost, understood that. They never wanted to reveal Laura's killer, but at the very least wanted Twin Peaks to end with audiences finding it out. To be honest, any writer with a modicum of understanding of how stories work, and how they should be structured, understands that. The man who did not was Bob Iger. Iger has been in the studio business his entire adult life. Now CEO of Disney, he was named head of ABC Entertainment in 1989. It could be argued that Iger, first and foremost, is a businessman, and back then, especially, television was often viewed as a business made to sell advertisements. Commercials are what makes the business run, and according to excerpts from his book, The Ride of a Lifetime, Iger was frustrated that Lynch would not give the audience the answer to who killed Laura Palmer. Slow-burn storylines like these, however, were incredibly common. The famous "Who Shot J.R.?" plotline in Dallas is a classic example. At the time that Twin Peaks was on the air, TV was meant to keep audiences coming back week after week in order to figure out the story.

Bob Iger's Interference on 'Twin Peaks' Caused Ratings to Plummet

Lynch and Frost were doing something different with Twin Peaks. It was a much more cinematic, much more open-ended, and much more interesting kind of television show, and it remains incredibly influential because of that. The modern conception of "prestige TV" would not exist without it — but to Bob Iger, that was the issue with the show. In his mind, the audience needed to know who killed Laura Palmer, or at least receive some indication that the storyline would be tied up. Lynch was ultimately overruled and agreed to divulge the identity of Laura's killer midway through Season 2.

Unsurprisingly, this caused ratings to plummet. In The Ride of a Lifetime, Iger even said, "After that, the storytelling became a mess. There was no engine propelling the story after the mystery was resolved." The back half of Twin Peaks Season 2 is a mess, and even die-hard fans will admit that. It lacks direction because the show no longer had a reason to go on. Twin Peaks was later moved to a Saturday night airtime, which may as well have been yet another death knell, leading to plummeting ratings. Lynch attempted to save the show with a spectacular Season 2 finale, which did reignite the engine. Unfortunately, it was not enough, and Twin Peaks was canceled. Even a public plea, as well as Lynch giving out Iger's mailing address live on Late Night with David Letterman, was not enough to stop ABC from pulling the plug, although Iger also admitted later in his book that "David might have been right all along." This, however, is not the end of the story.

David Lynch Continued 'Twin Peaks' With Movies and a Third Season in 2017

David Lynch would go on to do much more with Twin Peaks after the show's initial cancelation, directing Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in 1992. The opening shot of that film is a television being destroyed, and that says more than enough. The movie, which serves as a prequel to the series, is incredible and recenters Twin Peaks entirely around Laura, her life, and the brutal murder that sets off the show. It is absolutely horrifying, and potentially the best film Lynch has ever directed. It also, however, flopped, due to the extreme content, and has a frankly antagonistic attitude towards the audience, perhaps stemming from the way Lynch felt after being forced into revealing Laura's killer in the original show. However, it has been reappraised and is now rightfully considered an excellent film.

Twin Peaks would make a comeback with Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017, with Lynch and a returning Mark Frost once again dismantling and reassembling the idea of what television could be. It is an absolute masterpiece and a testament to what can happen when you allow someone to have a vision and execute it. Even with the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the original show's second season, Lynch and Frost overcame them, cementing Twin Peaks as one of the greatest shows ever, and a timeless work of art still worth watching years after it first aired.

Bob Iger, however, has had a different trajectory. In 2023, he was at the forefront of the WGA strike, acting as a mouthpiece for the studios that were seeking to end it, and going so far as to call the demands of the writers "unrealistic" and "disturbing." Many would agree that demanding a fair wage and better conditions was not what was disturbing, but rather the greed of the studio heads who were determined to stamp out creativity, pay writers as little as possible, and force them to thanklessly churn out more of the same content.

During the WGA strike, we witnessed a repetition of what happened with Lynch and Twin Peaks, but on a larger scale. Those like Iger, Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav, and others at the top have become convinced that they know more about small-screen endeavors than those who actually make them. While the WGA eventually reached a historic deal after a 148-day strike, it's a shame that a show as weird, creative, and original as Twin Peaks was snuffed out by corporate greed and an unwillingness to trust talented writers.

Twin Peaks is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.

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