Twin Peaks Available to Stream for Free on Pluto TV

Fall makes for a great setting. There is something special about the thick foliage and heavy clouds as the backdrop for a mercurial town, especially when a story is set within the framework of genre. Many TV shows such as Widow’s Bay, Stranger Things, and The X-Files follow a cast of characters facing all manner of strange situations amidst their small-town daily lives.

No show did this with more originality than Twin Peaks. Developed by David Lynch and Mark Frost, Twin Peaks is about a murder investigation on paper. While it only ran for two seasons on ABC in the nineties, the series proved to be much more than its premise suggested thanks largely to David Lynch and his mood-first style of storytelling. In 2017, David Lynch returned to the world he helped establish with Twin Peaks: The Return, which completed his vision and cemented the series as a must-watch for cinephiles regardless of genre preferences.

The series is now streaming for free on Pluto TV.

A never-ending series of mysteries

Twin Peaks begins with the murder of Laura Palmer, played by Sheryl Lee. She is the town sweetheart and homecoming queen whose body is unexpectedly washed ashore naked and wrapped in plastic. As the town residents mourn her loss, FBI Agent Dale Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, arrives to investigate. Dale Cooper very quickly begins peeling back seemingly endless layers to a vast mystery involving awful parents, weird psychologists, and an evil supernatural force. With each episode, the town secrets deepen and the show expands in scope, exploring characters and stories ranging from cheating teens to money laundering and trafficking schemes.

Despite being the name most closely associated with Twin Peaks, David Lynch only directed six episodes out of its original thirty-episode run. During the second season, network executives began to interfere, forcing David Lynch and Mark Frost to resolve the murder of Laura Palmer. That interference was the beginning of the end for the series, which was canceled shortly after.

“David always said, ‘We should never solve the mystery — this should go on forever,’” Mark Frost told Variety in 2024. “And there’s a part of me that thinks he may well have been right.”

Lynch’s singular approach to storytelling

The work of David Lynch is hard to explain and resists being tied down to plot points. While Twin Peaks is about a quirky detective investigating a horrifying murder, it is also about beautifully shot rooms and the mountains of the Pacific Northwest accompanied by Angelo Badalamenti and his haunting score. While the complex ideas of Twin Peaks are wonderful, its simplest moments are just as good, with David Lynch creating room for coffee jokes, a slice of pie at a diner, and a cameo of himself playing a very weird FBI agent.

A helpful way to understand the work of David Lynch is to listen or read through some of his own words. In a 2017 interview with Variety, David Lynch discussed the starting point of his projects. “It comes in a burst,” he said. “An idea comes in, and if you stop and think about it, it has sound, it has image, it has a mood, and it even has an indication of wardrobe, and knowing a character, or the way they speak, the words they say.”

While challenging, Twin Peaks rewards patient viewers who surrender to the experience. Those viewers pay less attention to solving its mysteries and more to the subconscious world that has been carefully constructed. You may not come out understanding what happens, and there might not even be an answer, but the series offers pure cinematic expression that explains why no fictional small town has ever felt as strange or alive as Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks is available to stream for free on Pluto TV.

Source: Polygon