Damon Lindelof Thinks Lost And Twin Peaks Suffered From Opposite Problems

While the reveal and immediate aftermath of Laura’s killer halfway through the second season made for some pretty good TV, “Twin Peaks” didn’t seem to know what to do with itself afterward. The storylines grew increasingly silly, the ratings plummeted, and the show wouldn’t get its third season until a full 25 years later. For “Lost” showrunner Damon Lindelof, it was a somewhat ironic fate for “Twin Peaks,” because it was basically the opposite of what would happen to his own show. Whereas the ABC executives forced Lynch to resolve his central mystery much sooner than he intended to, they would later try to force Lindelof and the other “Lost” writers to drag the mysteries out for as long as possible.

“They were just like, ‘Do you understand how hard it is to make a show that people want to watch? And people like the show, so why would we end it?’ You don’t do that. Like, you don’t end shows that people are watching,” Lindelof explained in a 2020 Collider interview. For the first few seasons, most of the behind-the-scenes conflicts around “Lost” centered around the writers wanting to work towards an ending for the show, and the network wanting to keep it going indefinitely. Over a decade earlier, meanwhile, “Twin Peaks” would be cancelled even though the show itself wanted to keep going. There were still plenty of questions left to be resolved, but without the big central hook that was Laura’s murder, general audiences didn’t seem to care anymore.