While Laura’s killer was revealed halfway through the second season and a pretty good television show was made right after, “Twin Peaks” didn’t seem to know what to do with itself next. The stories got ridiculous, ratings plummeted, and the show wouldn’t get its third season exactly 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. ABC executives would force Lynch to solve the main mystery much sooner than he intended, while later forcing Lindelof and the other “Lost” writers to keep the mysteries out for as long as possible.
“‘Do you understand how hard it is to make a show that people want to watch? And people love the show, so why should we finish it?’ You don’t do that. You don’t finish the shows people watch,” Lindelof Explained in the 2020 Collider interview. During the first few seasons, much of the behind-the-scenes conflict around “Lost” centered around writers wanting to work on an ending to the show and the network wanting to keep it going forever. Meanwhile, more than a decade ago, “Twin Peaks” was going to be cancelled, although the show itself wanted to continue. There were still many questions to be resolved, but without the big central hook that was Laura’s murder, general audiences didn’t seem to care anymore.