What we thought was going to be an eternal mystery—what would Mark Frost and David Lynch have done with their creation if Twin Peaks had lasted longer than two seasons—was solved when Showtime brought the cult-classic drama and most of the original cast back for a third season in 2017.
Yet nothing will ever quite compare to how it all started 30 years ago, on April 8, 1990, when Twin Peaks' two-hour pilot premiered on ABC, posing the infamous question: Who killed Laura Palmer?
It wasn't easy to convince the network to put the decidedly different drama on the air at all, but the response, when it did, was fairly rapturous. The eight-episode first season was promptly nominated for 14 Emmys and won two, and it was named Best TV Series, Drama, at the Golden Globes the following year.
Dark, funny, endlessly surprising and ultimately way ahead of its time, the series didn't turn out to be everyone's cup of coffee and, after Laura's killer was revealed in the middle of season two, was canceled after 30 episodes.
But it endured in the hearts and minds of superfans everywhere (a fanzine called Wrapped in Plastic published for 12 years, and now you can read all the issues online), and armchair analysis has been consuming the internet ever since.
So in honor of this damn fine show about murder, secrets, betrayal, love, family and hallucinatory dreams in a small town where it turns out nobody really knows each other, here are some secrets we dug up about the making of Twin Peaks:
All 30 episodes of Twin Peaks are streaming on Hulu.