Fringe Was More Than Just Twin Peaks' Successor — It Was A Stealth Sequel

Not only can Fringe reasonably be considered a spiritual successor to Twin Peaks, but the show directly confirmed that its story takes place in the same fictional universe with one season 3 nod. There are a lot of shows that could claim to be the spiritual successor of Twin Peaks for a wide variety of reasons. Mark Frost and David Lynch’s masterpiece Twin Peaks is one of the most influential TV shows of all time, and its blend of police procedural, subversive offbeat drama, and psychological horror shaped various TV genres over the decades.

If it weren’t for Twin Peaks becoming a mainstream hit, it would have been tough to greenlight Fox’s later supernatural police procedural, The X-Files, without which viewers would never have gotten Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Evil, Supernatural, Lucifer, or Grimm. Without Twin Peaks pioneering the “Seemingly sweet small suburban town with a dark secret” subgenre, everything from Desperate Housewives to Wayward Pines, to Netflix’s Stranger Things franchise, to Fargo, to Riverdale might never have happened.

However, few shows can claim quite as much shared DNA with Twin Peaks as Fringe. Like Twin Peaks, Fringe was a police procedural that featured a lot of trippy excursions to mirror dimensions, alternate realities, and parallel timelines. Like Twin Peaks, Fringe was the story of law enforcement officers grappling with paranormal forces beyond their comprehension. Furthermore, the show’s creators even acknowledged that the earlier show was a huge influence, and linked their fictional universes in one throwaway line.

Fringe Actually Takes Place In The Twin Peaks’ Universe

Fringe season 3, episode 10, “The Firefly,” features a moment where Walter mentions that his 3D glasses with colored lenses were sent to him by his friend “Dr. Jacoby from Washington State.” Walter uses these glasses to see the aura of guest star Christopher Lloyd’s washed-up former rockstar Roscoe Joyce, and it should come as no surprise that Fringe’s story reveals the glasses have special powers.

After all, Russ Tamblyn’s Dr. Jacoby was the resident psychiatrist for the town of Twin Peaks, and his treatment style was nothing if not unconventional. Although Twin Peaks never confirms that Jacoby was outright inappropriate with Laura Palmer, it does become clear that the strange, somewhat eerie doctor definitely failed his patient as the show’s central mystery unfolds. Jacoby had more insight into Laura’s intern life than most, but failed to realize what was really behind her crumbling grip on reality.

Fringe Was One Of Many Would-Be Successors To Twin Peaks

To be fair to Jacoby, almost no one predicted the darkest twist in Twin Peaks before the identity of Laura’s killer was revealed early in season 2. The identity of her murderer implied a backstory that turned out to be jaw-dropping in its bleak intensity, and this was a stark reminder of one element that many imitators of Twin Peaks were missing in their attempts to replicate the show’s appeal.

While The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Supernatural featured more explicitly paranormal villains like vampires and demons, these shows never delved as far into the real-life darkness underpinning American suburbia as Twin Peaks. While soapy dramas like Desperate Housewives replicated the black comedy and absurdism of Twin Peaks, these also stopped short of copying its intensely dark twists.

While Lynch and Frost’s murder mystery masterpiece is often rightly remembered as a fun and funny series, Twin Peaks was also unapologetic in its excavation of the dark rot at the heart of the American family. In contrast, most of the shows that hoped to be crowned its successor were too uncomfortable with discomfiting audiences to truly match its impact. Thus, Fringe had to be content with sharing the fictional universe of Twin Peaks, rather than the original show’s inimitable dark edge.