The coffee is hot, the owls are watching and “Twin Peaks” is coming back to the big screen for season two beginning at 4 p.m. Sunday at IU Cinema.
Over the course of five Sundays until Feb. 22, the cinema will show between three and five episodes per screening. Each showing will feature a costume contest, trivia or giveaway.
“Twin Peaks” season one was screened by IU Cinema last semester, drawing an estimated crowd of about 100 per showing, IU Cinema director Alicia Kozma said. She predicts a similar crowd this Sunday for season two.
The cult-classic television series follows FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) as he is sent to the small town of Twin Peaks, Washington, to investigate the murder of high school student Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). The series ran for two seasons between 1990 and 1991, later spawning a prequel film in 1992 and revival series in 2017.
Kozma and the IU Cinema staff are all “huge, massive fans” of David Lynch, the co-creator of “Twin Peaks.” After Lynch’s death on Jan. 16, 2025, the cinema put on a free marathon of all his films, garnering up to 700 attendees over the course of the screenings, Kozma said.
During the screenings, attendees began asking Kozma when the cinema will show “Twin Peaks.” Kozma typically finds getting the rights to screen a television series in a theatrical setting to be a hard task, so, at the time, she disappointed a few fans with her answer.
“This series in and of itself is something that we love here,” Kozma said. “But, because it is a television show, it’s not something that you can show in movie theaters.”
Eventually, due to the outpouring of audiences worldwide with eyes on Lynch’s work, the rights holders for “Twin Peaks” released remastered versions of the television series for theatrical screenings.
Kozma, now having knowledge of a “huge, massive audience” of Lynch fans in the area, knew immediately that the cinema was going to screen season one of the show.
“As soon as we found out about that, we said, ‘Absolutely, we need to do this,’” Kozma said.
Kozma used season one as a test to see if audiences were interested in returning each week. The answer? A resounding “yes” to also showing Season 2. The test was especially important for Kozma because Season 1 only contains eight episodes, while the second has 22, requiring audiences to return to the cinema for a month rather than three weekends.
Between episodes during Season 1, projectionist Grayson Pettit took it upon himself to find period-accurate advertisements to put on the big screen at the cinema.
One of the advertisements shown was for Japanese Georgia Coffee, which depicts characters from “Twin Peaks” promoting the now out-of-business brand’s coffee to the audience.
Pettit is continuing his hunt during Season 2, finding more advertisements that fit the time period to show audiences between the 22 episodes.
Alongside this, IU Cinema held giveaways before each screening, awarding prizes like official “Twin Peaks” mugs and a MacLachlan cardboard cutout.
Season 2’s screenings will include trivia, giveaways and costume contests. The cinema will announce on its Instagram what attendees should expect at the screening.
The costume contest, taking place at the Feb. 1 screening, will award the best costume resembling a “Twin Peaks” character a special secret prize announced at the screening.
The contest was inspired by attendees of Season 1 episodes who came dressed in outfits inspired by the style of “Twin Peaks” characters. Kozma and Michaela Owens, the programming and audience development manager for IU Cinema, also decided to dress in outfits of their own for the last two out of the three screenings for Season 1.
Owens, who dressed as the Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson) during one of the screenings, said she found the experience rewarding and wanted to share it with others by encouraging them to dress up for the contest.
“These characters are so easy to make costumes out of,” Owens said. “I dressed as the Log Lady one time and I just had, like, my earrings from my grandmother and a big sweater that I was able to find, and I had to borrow a log from my sister.”
Kozma said that the audience participation from last season inspired the many games and engagement available for Season 2.
Last semester, she noticed a community of fans within the red seats of the cinema begin to form. She aims for that “Twin Peaks” community to continue to flourish and expand over the course of the next five Sundays.
“You see groups of people who don’t know each other, like, spontaneously breaking out into conversation,” Kozma said. “It’s just such a really open and welcoming community.”
Within this community is Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design freshman Abigail Tauriainen, who went to all three screenings of the first season and is planning on going to the five screenings of Season 2.
Tauriainen is a fan of watching and discussing television shows and movies with other people, a large part of what draws her to view “Twin Peaks” at IU Cinema.
“The absurd and surreal elements of ‘Twin Peaks’ really lend itself to discussing the show with other people,” Tauriainen said. “Especially because it’s so mystical and surreal that no two people are going to have the same expectation of what it brings.”
Tickets for “Twin Peaks” at IU Cinema are available online or in the box office for $12
CORRECTION: This story was updated to accurately characterize the audience events at screenings of "Twin Peaks" Season 2.
