How Twin Peaks Influenced Netflix’s Sweet Tooth

The love and influence of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks can be felt in most of Jeff Lemire‘s comics work, including his seminal series Sweet Tooth. In addition to the trippy dream sequences it has, and the fact that its follow-up series is also called Sweet Tooth: The Return like the show’s 2017 sequel, Sweet Tooth has plenty in common with the fan-favorite TV show. Even beyond the influence of Twin Peaks on Sweet Tooth the comic, the cult show had an effect on what the producers of the live-action adaptation decided to do with the Netflix TV show.

“Definitely,” creator and executive producer Jim Mickle told us when we asked if Twin Peaks influenced the show beyond how it influenced the comic. “Twin Peaks is my favorite show of all time. And that tone is… That was when I was falling in love with film and television so that, I don’t know if it’s overt, but it’s kind of always in the DNA I think, of what I’m playing with, especially when you’re out in the woods and all that.”

Executive producer Beth Schwartz added, “I would say, it wasn’t something necessarily that came up that much, but now thinking about a lot of our characters, especially in Rockbridge have some Twin Peaks vibes for sure.”

Speaking to Lemire, Mickle also noted: “And the dreams are reality. Like the part of your books Jeff.”

“It’s definitely a part of the whole show,” Lemire said with a smile.

The creator previously opened up in an interview with EW about how Twin Peaks has found its way into his work, including the 2018 Eisner Award winning comic Gideon Falls.

“I’ve been obsessed with Twin Peaks since I was a kid,” Lemire said back in 2018. “It just hit me somewhere really deep, and it’s been a big part of my creative life ever since. I have this very conscious relationship with it. I wanted to do something that was a rural murder mystery, and the best way to pay tribute to something is to take it and be inspired by it. Then when I was writing (Gideon Falls) and Twin Peaks: The Return hit, which I had dreamed of for two decades. The Black Barn is this otherworldly dimensional thing happening in a small town, so you can draw your own parallel. But it’s not gonna go the same place the Lodge went.”

Season one of Sweet Tooth is now streaming on Netflix, sadly Twin Peaks is also available on the service but only for a few more days.