Sarah Palmer

Sarah Palmer is Laura's mother, a woman we meet in the raw aftermath of her daughter's murder, already unraveling before our eyes. She smokes, drinks, and stares at nothing, her grief so total it seems to have its own gravity, pulling the whole town's mourning into her living room.

Zabriskie plays devastation without vanity, letting her face and voice fray in ways that feel uncomfortably real amid the show's stylized quirk. Her early scenes—especially one wordless phone call—set the emotional register for the entire series, proving Twin Peaks could be genuinely harrowing, not just odd.”