‘Twins Peaks’ Leaves Its Audience Hanging : Television: Many viewers complain that the series finale failed to provide an answer to the No. 1 question: Who killed Laura Palmer?

A lot of “Twin Peaks” fans were complaining Thursday about the season-ending episode that failed to provide a definitive answer to the question of who killed Laura Palmer. Instead, it left most of its major characters in cliff-hanging situations that won’t be resolved until fall.

The producers and ABC--which hyped Wednesday’s program with ads promising “the shocking finale”--maintained that they had never said the mystery would be resolved this season.

“Well, it was a shocking finale--a season finale,” an ABC spokeswoman said.

Mark Frost, co-creator and co-executive producer of the series with David Lynch, said in an interview that he understood the fans’ frustration but said there were two factors at work in ending the season as they did. One was what he called a “calculated gamble” to force ABC to renew the series for fall; the other was that the story had “its own pace and its own rhythm, and wasn’t ready to make a revelation yet. We very well may do that in the first episode next season.”

Had ABC opted to cancel the series anyway, Frost said, there was an alternate ending that would have brought the story to “a more complete conclusion.” He would not disclose what it was but said it would have been different from the ending that had been made for a European film version of “Twin Peaks,” in which the long-haired man named Bob--who had appeared in a dream of FBI agent Dale Cooper’s--was identified as Laura’s murderer.

As the curtain fell on “Twin Peaks” Wednesday:

* Special Agent Cooper was shot three times by an unknown assailant.

* Jacques, a leading suspect in Laura’s murder, was smothered to death by the girl’s father, Leland.

* Hank shot prime suspect Leo Johnson as he was trying to kill Bobby with an ax.

* A hooded man beat Dr. Jacoby, who suffered a heart attack after seeing Maddie dressed as Laura.

* Ed found his wife Nadine after she took an overdose of pills.

* Lucy told Andy she is pregnant.

* Catherine and Shelly are in the burning mill. Pete ran in after them.

* Cooper found the cocaine Bobby planted in James’ gas tank.

* Benjamin is about to find out that his daughter Audrey is the new girl at One-Eyed Jack’s.

* Hank collected $90,000 from Josie for the murder of her husband, and Hank forced her to perform a blood-brother ritual.

The episode attracted 22% of the audience to win its time period and was seen in about 11.6 million homes--about 1.8 million more than watched last week, but about 8.4 million fewer than tuned in the premiere April 8.