The ‘Twisters’ Mystery, Explained: Why Helen Hunt Isn’t in the New Movie

There’s something strange in Lee Isaac Chung’s “Twisters.” And it has nothing to do with gathering storm clouds or the atmospheric pressure as a tornado approaches.

And, we suppose this includes some mild spoilers , so if you’re squeamish about that kind of thing, turn back now and revisit this article after you’ve had your hair blown back by this new legacy sequel. This article will still be here.

In “Twisters,” Daisy Edgar-Jones plays a plucky young storm-chaser named Kate Cooper, who loses several friends (including her boyfriends) during a college experiment gone wrong. (It’s pretty gnarly.) Years later, she is wooed back to the world of tornado-hunting by Javi (Anthony Ramos), the only other survivor of their doomed college project. During that fateful outing, she gets a phone call from her mom; her friends revere her mother (and her mother’s cooking). They look forward to visiting Kate’s mom after the experiment concludes without incident. We know how that goes …

But the obscuring of her mother’s identity continues throughout the movie, to the extent that everyone just assumes it will be Helen Hunt from 1996’s “Twister.” But it’s not.

At one point she refuses to reveal her last name; we assume that it will be Harding, which was Hunt’s last name and the last name of Bill Paxton’s character, her estranged (but not legally!) husband. Her mom calls her cell phone but she refuses to answer. When she finally returns home, it’s in the middle of the night and her mother is bathed in shadow. As she steps forward, the audience braces for the big reveal. But, alas, it’s not Helen Hunt that emerges from the darkness. It’s Maura Tierney.

To be clear, this is not a knock against Maura Tierney. Maura Tierney is very wonderful and she’s terrific in “Twisters” as Kate’s mom – gently prodding about her personal life and not-so-gently prodding about her professional life. She serves as the partial impetus for Kate to attempt, once again, the experiment that got her friends killed. Tierney’s character is also one of subtle voices of climate change outrage, which we appreciate. (Yes, there should have been more.)

It’s also worth noting that when “Twisters” was really gearing up, it was revealed in the trades that Helen Hunt was indeed part of the plan. “The hope is to bring Helen Hunt back, with a drama that focuses on the daughter she had with the character played by the late Bill Paxton. She has caught the storm-chasing bug her parents had,” read a competitor’s report .

When TheWrap interviewed Chung over the weekend, we asked him to look us in the eyes and tell us that he didn’t try and get Helen Hunt. And he said, “I never did.” Really?

“I tried to hint it in the beginning because I knew that might come up,” Chung said. “You see it in the phone screen. That was very intentional that when she’s getting a call, it’s clearly not Helen. But I think some people just end up expecting it will be her.”

More importantly to Chung, he just didn’t want to put Hunt’s Jo Harding on a farm, doting after her genius, tornado-obsessed daughter.

“I just felt like that is not what I want to see Jo Harding doing years from now,” Chung said. “Right after seeing that first film, I imagined, What is Jo Harding up to now ? She’s out there chasing storm, not at the farm complaining that her daughter’s not calling her.’ And so that was really the basis of why, OK, it’s got to be someone else .”

We couldn’t let this go and asked Chung about the biggest telltale sign that Kate’s mom is Jo Harding – in the opening sequence where her buddies get killed, they’re utilizing the Dorothy V. If you’ll recall from the first “Twister,” Dorothy was the instrument they were using to try and get a better reading of the inside of the tornadoes – to give people more warning and more time to get to safety. (Jo had a similarly tragic, storm-related backstory where her father was killed in a tornado while her family raced to an underground cellar.) In the first movie, Jo and her merry band of storm-chasers deployed Dorothy I – IV. Kate has Dorothy V, which we (as moviegoers) have never seen before. How the hell did she get it, if Jo Harding wasn’t her mother?

Chung didn’t take the bait.

“I have wondered this. And I have wondered what that story is. I’m sure she studied at Muskogee State. I’m sure there were scientists from the first ‘Twister’ who were involved, passing on the torch,” Chung said. Then: “I don’t know. I leave it to you.”

There you go.

“Twisters” is in theaters now.

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