10 Best Twilight Zone Episodes That Nobody Talks About

It’s no exaggeration to say that The Twilight Zone is one of the most beloved TV shows of all time. When discussing the series’ merits, however, the same handful of episodes are always brought up, as if The Twilight Zone‘s status as a television icon rests solely on the shoulders of “It’s a Good Life” and “To Serve Man.” While those stories, along with the show’s other greatest hits like “Time Enough at Last,” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” represent the very best The Twilight Zone had to offer, there are plenty of other reasons to revisit the classic anthology series.

For your consideration, we’ve put together a list of 10 such episodes. These are The Twilight Zone episodes nobody ever talks about — the workhorses, tasked with maintaining the show’s high standard of quality in between standouts like “Eye of the Beholder” and “Living Doll.” Don’t worry if you don’t recognize some of these — that’s kind of the point — just sit back and enjoy as we crossover into the Twilight Zone.

1) “Where is Everybody?” (Season 1, Episode 1)

From the very beginning, The Twilight Zone was firing on all cylinders. The very first episode, “Where is Everybody?” does a fantastic job of setting the tone for the entire series. A man with no memory of who or where he is discovers a town devoid of human life. Ringing telephones and cigars left burning in ashtrays suggest that one second the town was full of life, and the next, everyone vanished. The truth, however, is much stranger.

2) “And When the Sky Was Opened” (Season 1, Episode 11)

A few episodes after “Where is Everybody?” The Twilight Zone would give us a companion piece of sorts. Instead of wandering through a world eerily devoid of human life, the astronauts in “And When the Sky Was Opened,” have to deal with a world in which they themselves may not exist.

When the experimental spaceplane, the X-20, touches down on Earth after disappearing from military radar screens for a full day, it’s missing a crew member. The problem is, no one but the remaining two pilots remembers that there was a third astronaut…

3) “Steel” (Season 5, Episode 2)

“Steel” is about the quintessential battle between man and machine. In the future, human boxing is outlawed, forcing fans to get their fix by watching Robot pugilists duke it out. A down-on-his-luck ex-boxer (Lee Marvin) is forced to disguise himself as one of these mechanical brawlers after his own “Battling Maxo” proves to be too broken down to fight.

What follows is a desperate attempt by the boxer to KO his automaton rival that ends rather bleakly. When it comes to the futility of fighting technology, writer Richard Matheson was ahead of the curve.

4) “The Midnight Son” (Season 3, Episode 10)

The way society collapses in “The Midnight Son” plays out like Dawn of the Dead without the zombies. In place of the flesh-eating undead, we have the sun, which, due to some undisclosed catastrophe, Earth is slowly hurtling towards. This has led to a shortage of food and water, rampant looting, and the breakdown of civilization as we know it. The episode takes us through the last few minutes on Earth before the planet becomes completely unlivable, before ending in one of the cruelest twists in Twilight Zone history.

5) “He’s Alive” (Season 4, Episode 4)

Hardcore Zoners know that Season 4, when the series went from a half-hour runtime to an hour, is universally accepted as the worst. One of the few exceptions is “He’s Alive,” a chilling portrait of a young white male coerced by Hitler’s ghost to adopt right-wing extremism after a lifetime of perceived alienation. Dennis Hopper plays Peter Vollmer, leader of a struggling Neo-Nazi group, but he could just as easily be playing a modern incel-turned Proud Boy.

The episode is, unfortunately, still relevant today and contains several chilling parallels to the emboldened hate groups that have started plaguing our society in recent years. This one might be a bit of a hard watch, but trust us, it’s worth it.

6) “The Silence” (Season 2, Episode 25)

The premise of “The Silence” is simple: a wealthy curmudgeon bets a chatterbox $500,000 ($5,300,000 when adjusted for inflation) that the latter can’t go an entire year without talking. Of course, this being the Twilight Zone, there are other factors at play, like the curmudgeon not having $500,000 and the chatterbox going to extreme lengths to remain silent.

The ending, in true Twilight Zone fashion, plays out like a twisted version of “The Gift of the Magi,” with both men ultimately learning that gambling is — as Rod Serling puts it — “a most unproductive pursuit.”

7) “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” (Season 5, Episode 17)

In the future, everyone on their 19th birthday must undergo a procedure that transforms their body into one of several physically attractive templates. “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” presents a rare dystopia, filled not with atomic mutants or wasteland scavengers, but with beautiful people, smiling constantly without a care in the world.

When 18-year-old Marilyn decides not to undergo this transformation, she soon finds out that the procedure isn’t optional, thanks to a psychological component that makes everyone more docile and easier for the state to control.

8) “The Odyssey of Flight 33” (Season 2, Episode 18)

Imagine getting on a plane for what you think is a routine flight, only to find yourself transported back to prehistoric times. That’s the strange adventure that befalls the passengers and crew of Flight 33. Global Airlines Flight 33 is en route from London to New York City when the plane experiences a severe bout of turbulence, followed by a strange flash of light. Suddenly, the crew is looking at a dinosaur through the cockpit window.

“The Odyssey of Flight 33” doesn’t feature any of Rod Serling’s signature social commentary but is instead a fun time-travel romp years before such stories would become en vogue.

9) “I Shot an Arrow Into the Air” (Season 1, Episode 15)

Rod Serling would famously use the idea of astronauts crash-landing on an alien planet that turns out to be Earth as the basis for his Planet of the Apes script. Eight years before that, however, he used the same “it was Earth all along,” gag for a Season 1 episode of The Twilight Zone.

Corey, Pierson, and Donlin — the only survivors of an eight-man space expedition — crash on what they think is a harsh desert asteroid and immediately begin bickering over their limited supplies. Things take a turn for the nasty when Corey adopts a survival of the fittest mentality and gradually becomes the expedition’s sole survivor just moments before spying a sign for Reno, Nevada.

10) “The Shelter” (Season 3, Episode 10)

“The Shelter” is one of the most chilling episodes of The Twilight Zone because it’s one of the few that could easily happen in real life. The Stockton family is in the middle of hosting a suburban dinner party when news of a possible nuclear strike heading for the US turns their polite guests into characters out of Lord of the Flies. The Stocktons lock themselves in their fallout shelter as their guests begin violently insisting they also be let in.

Only after the blood-thirsty mob breaks down the door of the shelter does a new report clarify that the “nuclear missiles” were just harmless satellites.

Do you agree with our list? Let us know in the comments.

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