Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone was primarily known for one thing: twist endings. Admittedly, not all of them are good. In fact, some of them are outright silly. There were 156 episodes of the show, after all, not every last one of them could be effective. But when they work, they really work. On one hand, this is because they’re so genuinely unexpected. On the other, it’s because the characters are so well-written. We often grow fond of them (or grow to dislike them as intended) and then feel what we’re conditioned to feel when the left turn is made.
Videos by ComicBook.com
From identity reveals to simple twists of fate, The Twilight Zone knew how to deliver a gut punch. The best of the best follow.
1) “Time Enough at Last” (Season 1, Episode 8)
In “Time Enough at Last” Rocky‘s Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, a sheepish man working a job (as a bank teller) he’s bored by who then goes home to a wife he can’t stand. His only solace is his lunch break, where he can do the one thing he ever wants to do: read in peace.
However, one day, a nuclear explosion rocks the vault, knocking him unconscious. He exits the vault to find that everyone he’s ever known is dead, but instead of being wrought with sadness, he’s overjoyed. He can now read as much as he wants without being disturbed. However, his life plan is shattered when his glasses fall to the ground.
2) “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (Season 1, Episode 22)
An influential episode that received an inferior remake at one point, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is an incisive look at just how little manipulation it takes to turn society on itself. It’s also an episode that’s perhaps hampered by its twist.
Throughout the episode, strange occurrences are happening on Maple Street. Simple things, like street lights flickering. But between those occurrences and news of a possible alien invasion, the people of Maple Street are quick to turn on their neighbors, who they have spent years living next to. It would be better if there weren’t aliens causing the lights to flicker, but the final scene reveals they are. We spend the whole episode thinking this is just people being people, and it’s a little surprising Serling thought it necessary to have a pair of aliens looking down on the chaos.
3) “The After Hours” (Season 1, Episode 34)
“The After Hours” is a fairly sweet episode with a few poignant themes. Stuff like accepting yourself for who you are, enjoying your limited time in life while you can, and so on.
We follow Marsha, who has entered a department store with the purpose of purchasing a gold thimble for her mother. She is directed to the ninth floor, and, oddly enough, by employees who seem to know her name. After purchasing the thimble, she notices it is scratched so she then hopes to return it. She tells the store manager that she purchased it on the ninth floor only to be told that the store has no ninth floor. Worse yet, she sees the woman who sold her the thimble only to realize that the saleswoman is, in fact, a mannequin. It turns out that’s Marsha’s status, too. Each of the store’s mannequins is allowed exactly one month to live out in the world with flesh and blood human beings, and Martha’s month has now reached its end.
4) “Eye of the Beholder” (Season 2, Episode 6)
Like “The After Hours,” “Eye of the Beholder” has a twist that is actually quite heartfelt once the viewer gets past the creepiness. The protagonist is Ms. Janet Tyler, who lives in a futuristic, totalitarian society where physical beauty is far more important than emotional complexity.
Tyler is undergoing her eleventh surgery, which is the final one allowed by the “State.” Should it fail, she will be ostracized, shepherded away to live with those who are similarly hideous to the eye. Once the bandages are removed, however, we learn she’s stunningly beautiful, and it’s the doctors and nurses who are grotesque.
5) “The Invaders” (Season 2, Episode 15)
One of the best Twilight Zone episodes not written by Rod Serling, “The Invaders” tells the tale of a woman who lives alone in a cabin. She never speaks a word. And, throughout the whole episode, we come to believe she never speaks because of that isolation.
Not even when some tiny extraterrestrials invade her home does she utter more than the occasional grunt. But they’re not extraterrestrials … they’re astronauts from Earth. She never speaks any English words because she doesn’t know them. She’s the extraterrestrial, and a massive one at that. While the little space-suited “aliens” haven’t aged particularly well (they’re clearly toys), Bewitched‘s Agnes Moorehead really sells her silent character as a human being who is frightened by what appears to be a team of E.T. invaders.
6) “Long Distance Call” (Season 2, Episode 22)
While it has a conclusion that’s genuinely a bit frightening, “Long Distance Call” can be a bit of an awkward watch. That is because this was one of the few episodes shot on videotape, and it looks it.
We follow Bill Mumy’s Billy Bayles, a little boy whose beloved grandmother passes away. But not before she gives him a toy telephone for his birthday. Billy’s parents grow concerned when he keeps talking on the phone to an individual he says is his grandmother. It’s as if he is not grieving at all and is instead relying on imagination. But he is talking to his grandmother, which Billy’s mom learns when she picks up the phone and hears her late mother-in-law’s voice.
7) “The Silence” (Season 2, Episode 25)
In the underrated episode “The Silence,” we are introduced to the members of an affluent men’s club. Specifically, Colonel Archie Taylor and the chatty Jamie Tennyson. Taylor wants peace and quiet, and Tennyson is getting in the way of that. To get Tennyson to shut his mouth, Taylor bets him $500,000 that he cannot remain utterly silent for a full year.
Taylor builds Tennyson a glass-walled apartment and keeps an eye on him consistently as the year goes on. Much to Taylor’s surprise, Tennyson is succeeding, which isn’t so great for Taylor considering he doesn’t have the money to pay up. There’s one twist, but the even bigger curveball is the fact that, one year ago, Tennyson had his vocal cords severed. This whole time he’s been covering the scar with turtlenecks.
8) “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” (Season 2, Episode 28)
In “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” viewers follow quite a few characters, all of them within a particular diner. Most of them are the passengers of a bus that could not proceed safely given the fierce snow storm raging outside. Then there are two cops, who were called out to investigate a handful of reports all claiming to have seen a UFO.
The two cops do, in fact, find what appears to be the crash site of a UFO, and leading away from it are an individual’s footsteps. Those footsteps lead right to the diner, and now the passengers of the bus are pointing fingers at one another. As it turns out, one of them is in fact a Martian. But the real twist is that the Martian wasn’t the first visitor from another planet, as the diner’s operator is from Venus, and he got here first.
9) “To Serve Man” (Season 3, Episode 24)
One of the most revered episodes of The Twilight Zone, “To Serve Man” comes with the entire series’ best twist. If there’s an episode where the conclusion precedes it, it’s this one.
The Earth has been visited by the Kanamits, a race of extra tall aliens who claim to have benevolent intentions. They’ve even brought a book titled To Serve Man, which supposedly describes their plans to make Earth a better place for Earthlings. But it’s not that … it’s a cookbook.
10) “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (Season 5, Episode 3)
Almost certainly the most iconic episode of The Twilight Zone, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” has received not one but two remakes. But there’s simply no replicating the impact of the original.
We follow William Shatner’s Robert Wilson, who has just been discharged from a mental health clinic and is now aboard a domestic flight. The trouble is he can’t stand flying, and he keeps seeing what he calls a “Gremlin” on the wing of the plane. Given Wilson’s past and Shatner’s sweaty, frightened performance, we genuinely believe the “Gremlin” is a figment of his imagination. But the final shot of the episode, which shows the plane’s wing torn up right where Wilson claimed to see the “Gremlin,” strongly hints otherwise.
Most Viewed
-
Image Courtesy of Pierrot/Shueisha -
Image Credit: DC -
Images Courtesy of Crunchyroll/Studio 4ยฐC
