Severance Season 2’s Twilight Zone Easter Eggs Could Explain Everything

This article contains spoilers for Severance season 2 episode 9.

We’re in the endgame now, and following the jaw-dropping “she’s alive” moment from the Severance season 1 finale, fans of the hit Apple TV+ series are expecting something equally Earth-shattering for the season 2 conclusion. During a season that’s largely split the arcs of Innies, Outies, and Lumon execs into various strands, season 2’s penultimate episode brings the whole gang back together for an unexpected crossover with The Twilight Zone. 

Even before season 2’s ninth episode aired, many fans clocked that it shared its title with a June 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone. While not remembered up there with icons like “Eye of the Beholder” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” “The After Hours” isn’t even classed as an underrated episode of The Twilight Zone. Some suggested watching the black and white episode ahead of this Severance installment, and for those who did, the Uta Briesewitz-directed hour took on a whole new meaning. While it might’ve been hard to connect the dots between the two sci-fi shows, Severance’s latest episode is packed with references to The Twilight Zone. 

The Twilight Zone’s “The After Hours” follows a young woman called Marsha White, who visits the ninth floor of a department store in search of a gold thimble to gift to her mother. Things go awry when Marsha learns there is no ninth floor, nor are the sales assistant or lift operator who’ve been helping her seemingly real. Marsha eventually realizes that the ninth floor is a holding area for mannequins who take it in turns to come to life and live among the “outsiders” for a month at a time. As well as learning she’s actually a mannequin herself, Marsha comes to accept her fate that she’ll be confined to the shadowy ninth floor. If this doesn’t sound like an allegory for the Innies of the Severed Floor, nothing does. 

all of the parallels between “The After Hours” episode of the twilight zone to severances ep of the same name and the show as a whole: a thread