"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of one's fears and the summit of one's knowledge. You are now traveling through a dimension of imagination. You just crossed over... into the Twilight Zone."
The third revival of The Twilight Zone, which was made for Paramount+ and ran for two seasons. This iteration was hosted by Jordan Peele, who also served as an executive producer throughout his company Monkeypaw Productions. The first teaser played during Super Bowl LIII and the first season consists of ten episodes featuring many prominent actors in guest roles.
On May 30, 2019, CBS All Access released a special Black and White edition of the first season
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On June 25, 2020, CBS All Access released the entire second season. The series was cancelled in 2021.
CBS All Access' successor, Paramount+, only continued to carry this show until January 2023. It disappeared from the site after the announcement of Showtime combining with Paramount+, but other digital retailers continued to carry it.
Previews: Trailer 1, Nightmare at 30,000 Feet, The Comedian
When the tropes are not the tropes, what dimension are you even in?
- Allegory: Sometimes subtle, sometimes not.
- "Replay" is one for Police Brutality and race relations.
- "A Traveler" plays with "fake news" and confirmation biases.
- "Point of Origin" covers illegal immigration and border control.
- "You Might Also Like" covers consumerism.
- Alternate Timeline: Kumail Nanjiani's character, Samir Wassan, in "The Comedian" finds himself in a universe where he no longer has a dog and is extremely successful after he "changed something. Erased something." The more he erases, the more he changes.
- Ambiguous Ending: Occurs in "Replay" and "Six Degrees of Freedom".
- Arc Number: 1015 it seems, as detailed in Recurring Element.
- Artifact of Death: The MP3 player in "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" doesn't seem to be inherently malevolent but still causes the death of Adam Scott's character, Justin Sanderson.
- As Himself: Jordan Peele, Seth Rogen, Betty Gabriel and Jason Priestley in "Blurryman".
- Bigot with a Badge: In "Replay", a black single mom transporting her 18-year-old son to college gets pulled over by a white sheriff's deputy, and gets out of the traffic stop with the discovery that her camcorder is a Time Rewind Mechanic. She spends the rest of the episode trying to get her son safely past the deputy, who is acting as the Monster of the Week and seems determined to prevent them from reaching their destination no matter how many times she rewinds.
- Body Surf: "The Who of You" focuses on a struggling actor turned bank robber who discovers he has the ability to body swap by looking into the corner of people’s eyes, and then tries to use this ability and his acting talent to get away with his loot and escape the police.
- A Child Shall Lead Them: "The Wunderkind" has a child being elected president.
- Christmas Episode: "A Traveler" follows an Alaskan police officer, Sergeant Yuka Mongoyak, on Christmas Day.
- Chummy Commies: In "A Traveler", the Iglaak Sheriff's Department doesn't hesitate to invite a visitor who flew in from Russia to join their festivities.
- Companion Cube: The titular object in "The Blue Scorpion".
- Connected All Along: It heavily implied that this incarnation of The Twilight Zone is not only a Shared Universe, but that it's the same universe as the original incarnation of the show. The final episode more or less confirms this, with the return of the Kanamits from "To Serve Man".
- Contrived Coincidence: Invoked.
- "Six Degrees of Freedom" has several, which convinces one of the crew members that their trip is an elaborate Secret Test.
- In "The Blue Scorpion", nearly everyone the protagonist meets is named "Jeff".
- Darker and Edgier: Not that previous series were light, but this TV-MA version ups the profanity and sexual content.
- Deal with the Devil: Implied in "The Comedian" where J.P. Wheeler gives Samir Wassan advice. He does it again after Samir is Ret-Gone from existence.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Similar to Logan Noir and Mad Max: Fury Road Chrome Edition, there is a black and white edition of the first series, as a homage to the original 1959 series.
- Downer Ending: Several.
- Early-Bird Cameo: The being from "Blurryman" appears in the background of all the previous episodes of the first season.
- Empathic Weapon: "The Blue Scorpion" features one.
- Exact Words: Excluding the "pilot", Justin Sanderson was the only one not confirmed to survive the crash of Flight 1015. That is the story the remaining passengers are going with.
- Foreshadowing: As Justin buys a magazine in "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" one cover reads "Not Kidding Around: The Unexpected Rise of Oliver Foley." This is the name of the young boy who runs for the US presidency in the later episode "The Wunderkind".
- Gory Discretion Shot: Raff Hanks being cut into by a child doctor at the end of "The Wunderkind" is kept entirely offscreen.
- Grail in the Garbage: In "The Blue Scorpion", a very valuable handgun belongs to an anonymous old hippie in a small upstate New York town.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: At one point in "The Blue Scorpion", a character receives insight after getting high on marijuana.
- Hollywood Law: Heavily used in "The Wunderkind".
- The Illegal: A key aspect of "Point of Origin".
- Implacable Man:
- Officer Lasky from "Replay".
- The Blurryman from "Blurryman".
- Kill All Humans: At the end of "8", the titular octopus and his race are almost certainly going to do this now that they have evolved to walk on land.
- Kill and Replace: In "The Who of You" Harry accidentally does this to Detective Reece, who is shot dead by the police after the two body swap.
- Mic Drop: How the last routine of "The Comedian" ends due to Samir having himself be erased.
- Mythology Gag:
- Series Wide:
- Various pieces of technology have the brand name "Whipple". These include the MP3 player from "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet", the camcorder from "Replay", and a pinball machine in "The Wunderkind". The name also appears on a poster in "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" and the news channel in "The Wunderkind." It's also the company responsible for the space mission in "Six Degrees of Freedom". Whipple is a reference to "The Brain Center at Whipple's".
- "Kanamit Lager" appears in "The Comedian" and "The Wunderkind" which shares its name with the alien race from "To Serve Man".
- "The Comedian":
- The name James Embry is seen on the wall of the green room which the is name of the main character in "King Nine Will Not Return". It's also one of the names on Samir's contact list in his phone; other names include Al Denton (the main character of "Mr. Denton on Doomsday"), Cadwallader ("Escape Clause"), and James Corry ("The Lonely").
- The name Paul Grinstead appears, a reference to a character of the same name from "Mirror Image".
- The faces in the mural at the back of the club and the Tragedy mask at the front of the club are visual references to "The Eye of the Beholder" and "The Masks".
- "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet":
- The gremlin from "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" appears at the end as a doll. Also, the name of the doctor that is referred to, "Dr. Cravat", is based on the name of the original actor who performed as the gremlin.
- The name of the airline is also similar to that of the original episode.
- "Replay":
- The napkin dispenser from "Nick of Time" appears in the cafe. The episode also starts in The Busy Bee Cafe.
- The headline of Jordan Peele's newspaper references "I Shot an Arrow in the Air".
- The motel where Nina and Dorian Harrison briefly stay is called the Old Cadwallader, a reference to "The Escape Clause".
- The license plate of Nina's car is 2D7876, the same plate as Nan Adams' car in "The Hitch-Hiker".
- "A Traveler":
- The ventriloquist dummy from "The Dummy" and "Caesar and Me" appears on the wrapping paper of a present.
- The gremlin doll from "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" and Talky Tina from "Living Doll" appear on the Christmas tree.
- "Not All Men":
- The biker that chases Annie and Martha has the symbol of the aliens from "Black Leather Jackets" on his helmet.
- The gas pump that Annie and Martha hide behind has a sticker that reads Maple Street on it, a reference to "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street".
- "Point Of Origin":
- The ice cream truck reads "Mr. Dingle's Ice Cream." Mr. Luther Dingle is the main character of "Mr. Dingle, the Strong".
- The Gremlin toy can be seen in the window of the dollhouse in Eve's house.
- The breakfast cereal is Kanamunch, named after the the Kanamit from "To Serve Man".
- The mask used by the facility in this episode is similar to the pig faces from"The Eye of the Beholder"
- Matheson Charter School is named after prolific Twilight Zone writer Richard Matheson.
- "Blurryman":
- The titular figure steps into the light revealing a long-dead real life figure, just like in "He Lives".
- Series Wide:
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Justin Sanderson's actions in "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" are what leads up to his plane crashing. Everyone but the pilot survives, and the survivors kill him as a result.
- Oh, Crap!:
- "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" ends with Justin Sanderson realizing to his horror that the survivors of Flight 1015 are approaching him with malicious intent due to his role in the crash.
- "The Wunderkind" ends with Raff Hanks realizing he's going to be operated on by an apathetic child.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: The Super Bowl TV spot starts out like coverage of the game, only for the screen to start flickering and then cut to black altogether.
- Oppressive Immigration Enforcement: The government agency hunting immigrants from another dimension in "Point Of Origin" are overall presented as vicious bigots, who despite all the immigrants we see being peaceful, honest, productive members who have long acclimatised to the new society are fixated on detaining then deporting them back overall for no other reason than they are technically different, justifying it with accusations of theirs's being a "lesser dimension" and their presence "diluting the natural evolution of our lives". Their detainment facility is concrete prison with no lighting, staffed by apathetic guards who don't care in the slightest about the prisoners well being, and their interrogators are merciless sadists who regularly utilise torture in ascertaining whether the accused is from another dimension.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": In several episodes, the passcode for three different keypads (which all look the same) is 1-0-1-5.
- Police Brutality:
- "Replay" has Nina Harrison repeatedly threatened by a police officer, Christopher Lasky, with a taser while clearly confused by what's happening to her.
- In "Point of Origin", immigration officials interrogate a housewife by strapping her to a metal rack, placing a garish mask with various hoses on her face, then stabbing a thick cable with metal spikes into her back.
- Production Throwback: The opening credits feature symbols that were used in the original series opening. The production credits are in the same Garamond font, and the closing credits feature a still shot of an item from the episode like the original series.
- Recurring Element: The number "1015" is seen on clocks, license plates and so forth.
- The Remake: "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" is a contemporary remake of the classic episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". It's a
Spiritual Successor to the original episode and does not involve a Gremlin. - Ret-Gone: In "The Comedian", Samir Wassan discovers that the audience can't stop laughing whenever he uses a real person (or his dog) as "material," but afterwards they're just gone like they never existed. He attempts to balance out his power by making "terrible people" (such as a fellow comedian who got away with murder) disappear, but after he has a fit of jealous rage that leads to his girlfriend's mentor disappearing (therefore, she doesn't become a lawyer, resulting in the two not staying together), he begins to realize his mistake. Samir eventually does this to himself after his girlfriend calls him out on stage over "being a bully" and in a way to protect her from using his power on her.
- Retraux: Various devices such as the Whipple MP3 player and a TV in the bar of "The Wunderkind" have older aesthetics for modern technology.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Nina's motivation of using the camcorder in "Replay".
- Shared Universe: While the stories themselves are stand-alone, there are hints that they share a common setting:
- Samir Wassan from "The Comedian" can be seen on the cover of an airport magazine in "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet".
- Another magazine has Oliver Foley from "The Wunderkind" on the cover.
- The airport in "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" also features an ad for a trip to Mars, alluding to "Six Degrees of Freedom".
- Various pieces of technology in different episodes all have the brand name "Whipple".
- Shout-Out:
- "The Comedian" makes a few references to The Shining.
- "Replay" name-drops The Matrix, Ryan Coogler's Black Panther (2018), and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.
- "Six Degrees of Freedom" gives several to author Ray Bradbury and The Martian Chronicles.
- "Blurryman" pays tribute to the classic Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough At Last".
- Title Drop: Like the classic version and all its other revivals, each introduction and epilogue by the host ends with the words "The Twilight Zone."
- Twofer Token Minority
- Didi in "The Comedian" is a black lesbian.
- Sergeant Yuka from "A Traveler" is an Inuit female police officer.
- From "Six Degrees of Freedom", Commander Brandt — leader of an expedition to establish Earth's first off-planet space colony — is a black woman.
- The protagonists of "Replay" and "Blurryman" are also black women; Sophie from "Blurryman" is implied to also be a lesbian.
- Wham Line: For the Super Bowl promo: "CBS IS OFF THE AIR."
- From the Season Finale "Blurryman"
Rod Serling: I take it I have your attention? - Zero-G Spot: Occurs in "Six Degrees of Freedom".
"What dimension are you even in?"
