I Watched The Twilight Zone That Severance's Latest Episode Is Named After, And I'm Creeped Out By All The Clues And Similarities

Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t watched the latest Severance Season 2 episode with an Apple TV+ subscription, so be warned, refiners!

It pains me to think that that last nine months of the 2025 TV schedule will be completely free from new Severance episodes, with the extended Season 2 finale dropping like an egg-shaped bomb on March 21. The second chapter in this meticulous mystery has delivered one shocking doozy after another, and the penultimate installment took some direct inspiration from another twisty sci-fi favorite, The Twilight Zone. Somebody more talented than me mash these two theme songs together, stat.

One of The Twilight Zone's best episodes, "The After Hours" was the 35th episode that aired from the anthology series' first season. (I wish someone could guarantee that Severance makes it to 35 episodes.) And it's the same title used by Dan Erickson for Ep 209, so it's as good a place as any to start pointing out similarities.

The Title "The After Hours"

At a glance, the shared titles may seem like a mundane tip of the hat to Rod Serling's influence. It rather directly applies to both Outie Mark and Helly, whose respective anti-Lumon plans require waiting for action to be taken after the traditional workday has been completed. For Mark, it's being smuggled to the company's birthing cabin with Cobel and Devon, while Helly is attempting to memorize the directions to the Testing Floor. It's unclear if either plan will bear fruit, however.

And if Severance turns out anything like the end of the Twilight Zone ep, then we might be watching all of our favorite characters forced into accepting their doomed fates, without a clear option for how to change their realities. But more on that shortly.

It All Starts With A Mysterious Elevator Ride

I don't have to tell Severance viewers how important elevators are to Lumon employees, particularly those with (presumably?) patented chips in their heads. So imagine my surprise to see that the original "After Hours" kicking off with Anne Francis' Marsha White hopping into an elevator that mysteriously travels to a floor that isn't supposed to exist. It more or less brings Marsha from one reality to another, or at least another perception of it.

Though she may not be a completely different person, each times she exits the elevator, Marsha's tale is a basic reflection of the Innies' existence, from the utter confusion about the ninth floor to the inability to fully escape the overbearing walls surrounding her.

Password: Golden Thimble

When Cobel pulls up to the birthing cabins near the end of the episode, she convinces the woman guarding the gate to let them through in two distinct ways. First by directly referring to some of the Twilight Zone episode's dialogue, namely that Marsha White is looking for a golden thimble on the ninth floor. Which is a wild bit of in-universe referencing, since it implies that someone in charge of security at Lumon is a Rod Serling fan. (Looking at you, Drummonds.)

More disturbingly, however, Cobel goes beyond just the coded language and falsely alludes to Devon being the latest of what seems like many women who were impregnated by Jame Eagan, either intentionally or not. I'm not sure if the implication was that Cobel would be aborting the baby, but they were allowed in. It would make me sick to think about how many illegitimate Eagan children are walking the streets of Kier and nearby towns.

It Takes Place Within A Sparse Workplace Within A Branded Corporation's Marquee Location

Speaking of those hallways, the Twilight Zone episode takes place within quite the popular department store, with (at least) eight floors of wares for customers to peruse. It may or may not be that company's largest store, but you can bet this isn't the branch they'd stick in Salt's Neck next to the ether factory. And while it's made to look bustling in one part of the building, other areas are quite empty, save for the limited employees working there. As Marsha herself puts it at one point:

I don't think it would be logically possible for any other company on the planet to have as much unused space as Lumon does, given its labyrinthian hallways and large, simply furnished offices. It's literally meant to confuse workers and keep them from discovering other departments on the floor, which is more complicated than the department store's situation, but close enough to count.

"A One-Way Bus Ticket To Any Department Store West Of Cleveland"

After Marsha complains about having purchased a damage thimble on a floor that doesn't exist, the store manager believes her to be a highly disturbed woman, and tells one of his employees that he'd like to buy her the above-mentioned "one-way bus ticket" out of town.

Granted, he doesn't actually get around to buying that bus ticket, but I think that declaration was itself a Serverance reference, with Burt showing up uninvited inside Irving's house with an offer the other man can't refuse: a one-way train ticket to a location that Burt couldn't be told about, so that he wouldn't have anything to report back to Lumon, since it's all but confirmed that he's still working for them in the outside world. I can't help but think that Irv will return in the finale, but also fear that he might have taken Burt's advice to heart.

The Main Character Is Revealed To Be Someone Only Allowed Out Into The Outside World As A "Real" Person For A Limited Time

The big twist behind the Twilight Zone's "After Hours" is that Marsha White wasn't hallucinating at all. Rather, she was actually one of many sentient, talking mannequins within the department store that, for one month out of the year, are able to escape their ninth floor home and live amongst real people. It is quite the escape for them, to the point where Marsha legitimately forgot that she wasn't a real person.

While the reveal wasn't played quite as traumatically as it could have been for Marsha herself, the moment definitely triggered memories of watching Gemma suffer Dr. Mauer's psychological torture on the Testing Floor. Because for all that she was willing to return to her station without fighting it, the longing behind Marsha's last line definitely sticks around for a while after watching. When asked if she enjoyed herself, she replied:

And then she settled into place and stopped moving, and all the chills started running all over my spine. The episode caps off with a scene featuring the store manager discovering the Marsha mannequin, which could very well have its own implications that I'm just not recognizing at the moment.

If someone can figure out how to make time pass by extremely slowly between now and Severance's finale hitting, I'll buy you a real Living Doll. Just don't read the customer reviews.