There’s an episode of Severance that didn’t just influence the tone of the Apple TV+ sci-fi drama - it directly inspired one of its most pivotal episodes. In Severance season 2, episode 9 is titled “The After Hours,” and the name isn’t random. It’s a deliberate homage to one of the most unsettling and iconic episodes of The Twilight Zone. In the Severance episode “The After Hours,” there are multiple references to a classic episode of The Twilight Zone, one that laid the foundations for many of the unique themes and ideas present in the strange world the Innies of Lumon Industries inhabit.

The surreal, dreamlike horror of the Severance episode feels lifted directly from Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling’s playbook - and that’s no accident. The wider story of Severance, with its themes of identity, memory control, and artificial environments, has always felt like a natural evolution of The Twilight Zone’s best ideas. However, season 2’s “The After Hours” makes the influence of The Twilight Zone on Severance unmistakable. The parallels run deep, and once they’re spotted, it’s clear this is more than a nod - it’s a legacy being continued.

"The After Hours" Is A Classic The Twilight Zone Sci-Fi Episode Very Similar To Severance's Premise

A 65 Year Old Story Paved The Way For Severance

Before Severance blurred the line between corporate servitude and personal identity, The Twilight Zone was already asking eerily similar questions. The Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours,” which originally aired in 1960 as episode 34 of season 1, is one of the most haunting and surreal entries in Rod Serling’s anthology. It follows Marsha White, a woman shopping in a department store who finds herself trapped on a mysterious, seemingly empty floor. The staff act strangely, the merchandise is off, and eventually, Marsha realizes she’s not a customer at all. She’s a mannequin, on a brief visit to the world of the living, now overdue to return to her inanimate state.

The Lumon employees (especially the Innies) live within a closed system, just like the mannequins in “The After Hours.”

This Twilight Zone episode feels remarkably ahead of its time, exploring themes of identity, free will, memory, and existential dread, long before prestige TV shows like Severance made such topics fashionable. For modern viewers, it’s immediately recognizable as an episode of Twilight Zone like Severance. In both, the protagonist grapples with a reality that is simultaneously constructed and confining, where escape seems impossible and self-awareness is a kind of punishment.

Severance’s entire premise echoes this. The Lumon employees (especially the Innies) live within a closed system, just like the mannequins in “The After Hours.” They believe the world they inhabit is all there is, until cracks begin to show. Just as Marsha’s sense of self fractures when she’s told she’s not human, the employees in Severance slowly realize they’re not who they think they are. The horror lies not in monsters or jump scares, but in the slow erosion of reality itself.

Both the Twilight Zone episode and Severance raise philosophical questions about autonomy. Does someone created for a purpose and forced to live by strict rules have any true agency? Marsha is a mannequin who briefly forgets what she is, and the Lumon Innies are essentially manufactured identities without context. What makes these characters tragic is the fact that they do become self-aware, only to find they’re part of a system that never had their interests in mind.

Severance Season 2's Penultimate Episode Title Was Inspired By "The After Hours"

The Similarities Aren't Coincidental

It’s no coincidence that Severance season 2, episode 9 is titled “The After Hours.” This wasn’t a random homage or a cheeky nod - it’s a direct signal that the episode was drawing from The Twilight Zone’s “The After Hours,” and doing so in a way that recontextualized the classic tale for a new generation of sci-fi fans.

Both “The After Hours” episodes use physical space to represent mental imprisonment. In The Twilight Zone, the department store is an uncanny valley between humanity and artificiality. In Severance, Lumon itself functions the same way. It's a gleaming, sterile environment masking something far more sinister. In both episodes, the characters begin to suspect the truth not through overt confrontation, but through subtle cracks in the facade.

What makes Severance’s use of the title so clever is that it’s more than a reference - it’s a statement of intent. By naming the episode after one of The Twilight Zone’s most iconic stories, the creators are aligning themselves with Serling’s brand of philosophical horror. They’re acknowledging their debt to a show that didn’t just entertain, but challenged viewers to think deeply about identity, morality, and the structures they live within.

In both episodes, memory plays a central role. Marsha forgets that she’s a mannequin. Helly, like all Innies, only knows a version of herself created for her job. They both live in the knowledge that they are not their true selves, and both stories ask: if you forget who you are, do you become someone new? Is ignorance of the truth a form of freedom, or a deeper kind of prison?

Stylistically, the two also share a dreamlike tone. The Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours” is all uncanny silences, sterile settings, and disted conversations eerily similar to Lumon’s pristine white corridors and emotionless employee interactions. Time feels non-linear. Logic starts to slip. Both shows weaponize atmosphere, creating psychological discomfort rather than relying on plot twists alone.

The Twilight Zone Is A Great Classic Sci-Fi Show For Severance Fans To Watch

The Classic Sci-FI Paved The Way For The Apple TV+ Show

Fans of Severance looking for something equally cerebral, chilling, and thought-provoking need look no further than The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling’s anthology series, which originally aired from 1959 to 1964, wasn’t just a sci-fi curiosity, it was a foundational piece of television history that dared to challenge societal norms, philosophical concepts, and the very idea of identity itself.

If Severance is a slow-burn dystopia about workplace control and fractured consciousness, The Twilight Zone is its spiritual ancestor. Every episode of Serling’s show tackled a “what if?” scenario: What if you could stop time? What if society collapsed and you were the last person alive? What if your life turned out to be someone else’s dream? It’s a buffet of ideas, many of which laid the groundwork for high-concept shows like Severance to even exist.

The Twilight Zone episodes like “The After Hours,” “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” and “Mirror Image” are perfect companions to Severance. They feature protagonists trapped in mysterious environments, questioning who they are and what’s real. These are not traditional sci-fi action plots - they’re intimate, unsettling character studies wrapped in the surreal.

The Twilight Zone also excels in world-building, despite being limited to half-hour episodes. Like Severance, it thrives on atmosphere: stark lighting, strange silences, ambiguous endings. Viewers never get all the answers, and that’s part of the appeal. Severance fans are already used to piecing together cryptic clues and theorizing between episodes, and watching The Twilight Zone scratches the same itch.

More importantly, The Twilight Zone broke rules in a way that made shows like Severance possible. At a time when TV was dominated by sitcoms and westerns, Serling insisted on telling challenging, sometimes disturbing stories. He tackled big themes: corporate dehumanization, conformity, authoritarianism, through genre metaphors that got past censors and straight into viewers’ minds. Without The Twilight Zone, there might be no Black Mirror, no Devs, no Severance.

The Twilight Zone's influence on modern sci-fi television can’t be overstated. Serling opened the door to ambiguity, to metaphor-heavy storytelling, to characters facing crises of identity inside surreal systems. It made the weird mainstream. For Severance fans, diving into The Twilight Zone is a chance to explore the roots of the genre they already love. The Twilight Zone isn’t just a recommendation for Severance fans - it’s required viewing. It’s the origin story for the kind of high-concept, psychologically rich storytelling that makes Severance so compelling.