'The Twilight Zone' Season 2 Ending Explained: Do aliens eliminate the human race in 'To Serve Man' reboot?
Spoilers for season 2 episode 10: 'You Might Also Like'
One of the most memorable episodes from Rod Serling's original 60's horror 'The Twilight one' has to be season 3's episode 24 - 'To Serve Man'. A unique, satirical, yet thought-provoking take on humans and their obsessions with alien invasions see Serling's story turn very dark, very abruptly, and even though all of it is horrifying, one can't help but chuckle at the obvious fate the unsuspecting earthlings are granted at the hands of the cannibalistic aliens. So almost 60 years since it first aired, when Jordan Peele announced that Season 2 of Serling's classic would entail a sequel of the alien-misadventure, fans were thrilled with expectations soaring. While Peele's reboot and Osgood Perkins' story in 'You Might Also Like' satirizes humans' obsession with commercials along with this inherent need to be saved by aliens, it picks up years after the Kanamits habited earth in search of a broader palette. And this is how it ends.
Based on Damon Knight's short story of the same title, Serling's original saw an alien specie invade planet Earth under the pretext of benevolence; over a United Nations, these aliens announce their agenda is the titular motto - 'To Serve Man' - as deciphered by from a book in Kanamit language. The aliens talk about an atomic generator to provide cheap electricity, nitrate fertilizers to cure famine, and a force field to prevent international warfare. This ropes in our protagonist, cryptographer Michael Chambers, whose team of professionals includes Patty - the woman who eventually realizes the full contents of the Kanamit book. After coming off as benign and benevolent benefactors of all humans, the Kanamits also introduce space travel to their home planet, and Chambers is asked to visit too. It is on the day of his departure - right as he's boarding the spaceship - that Patty figures out the book is actually a cookbook, and the Kanamits are cannibals taking humans onboard to eat them.
While the episode ends with Chambers resorting to the Kanamit meal and accepting his own fate in their spaceship, Perkins' story kick starts with Gretchen Mol's harried housewife Jane Warren whose grief is excellently hidden by an in general lack of trust in people around her. Along with her aloof neighbor (Greta Lee), Janet decides to investigate strange noises in her house while awaiting the arrival of a 'fulfillment' device called the 'egg'. People are going berserk about this mysterious device that's somehow supposed to make everything in their lives better. Strangely enough, when Jane tries to cancel her device the request doesn't go through. Instead, at night, in her sleep, she gets abducted by the same 9-foot tall extraterrestrial creatures from Serling's original. These men take her to their overlord - queen if you will - who answers all of Jane's questions.
'To Serve Man' reflected on the futility of man's existence and evolution as the supreme rulers of the planet ended up being chunks in another species' soup for the day. In 'You Might Also Like', the alien queen informs Jane that the reason the aliens have targeted humans with that egg-type device is that they think freely and change their minds too often; the Kanamits all share one brain even though they are separate bodies and that is the very reason why they get to rule of humans with individual thought processes. Their goal with the egg - as we see Lee's character bringing it home - is ultimately to cause mass destruction over the planet by the being inside the egg killing them all.
When Perkins' story begins in the reboot, whoever is handing out the eggs sounds like an all supreme power akin to the government. They stalk humans through advertisements and commercials, keeping tabs on them ever since radios were invented. As Jane figures out during her one-on-one with the alien queen who claims to have laid all of the eggs, the aliens use commercials to understand what makes each human weak as an individual for easier dominance of course. They are lured into obtaining the eggs under the guarantee of getting whatever they want - something they don't already have, and for Jane, that is the stillborn she had given birth to not so long ago. Once again, yet another free-thinking human not tied to their ruler with a single strand of thought is roped in with promises of what they don't have. Grief overpowers Jane and he too expresses her desire in returning to earth for the egg.
When Jane is sent back, she marches towards her registered pickup point amongst people practically rioting for a shot at this miraculous device supposed to save them from whatever their life has become. In the background, smoke engulfs the sky as spaceships galore implying the aliens' control much more potent and omniscient than we had estimated. Even in the sequel, Serling's original idea remains constant: the downfall of humans at the hands of the same people who promise to save them is inevitable.
'The Twilight Zone' premiered on June 25 and is available for streaming now on CBS All Access.