10 Greatest Twilight Zone Endings Of All Time

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10. The Midnight Sun



Season 3, Episode 10

Original air date: November 17, 1961



It’s the hottest day in history, the earth is slowly being pulled towards the sun and society is slowly becoming deprived of drinking water. This episode follows a young lady named Norma, and her landlady, Mrs. Bronson, the last two people in their apartment building who haven’t fled.



The two spend the day together as they slowly become delirious from the heat. A wanderer later breaks into their apartment and robs them for the last of their water and they essentially become doomed. Mrs. Bronson collapses and dies from heat exhaustion and Norma quickly follows.



The ending: It turns out the entire thing was a dream, Norma wakes up and not only is the world not becoming increasingly hot but it’s actually snowing outside. All seems well, for about thirty seconds. It turns out that instead of the planet moving towards the sun, we’re actually moving away from it and everybody on the planet is soon going to freeze. So, the ultimate question becomes: would you rather burn or freeze to death?





9. Stopover In A Quiet Town



Season 5, Episode 150

Original air date: April 24, 1964



A married couple, Bob and Millie Frazier, wake up in an unfamiliar house, in an unfamiliar bed. They have no idea how they got there, all they can remember is that they were drinking heavily the night before. The couple looks around the house and quickly notices that things are a little weird. The telephone isn’t plugged in, none of the drawers in the kitchen work and the food in the refrigerator – fruits, bread, etc – are nothing more than plastic props.



As they leave the house, they hear the playful laughter of a little girl but they can’t tell where it’s coming from. They wander around a bit more and soon realize that the town is completely abandoned, with no living person in sight.



The Ending: It turns it that the couple has been abducted by an alien family and placed in this fake town as “pets” for their daughter’s dollhouse neighborhood. The big reveal comes when the little girl (actually 100x their size) reaches down and picks them up, laughing with pleasure. At her mother’s behest, the little girl drops them back into the town, as the couple scurries off. The moral of the story? “If you drink, don’t drive. And if your wife has had a couple, she shouldn’t drive either. You might both just wake up with a whale of a headache in a deserted village in the Twilight Zone.”





8. Nightmare At 20,000 Feet



Season 5, Episode 123

Original air date: October 11, 1963



One of the most memorable episodes of Twilight Zone simply for starring Captain James Tiberius Kirk himself, William Shatner. Bob Wilson (Shatner) has just had a complete nervous breakdown and he happens to have an acute fear of flying. This isn’t being helped by his latest flight which happens to be taking place during a thunderstorm. Throughout the voyage he continually thinks he sees a gremlin on the wing of the plane. Nobody believes him simply because, he’s literally certifiably insane. His wife, the stewardess’ and even the pilot himself try to calm him down and convince him that there isn’t anything to worry about. Nevertheless, Bob continues to see the same strange Gremlin on the wing of the plane.



Bob ultimately steals a handgun (you can tell this took place fifty years ago) from one of the other passengers, proceeds to open his window mid-flight and shoot the gremlin off of the plane. We then cut to Bob being taken off of the plane in a straight-jacket and we are lead to believe that he was indeed just seeing things.



The ending: Yeah, there was totally a Gremlin on the wing of the plane.





7. The Hitch-Hiker



Season 1, Episode 16

Original air date: January 22, 1960



Have you ever been told before to never pick up a hitchhiker? Well, in this case it couldn’t have been more true. This episode begins with a young lady named Nan who is on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Los Angeles. She has an accident and is forced to stop at a local mechanic. While she’s getting her car fixed she notices an old man trying to hitch a ride. He’s not menacing, or adamant, he simply has his thumb out.



Nan begins her trip once again, but quickly notices the same hitchhiker over and over again as she makes her way from state to state. Every road she’s on she sees the same man with his thumb out. Nan even picks up another hitchhiker, a sailor on his way back to San Diego from leave, to keep her company and perhaps protect her. Though, he eventually leaves once he realizes how crazy she is. And again, the old man pops back up.



The ending: Nan finally breaks down and decides to call her mother to calm her nerves. She then finds out that her mother has had a complete nervous breakdown because her daughter has just passed away. Yup! Nan was actually killed in that car accident at the beginning of the episode. At this point, she realizes the truth: the hitchhiker is not a man who wants her to die, but is rather the personification of death, uncomplainingly and persistently waiting for her to realize that she has been dead all along. With a pleasant smile, the man again appears and simply says “I believe you’re going… my way?” Indeed!





6. I Shot An Arrow Into The Air



Season 1, Episode 15

Original air date: January 15, 1960



A manned space flight with eight crew members crash land on what they believe is an unknown asteroid. It’s a desert wasteland, half of the crew members have died on impact, and their supply of water is running out quickly. With only three men left alive, the youngest of the crew kills the other two members in order to steal their canteens of water. With only one man left and the water practically gone, all seems hopeless.



The ending: Well, it turns out that the guys didn’t actually land on an asteroid, they’re actually still on earth in the middle of a desert outside of Reno, Nevada. The poor sap just murdered his crewman in cold blood for nothing. Whoops!





5. The Silence



Season 2, Episode 61

Original air date: April 28, 1961



Colonel Archie Taylor, a bad-tempered aristocrat, has difficulty enjoying his men’s club because of the constant chatter of fellow member Jamie Tennyson. Because of this, Taylor comes up with the perfect plan. He offers Tennyson a half-million dollars if he can go an entire year without speaking. Well, being the arrogant guy that he is (as well as being desperate for money) Tennyson calls his bluff and decides to accept the challenge. They set Tennyson up in the club’s game room, in which a small glass-walled apartment has been erected, so Taylor can monitor the entire thing.



Tennyson surprisingly manages to indeed not speak a word for an entire year. Even after offering him money to quit early and making up stories about his wife having an affair, Tennyson walks out of the glass apartment victorious.



The ending: It turns out that Taylor is a complete fraud, he lost his fortune years ago and there is no way he can actually give Tennyson the $500,000 he had rightfully earned. The distraught Tennyson scribbles angrily on a sheet of paper. Taylor reads the note aloud: “I knew that I would not be able to keep my part of the bargain, so one year ago I had the nerves to my vocal cords severed!” Tennyson then shows the scar on his throat from the operation, which he has concealed for the past 12 months under scarves and turtlenecks. Too bad he can’t talk, he surely has a few choice obscenities he’d like to spew right now.





4. The Eye Of The Beholder



Season 2, Episode 6

Original air date: November 11, 1960



Janet Tyler (played by Maxine Stuart &  Donna Douglas) has spent her life as an outcast in a state that despises her because of her ugliness. She has undergone her eleventh treatment (the maximum number legally allowed) in an attempt to look like everybody else. When we first meet Tyler, her face is completely bandaged up and we ultimately find out that her latest surgery has been a failure.



The ending: When the bandages are peeled off, her repulsive ugliness remains. The reaction of the doctor and nurses is horror and dissatisfaction. The procedure has failed, and her face has undergone “no change—no change at all”. The camera pulls back to reveal that she is actually beautiful. At this point, the doctor, nurses and other people in the hospital are revealed to be horribly deformed, with faces that look like they’ve been smashed in by a brick. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.





3. The Invaders



Season 2, Episode 15

Original air date: January 27, 1961



An elderly unnamed woman lives in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. The residence is somewhat shabbily-constructed and does not appear to contain any modern appliances or furnishings. The woman’s clothing is simple and drab. By all evident accounts, she lives a quiet life of rural solitude. This changes however when she is accosted by small intruders that come from a miniature flying saucer that has landed on her roof. Two tiny robotic figures emerge from the craft. Eventually, after several minutes of a cat-and-mouse game between the old woman and the invaders, she manages to kill one, which prompts the remaining invader to escape back to its ship.



The ending: The remaining intruder (in English) frantically warns other potential visitors that the people on the planet are giants and impossible to defeat. Yup, those tiny space-suited figures giving that impoverished woman such a hard time? They were from earth.







10 Greatest Twilight Zone Endings Of All Time



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2. To Serve Man



Season 3, Episode 24

Original air date: March 2, 1962



As the episode opens, a man named Michael Chambers wakes up on a cot while aboard a spaceship. He gets in a minor dispute with one of the aliens over the intercom before we begin to see how he got to this point via flashback.



We then learn that the “Kanamits”, a race of 9-foot (2.7 m)-tall aliens had landed on earth (first landing in Newark, New Jersey of all places). One of the aliens ultimately addresses the United Nations, vowing that his race’s motive in coming to Earth is solely to be helpful to humanity. When his speech concludes, the Kanamit leaves a book behind, but it is written in the Kanamit language; cryptographers attempt to decipher its contents.



The alien’s word seems to be good, as hunger is wiped out, peace is spread and everything seems to be well in the world. Earth leaders’ suspicions are further allayed when the title of the Kanamit’s mysterious book is discovered to be ‘To Serve Man’. The visitors have even begun to invite hoards of humans to their planet, which is described as a paradise.



The ending: Well, it turns out that “To Serve Man” is actually not a guide to helping humanity but rather a cookbook. Get it? Serve could mean “to assist” or “to provide as a meal?” Yeah, it’s corny, but nevertheless it’s one of the most iconic endings to a television episode of all time.



1. Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?



Season 2, Episode 28

Original air date: May 26, 1961



During a snowstorm, two state troopers are investigating a crash which they are led to believe is actually a flying saucer. The investigation leads the troopers to a local diner where a bus of passengers are left stranded after a snow storm. The troopers quickly assume that one of the patrons might be an alien after it is discovered that there was only six passengers on the bus but miraculously there are now seven.



The inhabitants of the dinner quickly believe this premise (which is actually pretty strange, come to think of it) and begin to accuse each other of being the alien. Is it the bugged-eyed belligerent old man? Is it the hot dancer? Is it the only person who is speaking rationally? Or has it actually been the bus driver the entire time?



The ending: Well, it turns out that the only guy who was seemingly rational is actually the alien. After dispatching the bus load of passengers he heads back to the diner to have a coffee. He informs the cashier that he is from Mars and that more of his kind are on the way. Then we get presented with the most epic double fake-out ever as the cashier reveals that he is actually from Venus and that his kind had already decided to colonize on earth several years before. Can’t intergalactic space aliens just get along?

[Tweety]

Off the top of my head, my favorite endings were:

1) Time Enough at Last
2) A Stop at Willoughby
3) The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine
4) Walking Distance
5) A World of His Own
6) The Howling Man
7) The Obsolete Man
8) A Game of Pool
9) Kick the Can
10) Night Call


To Serve Man is kind of clever, although I don't know how realistic it is to for the word "serve" to have the same double meaning in the Alien language as it does in English.

To me, "Stopover in a Quiet Town" , being a Season 5 episode, has an entirely predictable ending when you hear the child giggling. I didn't watch the TZ in its original run, but I had that one figured out when I first saw it in reruns.

"The Hitchhiker" and "The Silence" were tough to leave off my list, those were both great!

It's tough to limit a series like that to a "top 10" list only