Jordan Peele’s reboot of The Twilight Zone is ending with its second season, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series recently wrapped up its run on CBS All Access back in June, and won’t return for a third season.
While most shows are canceled by their network, THR notes that this is a slightly different case—Peele and his production company were the ones who pulled the plug, and the CBS wanted more from the series.
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In a statement to THR, Peele and his producing partner Simon Kinberg noted that they had told all the stories that they wanted to tell in the 20 episodes that they released.
“We greatly enjoyed our time working on The Twilight Zone — particularly when the real world around us often felt more and more like another dimension.
We cherished the opportunity to collaborate with so many talented writers, actors and crewmembers. After 20 unique episodes, we have told the stories that we wanted to tell, and CBS All Access was gracious in their understanding of our decision. It was an honor and a privilege to bring audiences a modern re-imagining of Rod Serling’s iconic creation.”
The show was a reimagination of the original Twilight Zone series created by Serling in 1959. Like its predecessors, it was an anthology of standalone episodes that told surreal and surprising morality tales, and featured actors like Kumail Nanjiani, Adam Scott, Damson Idris, John Cho, Seth Rogan, Jimmi Simpson, Gillian Jacobs, and more. The show will remain available on CBS All Access, which is soon rebranding as Paramount+.
I didn’t see anything beyond the first episode. Did it improve? Any standout episodes to recommend?
No Rod Serling, no Twilight Zone. Simple as that. It’s never worked consistently well without him.
No jordan no please make more this is not fair u tease us with 2 seasons then that’s it iam a twilight zone fanatic I watch the old ones every New Year’s they play every episode and I’m there every year I am a horror mystery fanatic I live for this you stop the third season now I have nothing to look forward to thank God American horror story hasn’t stopped but the waiting is killing me well thank you Mr peele for the two seasons and please rethink your decision for more seasons thank you and God bless
I would also be curious if people enjoyed this. I watched portions of the first episode preview and then intended to get back to it. I also remember looking to see if it has been released on DVD but it wasn’t – at least not before the lock down last spring began as I typically get my DVDs from the local library.
I watched most of season 1 and skipped season 2. There’s were a couple of standout episodes, including one where a mother tries to rewind time to save her son from repeated encounters with a racist cop. Think the episode was called “Rewind.”
There were a couple of episodes that were terrible. One had a spoiled insufferable brat becoming president (they didn’t explain how they circumvented the age requirement in the Constitution). Another featured Kumail Nanjiani (who I usually like) as a standup comic who tells the same extended joke over and over. It was indulgent crap, twice as long as it needed to be to make it’s (very obvious) point.
Oh, and it had a remake of the “William Shatner sees a demon on the plane’s wing” episode. That one featured some unfortunate scaremongering regarding a Muslim passenger.
So at best a mixed bag, with a lot of mediocrity.
I watched season 1 & 2 enjoyed all the episodes and was looking forward to season 3. Lot’s of twist and changes in the episodes. I guess we just have to wait for his movies.
Not it was not even closed to the original Twilight. When something is has been done SUPERB , Don’t do remakes ,it will never work, call it the Six Sense, Outer limits, Step Beyond,Night Gallery something else etc etc. It is ONLY one TWILIGHT ZONE! and We might be living in it ??????
The trouble with this version of THE TWILIGHT ZONE is that it had good intent, but really wasn’t well-written and it was hard to commit time and attention to it – the strongest episode of the first season was the last one, “Blurryman” and THAT should’ve been the lead-off instead of enduring mediocre segments and a season-long gimmick that really paid off weakly.
The “Nightmare at 30,0000 Feet” episode wasn’t a remake of the Matheson story in the original show. Should have chosen a different title, as all it did was to invite vitriol from people who hadn’t even seen the show yet, but were outraged by the reboot.
Still need to see the second season; I hope the writing improved, but the cancellation probably signals that it didn’t. It was as good an attempt as the 80’s version was in intent, but all versions after the original series prove that Rod Serling was an indelible part of the show, and any iteration without him falls extremely short.
Personally, I think that NIGHT GALLERY might’ve been a better fit – maybe when Universal gets a streaming network off of the ground, that’ll be a reality.