Go forward and take the elevator again up if you have not watched season 2, episode 9 of “Severance,” titled “The After Hours.” There are spoilers down right here on the severed flooring!
“Severance” by no means does something by chance. The whole lot from the present’s musical cues to the props scattered throughout each the severed flooring at Lumon — the place our merry band of “innies” toil away as macrodata refiners, unaware of the true world inhabited by their “outies” — to the gadgets we see within the houses of varied characters has some type of significance. Consider the “rabbit or duck” sculpture seen in severed flooring supervisor Seth Milchick’s (Trammell Tillman) workplace, or all the Eagan-related trinkets Concord Cobel (Patricia Arquette) present in her childhood house within the prior episode, “Candy Vitriol.” That is all to say that the ninth episode of season 2 of Dan Erickson’s nightmarish office drama “Severance” is titled “The After Hours,” and that’s not a coincidence.
Why? Nicely, there’s an episode of the well-known anthology horror collection “The Twilight Zone,” the present spearheaded by Rod Serling that turned one of many largest tv phenomenons within the historical past of the medium, that is additionally referred to as “The After Hours.” This explicit episode was the thirty fourth installment of the present’s very first season and aired on June 10, 1960. So how does this episode of “The Twilight Zone” connect with “Severance,” other than the shared title? There’s really an astonishing quantity of overlap right here … which, once more, isn’t any accident.
What occurs in The Twilight Zone episode referred to as The After Hours?
Initially of the episode of “The Twilight Zone” titled “The After Hours,” a seemingly regular lady named Marsha White (Anne Francis) is looking for a present for her mom, and considerably weirdly decides that the perfect present will likely be a gold thimble. When she asks an elevator attendant at a division retailer, she’s knowledgeable that the ninth flooring is house to the thimbles. One drawback: Based on the elevator’s personal buttons, the shop has solely eight flooring. (The present’s customary narration right here says, “Categorical elevator to the ninth flooring of a division retailer, carrying Miss Marsha White on a most prosaic, unusual, run-of-the-mill errand.” After she leaves the elevator, it continues: “Miss Marsha White on the ninth flooring, specialties division, on the lookout for a gold thimble. The chances are that she’ll discover it — however there are even higher odds that she’ll discover one thing else, as a result of this is not only a division retailer. This occurs to be ‘The Twilight Zone.'”)
Marsha arrives on the mysterious ninth flooring, which is darkish and largely empty aside from a saleswoman (Elizabeth Allen) who exhibits Marsha that there’s a gold thimble on the market. The whole lot about this case weirds Marsha out: The saleswoman seems to know her title, and likewise, actually the solely merchandise out there to buy on flooring 9 is that this gold thimble. As Marsha leaves, she realizes the thimble is fairly closely broken, so she takes the elevator all the way down to the complaints division on the third flooring and is subsequently informed that there is no ninth flooring the place she may have presumably bought the thimble, and since she paid money and would not have a receipt, she will be able to’t even show it.
Lastly, the twist is revealed. Marsha is not an actual particular person; she’s a model come to life, albeit briefly. That odd ninth flooring serves because the holding area for mannequins, who take it in flip to “remodel” into apparently human girls and traverse the true world for a month at a time, however Marsha, having fun with the skin, stayed too lengthy. She’s forgiven for her delay, and passes the transformation baton over to the following model — and the following day, a model of Marsha graces the shop. Clearly, the concept of two selves that inhabit two distinct areas is what “Severance” is all about, however that present’s episode bearing the identical title would not simply share themes. There is a direct reference within the script.
Not solely do these two episodes share a reputation, however Severance instantly references the occasions of The Twilight Zone’s installment
Let’s join this again to the 2025 tv episode titled “The After Hours,” which dropped on Apple TV+ on March 13. Once more, the similarity of a “secret flooring” the place folks tackle a special but eerily comparable persona seems like an apparent connection, however on this “Severance” episode, a plotline that includes Concord Cobel (Patricia Arquette), Mark Scout (Adam Scott), and Mark’s sister Devon Scout-Hale (Jen Tullock) makes such a selected reference to that episode of “The Twilight Zone” that you just actually cannot miss it.
Mark, who’s been experiencing some medical points with the “reintegration” course of — that means a merging of 1’s “innie” and “outie” in order that an individual can entry each reminiscences, which we have by no means seen succeed (the one instance we noticed was unsuccessful sufficient {that a} man died) — lastly agrees, after Devon insists, to satisfy up along with his former severed flooring supervisor Concord. He isn’t precisely completely satisfied to cope with her, however contemplating that Concord is perhaps the one one that might help Mark discover his spouse Gemma (Dichen Lachman), whose “innie” is Lumon’s wellness counselor Miss Casey and whose “outie” is at the moment being tortured and examined in Lumon’s secret coaching flooring, he and Devon conform to go to Lumon’s “birthing cabins,” a spot that may enable them to talk to Mark’s innie.
With Mark hidden within the mattress of a pickup truck and Devon feigning being pregnant, Concord pulls as much as the guard home exterior of the cabins and is stopped by safety, who says that no person is scheduled to enter cottage 5 presently. After claiming that Devon is “certainly one of Jame’s” — referring to Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry), Lumon’s creepy CEO — and that this entire factor is a secret, Concord says to the guard, “Miss Marsha White, ninth flooring. I am on the lookout for a gold thimble.” (The guard’s response: “Specialties division.”)
“Severance” by no means does something by chance, so selecting the title “The After Hours” for this episode was clearly an essential resolution. Contemplating that the episode ends with Mark’s “innie” in a birthing cabin — his model of the “ninth flooring,” so to talk — with Devon and Concord, we’ll should see how this all shakes out within the season 2 finale “Chilly Harbor,” which drops on Apple TV+ at 9 P.M. EST on March 20, 2025.
