5 Essential ‘Twilight Zone’ Episodes Airing in Syfy’s New Year’s Marathon

Though 2025 might seem like one long episode of The Twilight Zone, Syfy is sending the year off with a marathon of the 1960s sci-fi anthology.

And no, you’re not experiencing déjà vu — the same cable network also ran a Twilight Zone marathon on Christmas Day this year, marking what would have been creator Rod Serling’s 101st birthday.

But now we’re getting an even longer block of Twilight Zone episodes, one that starts at 5 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, December 31, and ends at 6 a.m. on Friday, January 2.

If you try to watch all 49 hours in one sitting, we fear you really will move into another dimension. So to help you choose your Twilight Zone doses, we’re showcasing some of the show’s best episodes below.

“Time Enough at Last” (January 1, 6:30 p.m. ET)

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Many Twilight Zone fans consider “Time Enough at Last” the ultimate episode, and in a 1970 interview with University of Kansas professor James E. Gunn, Serling himself named it as one of the show’s two best episodes.

This Season 1 chapter stars Burgess Meredith as a man who survives an apocalypse and finally gets “time enough at last” for all his reading… until fate intervenes. Serling told Gunn the episode “was sheer, pure, beautiful irony and in terms of production values … was gorgeously done.”

“The Invaders” (January 1, 8 p.m. ET)

The other of Serling’s selections for The Twilight Zone’s two best episodes was this nearly dialogue-free installment, scripted by sci-fi storyteller Richard Matheson. In “The Invaders,” future Bewitched star Agnes Moorehead plays a woman besieged by tiny alien beings. And as in “Time Enough at Last,” there’s a last-minute twist.

Serling said this Season 2 episode “was, in a sense, pure science fiction with a very O’Henry-ish twist.” (Spoilers in the clip below!)

“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (January 1, 7 p.m. ET)

 

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On the surface, this first-season story is also pure sci-fi, with the neighbors on Maple Street descending into panic and paranoia — and accusing one another of alien origins — when confronted by unexplained phenomena.

“It was important for [Serling] to entertain and motivate his audience, which created lasting thoughts and pertinent lessons that we would all carry forever, [about] issues like racism and prejudice and hatred and fear and bigotry,” Jodi Serling, one of the creator’s daughters, told People in 2024.

“Walking Distance” (December 31, 11:30 a.m. ET)

This first-season episode — one featuring a 5-year-old “Ronnie” Howard in a small role — features a man (played by They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? actor Gig Young) trapped in nostalgia, literally transported his childhood hometown during his childhood years. There, he interacts with not just his younger self but also still-living versions of his deceased parents. And he has a heart-to-heart with his father, who imparts an important life lesson.

Jodi told People her father based the episode on his grief around his own father’s death, which happened while the future Twilight Zone creator was deployed overseas. ‘Walking Distance’ resembled the pain that [Serling] had and the longing to see his dad again,” Jodi added. “The story is just so touching and heartwarming and tearful, but a lot of his writings were cathartic for him and a way of coping with some of the losses in his life.”

“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (January 1, 9 p.m. ET)

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Another iconic Twilight Zone episode is this Season 5 offering, one written by Matheson, directed by future Superman filmmaker Richard Donner, and starring future Star Trek star William Shatner as a man who’s the only jetliner passenger to see a gremlin the wing of the aircraft.

Weeks after that episode originally aired, Serling tried to give Matheson a similar fright on a flight to San Francisco. “I had spent three weeks in constant daily communication with Western Airlines preparing a given seat for him, having the stewardess close the [curtains] when he sat down, and I was going to say, ‘Dick, open it up,’” Serling said in 1975, according to Marc Scott Zicree’s The Twilight Zone Companion. “I had this huge, blownup poster stuck on the [outside of the window] so that when he opened it there would be this gremlin staring at him.”

Unfortunately, the wind from the airplane’s propellers blew the poster away. “[Matheson] never saw it,” Serling lamented. “And I had spent hours in the planning of it. I would lie in bed thinking how we could do this.” Sounds like some Twilight Zone-level irony!