Mirror Image (The Twilight Zone)

"**Mirror Image**"
"Mirror Image"
The Twilight Zone episode
	Vera Miles as Millicent Barnes
Episode no.	Season 1; Episode 21
Directed by	John Brahm
Written by	Rod Serling
Production code	173-3623
Original air date	February 26, 1960
Guest appearances
	Vera Miles as Millicent Barnes; Martin Milner as Paul Grinstead; Joe Hamilton as Ticket agent; Naomi Stevens as Washroom attendant;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Elegy"	Next →; "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series, season 1)
	List of episodes

"Mirror Image" is the twenty-first episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on February 26, 1960, on CBS.

Opening narration

Millicent Barnes, age twenty-five, young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy November night. Not a very imaginative type is Miss Barnes: not given to undue anxiety, or fears, or for that matter even the most temporal flights of fantasy. Like most young career women, she has a generic classification as a, quote, girl with a head on her shoulders, end of quote. All of which is mentioned now because, in just a moment, the head on Miss Barnes' shoulders will be put to a test. Circumstances will assault her sense of reality and a chain of nightmares will put her sanity on a block. Millicent Barnes, who, in one minute, will wonder if she's going mad.

Plot

Millicent Barnes waits in a bus depot in New York for a bus to Cortland, en route to a new job. Looking at a wall clock she notices the bus is late. She asks the ticket agent when the bus will arrive, and he gruffly complains that this is her third time asking. Millicent denies this. While speaking with him, she notices a bag just like hers on the floor behind the desk. She mentions this and the agent responds that it is her bag. She does not believe this until she notices her bag is not beside the bench anymore. She washes her hands in the restroom and the cleaning lady there insists this is her second time there. Again, Millicent denies this. Upon leaving the restroom, she glances in the mirror and sees, in addition to her reflection, an exact copy of herself sitting on the bench outside.

Millicent then meets a genial young man from Binghamton named Paul Grinstead, who is waiting for the same bus. Paul encourages Millicent to tell him what obviously is bothering her, so she explains about encountering her double. Attempting to calm her, Paul says it is either a joke or a misunderstanding caused by a look-alike. When the bus arrives and the two of them prepare to board, Millicent happens to look up at the windows and sees the copy of herself, already seated on the bus with a malevolent look on her face. In shock, Millicent runs back into the depot and faints.

Millicent lies unconscious on a bench inside the depot while Paul and the cleaning lady attend to her. Paul decides to wait for the 7:00 a.m. bus. While they wait, Millicent, now coming to, insists the strange events are caused by an evil double from a parallel world – a nearby, yet distant alternative plane of existence that comes into convergence with this world as a result of powerful forces, or unnatural, unknown events. When these events occur, the impostors enter this realm. Millicent's doppelgänger can survive in this world only by eliminating and replacing her. Paul says the explanation is "a little metaphysical" for him, and believes that Millicent's sanity is beginning to unravel. Paul tells Millicent he will call a friend in Tully who has a car and may be able to drive them to Syracuse. Instead, he calls the police.

After Millicent is taken away by two policemen, Paul settles down. After drinking from a water fountain, Paul notices that his valise is now missing. Looking up toward the doors, Paul notices another man running out the door of the bus depot. Pursuing this individual down the street, Paul discovers that he is chasing his own copy, whose face shows a malevolent delight. His copy disappears as Paul calls out "Where are you?" while looking around in confusion and shock.

Closing narration

Obscure and metaphysical explanation to cover a phenomenon. Reasons dredged out of the shadows to explain away that which cannot be explained. Call it 'parallel planes' or just 'insanity'. Whatever it is, you'll find it in the Twilight Zone.

Episode notes

In a short film pitching the Twilight Zone series to a Dutch television station, creator Rod Serling claimed to have gotten the idea for "Mirror Image" following an encounter at an airport. Serling noticed a man at the other side of the terminal who wore the same clothes and carried the same suitcase as himself; Serling considered what would happen if the man turned around and was revealed to be a duplicate of himself. However, the man turned out to be younger and "more attractive".^[1] This episode is one of several episodes from season one with its opening title sequence plastered over with the opening for season two. This was done during the summer of 1961 to help the season one shows blend in with the new look the show would take during the following season.

This episode inspired Jordan Peele's 2019 film Us.^[2]

References

^ "The Twilight Zone Rods Netherlands Sales Pitch". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-11. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
^ "Stream a Twilight Zone episode that inspired Jordan Peele's Us". www.theverge.com. 22 March 2019. Retrieved 2019-03-22.

External links

"Mirror Image" at IMDb

[1] "The Twilight Zone Rods Netherlands Sales Pitch". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-11. Retrieved 13 March 2019.

[2] "Stream a Twilight Zone episode that inspired Jordan Peele's Us". www.theverge.com. 22 March 2019. Retrieved 2019-03-22.

[1]

[2]

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"