‘Twilight Zone’ Recap: “A Traveler”

“A Traveler,” the fourth episode of Jordan Peele’s reboot of The Twilight Zone, is a visual feast. Set at a state trooper’s station in rural Alaska on Christmas Eve, it has winding deserted highway shots, spooooky angles on festive décor, and enough flickering lights to warrant an extra visit to the eye doctor this year. Plus, it all ends with—I kid you not—the sight of an alien eating pumpkin pie.

Imagery, it has. Plot, and logic, and motivation, and stakes, and movement, and narrative resolution, however? Ehhhh…

This episode, just like the three that have come before it, features a handful of excellent performances that sort of float out in the ether of the various attempts at storytelling as they either land, or simply float into eerie sky by episode’s end. From the enigmatic Steven Yeun with his perma-Grinch-smile, to newcomer Marika Sila’s steely vulnerability, to Greg Kinnear’s vainglorious idiocy in the style of Michael Scott, there’s a lot of fun to be had here, and even a little bit of spook. But for enjoyment purposes, it might be useful to know going into this nearly hour-long episode that the plot will only makes sense if you squint really hard, and do a lot of the leg work yourself. (It would also be helpful to have a working knowledge of power grids.)

Yeun is…maybe…Santa Claus? And he wants to…maybe…colonize humanity, starting with this rural town? And that colonization is…maybe…drawing a comparison to the original colonization of indigenous peoples like Sila’s character by colonizers like Kinnear’s character?

All are options! Choose your own zany adventure, along with its own deeper meaning! Start with the Northern Lights!

The episode picks up with sleigh bells which turns out to be Christmas music playing over the police radio in Sergeant Yuka Mongoyak’s (Sila) car, as she drives her brother Jack (Patrick Gallagher) to the state trooper station in tiny Iglaak, Alaska. Both Yuka and Jack are First Nations, and he teases her about being a sellout: “They have been shoving their way of life on people everywhere they show up—they want me to live life like three wise guys who follow a start to a barn, find some magic kid? And that’s supposed to be more spiritual than our ancestors dancing on the Northern Lights while they watch down on us?”

If Yuka really buys into the Christmas spirit, she doesn’t show it. But she is arresting her brother for drunkenness on Christmas Eve because of her Captain, Lane Pendleton’s (Kinnear) self-righteous tradition of pardoning an inmate from the holding cell during the station’s Christmas Eve party. Except they didn’t have any inmates in the holding cell this year. And, so: Jack.

Yuka promises him that he’ll at least get turkey, and maybe pie, if he waits down in the dungeon-like cells until Pendleton is “done hearing himself talk.” And boy, does he like to hear himself talk! Pendleton gives what I would define as a loosely biblical speech that starts with the perfectly pompous, “Well, I’m humbled.” The captain talks about how he loves lookin’ out at that ol’ star of Bethlehem, knowing it’s the same one his ancestors looked at when they “first arrived to tame and make this great 49th state of Alaska,” noting that before said taming, it was just “a bunch of bears and Eskimos.” Cool—love this guy!

Finally, after talking about his great responsibility in supporting the nearby Cheney Air Force station and their state-of-the-art listening station, it’s time to pardon an inmate because their “Greatest Superior Officer” wants them to be “kind to strangers and visitors and stuff.” Powerful words.

Yuka goes down to get her brother, but as she does, the power grid that Iglaak shares with the much larger Air Force base, cuts out. When it cuts back in, she finds her brother snoring…and a mysterious man in a pinstriped suit and hat standing a few cells down; a stranger, you might call him.

But he calls himself—hold onto your 1920s zoot suit hat—A. Traveler (Yeun). He had his name legally changed in California, he tells Pendleton after Yuka called him down, pulling her gun on Traveler and demanding to know how he got down there. But Pendleton is startlingly uninterested in how the well-coiffed, old timey looking man got down there, because A. Traveler knows exactly what to say to goad him into cooperation. He tells Pendleton that he’s an “extreme tourist,” and agro-traveler (hence his dumb name) who visits the hardest places in the world to get to and features them on his YouTube channel. And the kicker: “Any traveler anywhere in the world know about Captain Lane Pendleton’s Christmas Eve pardons in Iglaak.”

Hook, line, and sinker baby, Pendleton marches A. Traveler right upstairs, makes a big show of pardoning him, and watches as he begins charming the whole crowd with his praise for Iglaak. But someone else is watching too—Yuka. She knows that everything out of Traveler’s mouth has been a lie, and begins running background checks on him, but yields no results.

Traveler approaches Yuka with a fake sad face on, asking if she wants to open the present he brought her; the thing she’d like most for Christmas. She tells him she doesn’t believe in Christmas. “You believe what you believe—isn’t that what Christmas is all about.” Sure, those are words string together in a sentence!

But Yuka is rattled. She goes back downstairs to bring Jack turkey, and asks him what he thinks she would want most for Christmas, and he responds: “Fuck Christmas.” Eventually he follows up with: “I dunno, maybe to be one of them.” Yuka says she knows who she is, and she’s proud of who she is.

When she gets back upstairs, things have shifted. The electricity cuts out in the middle of Traveler singing karaoke, so he starts providing some spoken entertainment instead—in the form of telling the townspeople all the secrets he knows about them: who’s hiring Russians from across the way, who’s drinking more than they should be, who’s lying about campaign promises, who has stolen goods in the trunk of their car. A brawl breaks out and finally Captain Pendelton, is like, Heyyyyy, waitaminute, who ARE you?

Back in his cell, Traveler tells them he’s a special agent from the Anchorage field office, there to investigate widespread corruption in their small town that could affect the safety of the United States. “Who’s under investigation?” Pendleton asks…suspiciously. When Jack briefly distracts the captain, Traveler takes the opportunity to whisper to Yuka, “I know the reasons you don’t trust me, but we’ll work well together once Captain Pendleton is removed and you replace him.”

Yuka and Pendleton check with the Anchorage field office, and there’s no agent who fits Traveler’s description. And that’s before they even know about the slug antenna he appears to have when they briefly catch him with his hat off after returning to the cells.

Finally, Traveler has been patient enough. He asks the troopers what’s the primary goal of their station. “To serve the common good,” Yuka answers. “By support and protection of an acknowledged temporary vulnerability on sight of the Cheney Air Force listening installation,” Traveler adds on. He tells her that there’s a point where the Air Force power grid meets with the older power grid of the town, and it’s housed in a nearby classified location. This is when Pendleton begins to frantically try to cut Traveler off, and when Traveler’s voice begins to occasionally take on an other-worldly effect. Traveler tells Yuka that Pendelton has sold the location of that vulnerable point in the power grid to the Russians, and that at this very moment, Russians are on their way to sabotage the threshold—but so are his people.

Pendleton instantly says he’s going to the location, and Traveler asks, “To warn the Americans or the Russians?”

Yuka has kept her gun trained on Traveler this whole time, even while knowing at this point that it probably wouldn’t do much good. “I thought he’d never leave!” he exclaims as he magically opens the cell door. “I’m just trying to prove to everybody what you’ve known for years: that he doesn’t care about this area, this land, or your people—that he’s a liar.” Traveler tells her that this is his Christmas gift to her, what she wanted the most: “Soon, you’re gonna be giving the orders around her.”

But Yuka is no Pendleton—she knows a manipulative colonizer when she sees one. Knowing that, no matter Pendlton’s intentions, he is in fact, leading whoever Traveler works for right to the most vulnerable place of attack, Yuka takes off to try and stop him. Eventually, she finds him, and hops out with a shotgun. “Lane Pendleton, you’re under arrest.” Pendleton scoffs. “Let me guess, you’re getting my job, is that what he told you? See, it’s only a lie if we choose to believe it.” I honestly don’t know what they’re getting at here about what is true, and what is a lie, dependent upon what we choose to believe.

But we’re really not here for philosophy. We’re here for Steven Yeun turning into an alien when Jack asks him who he works for.

As Yuka and Pendleton argue, they look up and find themselves surrounded by UFOs. The Christmas music sets in. Jack shares a slice of pie with a cartoonish depiction of an alien. Jordan Peele is in the cell next door: “The most dangerous lies come in the form of beautifully wrapped gifts. On this evening, Sargent Yuka Mongoyak discovered there is no difference between myth and mistruth. But she unwrapped her fateful present far too late on this dark and silent night…in the Twilight Zone.”

Jodi Walker writes about TV for Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Texas Monthly, and in her pop culture newsletter These Are The Best Things. She vacillates between New York, North Carolina, and every TJ Maxx in between.

Stream Twilight Zone "A Traveler" on CBS All Access