The Twilight Zone: The meaning behind A Traveler
By Mads Lennon
The fourth chapter of Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone stars Steven Yeun as a mysterious visitor come to sew discord in a small town.
Steven Yeun headlined the newest episode of Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone alongside Greg Kinnear and relative newcomer, Marika Sila.
Set amidst a wintry background, Kinnear plays the renowned local Sheriff Pembleton who is known for his legendary annual pardons. Every year, he chooses one criminal from lock-up to release with a full pardon and this year, Yuka (Sila), one of the other members of the force, hauls in her drunken brother to receive said pardon.
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Yet when they put the boisterous office Christmas party on hold to carry out this sacred tradition, they find someone else down in the cells. A traveler, or A. Traveler, as is his literal name. Steven Yeun plays the mysterious man with a sinister intensity that increases steadily over the course of the episode’s 50 minutes.
Traveler claims he likes to journey from place to place in search of the most interesting locales in the country. His real agenda soon becomes apparent as he starts to poison the small town well. All it takes is a few placed secrets dispersed to the crowd to cause chaos and discord. The silent night is vanquished as Traveler exposes the skeletons in everyone’s closets.
The largest truth bomb comes in the form of an accusation towards the once revered Pembleton himself. Traveler claims he is colluding with the Russians against his own country.
It’s not hard to understand the obvious parallels between this episode and our real-world political climate. “A Traveler” is obvious social commentary about the fickleness of human nature. How easy it it for us to turn against one another when fear, paranoia, and misinformation run rampant?
In our day and age, social media in particular makes the easiest and most farcical of lies spread like wildfire through the internet. All A. Traveler has to do it call attention to the prejudice and bigotry simmering just beneath the surface and everyone is immediately at each other’s throats. Once the poison seeps in, the truth no longer matters. People will take the slander and run with it until it develops a life of its own.
Of course, The Twilight Zone version of this allegory involves a sci-fi twist. A. Traveler is an alien, a pretty creepy Slender Man adjacent one I might add in the brief glimpse we get of his true nature.
It’s funny, we worry and fret so much about our neighbors and our own small, self-centered bubbles, it leaves us wide open to much greater threats from the unknown.