The Twilight Zone episode 8 review: Misses the mark on immigration issues

The rebooted Twilight Zone has a questionable approach on the borderline illegal treatment of migrants and refugees.

Thanks to its freedom to tell more overt stories, the new and rebooted Twilight Zone series has gotten bolder. We’re only eight episodes in, but the series has already tackled the malleable truth, racist police brutality, and a plethora of social commentary in its sea of political discourse.

This week, “Point of Origin” pivots to the inhumane treatment and segregation of migrants and refugees in immigration detention camps. However, The Twilight Zone tiptoes through the overwhelming issues, and it loses its point all together by the end of the episode.

Why? Because The Twilight Zone episode 8, “Point of Origin” focuses on a white woman as its main protagonist, thus making its commentary on immigration issues seem disingenuous.

Kicking the episode off with a mixture of modern and retro aesthetics, “Point of Origin” introduces us to the main character, Eve, who is oddly misplaced at the center of the immigration camps that parallel the real-life detention and separation of migrant families in the US. This is the primary misstep of the episode.

The theme should be focused on deportation and detention practices led by the government (the same practices that should be deemed illegal, but that is another conversation entirely). The story centers on Eve’s white privilege in her sci-fi-riddled detainment proceedings in such a way that it distorts the real issues “Point of Origin” is meant to critique.

The episode intends to use Eve’s white privilege to gain empathy from white viewers, who really don’t fear or need to fear being on the inside of a detention camp — especially when the U.S. has a long history of using detention camps to primarily target people of color.

By the end of it, The Twilight Zone pivots the sturdy depiction of her privilege to note that everyone is an immigrant. However, the conflation of Eve’s whiteness with the modern migrant conditions in detention camps is disingenuous and rumors the racist overtones of these camps that shouldn’t even exist in the first place.

The concept and conditions of detention camps predominately target migrants of color. Separating children from their families have left them vulnerable to childhood trauma, sexual assault, and death. Eve’s physical and mental abuse is sad, yes, but falls flat to the reality we’re well aware of when it comes to these camps.

In reality, detention camps are utilized as racist weaponry to target people of color who are seeking refuge. Ignoring these racist implications by the sheer existence of these camps is an episodic disservice — because it ignores how racism plays into these corrupt politics.

By the end of the episode, the message is clear: Despite status, white privilege, and wealth, anyone can be forced into a migrant camp and completely cut off from their basic rights and the outside world. As the concluding remarks clarify, we’re all immigrants, right? No. Some of us our colonizers and living on stolen land that we claim exclusive rights to.

Potentially, the point of focusing on a white immigrant in the episode was to conjure empathy from white people and to tie into the final message that we’re all immigrants. However, not everyone is an immigrant because to say so indirectly ignores Native and Indigenous peoples and their plight in today’s immigration issues.

In fact, many Americans and Canadians are descendants of colonizers. Creating a picturesque scenario where everyone is an immigrant indirectly minimizes that the United States of America shouldn’t even exist because this is stolen land.

Also, the conflation of the term pilgrim with refugees is similarly distasteful. Given that pilgrims were actively violent through their tirade across what’s now called the United States, this comparison attributes a negative connotation to refugees. Perhaps the comparison is unintentional.

In an episode of missteps that seem to question why modern-day immigration issues are so devastating, this connection only adds to the running dilemma in the episode: It’s disconnected from the issues.

Overall, it’s vexing that The Twilight Zone would focus on white immigrants when the issues of unjust extended kidnapping of migrants is a discriminately racist and xenophobic tactic by the current administration. Confronting a white woman’s grips with her own prejudice actions and placing her at the center of immigration issues that are not targeting white women, this episode misses the mark.