A second season of Apple TV’s dystopian thriller series, “Severance,” has returned — with new episodes dropping every Friday.
Mark S. (Adam Scott), Helly R. (Britt Lower), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) and Irving B. (John Turturro) are a team on the “severed floor” of Lumon Industries, where they work from 9-5; but, to their work selves, immediately appear back at work once their shift is over. This is because each of them has willingly ungone brain surgery to have their work life entirely separate from their home life, or to become “severed.”
When they step on the elevator each day to leave the severed floor at 5 p.m., they lose all knowledge of their day-to-day tasks, coworkers, boss and even their own personality at work; as is the other way around for their home selves when they are at work. Each character technically has two versions of themself, their “innie” and their “outie.”
Outside of work, Mark lives a quiet, solitary life. After the death of his wife, he is only left with his sister, Devon (Jen Tullock), her husband, Ricken (Michael Chernus) and the occasional visit from his eclectic next door neighbor, Mrs. Selvig (Patricia Arquette). Unbeknownst to Mark’s outie, Mrs. Selvig is also his boss at work, known at Lumon as the cold and forbidding Harmony Cobel.
At work, Mark leads his team in their “mysterious and important” work, as he says in season 1 when trying to encourage their newest and most rebellious team member, Helly R.
Unfortunately for Mark and his two bosses, Ms. Cobel and Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), Helly is not falling for their overly positive, corporate jargon and doesn’t have any interest in the inexplicable number sorting that is their work.
After many escape attempts and communication with her unforgiving outie, Helly R.’s defiance towards Lumon has spread to the rest of the team. They begin to explore the rest of the severed floor, canoodling with other departments and finding clues that lead them to be more and more confused about what it really is that Lumon does.
Any poor behavior, such as Helly’s, results in a trip to the “break room,” a dehumanizing punishment where the employee must repeat a paragraph apologizing for their actions until Mr. Milchick decides that they “mean it.”
Mark’s outie also begins to uncover mysteries about Lumon, after meeting one of his coworkers who has attempted the reversal process to severance, or “reintegration,” outside of work.
Like many dystopian stories, “Severance” asks questions about the state of our world and the direction we are heading. As Dylan says, “If our outies are up there severing their brains, s–t must have gotten pretty bad,” but the world outside the severed realm seems eerily similar to our own.
Like almost all big tech companies in real life, Lumon Industries has close ties to political figures that work to legalize severance. The fact that Lumon’s purpose as a company is a mystery in the show is also reminiscent of companies like Amazon or Google, who have their hands in almost every industry, making it hard to discern what they do as a whole.
In the finale of season one, creator Dan Erickson masterfully executes a cliff hanger that builds on the twist revealed in episode 7: Mark’s wife is alive and working on the severed floor.
In the group’s master plan, three of the four innies from the Macrodata Refinement Department are able to be woken up outside of the severed floor, and tell someone about the horrors of Lumon. In the final seconds, Mark’s innie is able to tell his brother-in-law’s book reading party that his outie’s wife is alive, after recognizing her as Ms. Casey from the wellness center at Lumon when he sees one of their wedding photos.
Now, you may have seen on social media “Severance” being promoted at Grand Central. Characters from the show were placed in a large glass box that appeared in Grand Central’s Vanderbilt Hall, containing a replica of the four-seated desk from Lumon’s department.
It was as if an entire episode of “Severance” was being played right in front of a live audience — which, in turn, got fans excited for season 2.
The first episode of season 2 picks up a few months after the “Macrodat Uprising,” or at least that’s what Mr. Milchick has told the innies.
Stay turned to find out what season 2 will have to say about Mark’s supposedly dead wife, Lumon’s purpose as a company or any of the other mysteries season 1 brought on.
This story was written by Annie Goode. She can be reached at [email protected].
