Most of us have, at one point, dreamed of having the ability to skip the mundane work hours of our days entirely. Severance on Apple TV explores a world in which this concept becomes a reality—workers at a mysterious company called Lumon choose to undergo the “Severance” procedure, which divides their consciousness between their work lives and their personal lives.
This split creates two distinct beings out of one person, referred to as “Innies” and “Outies,” respectively. The Innies retain common knowledge but no life experience—not even their own names, where they live, or whether or not they have a family. Viewers are forced to question what truly makes someone considered a person, and what, if anything, can transcend the Severance procedure.
The show is riddled with mysteries, often leaving the audience with more questions than answers. It is filled with lengthy cinematic shots and takes its time when revealing key plot details—yet somehow, the fifty-minute-long episodes seem to pass by in an instant, as if you were severed before watching them. It manages to feel dystopian yet familiar, and ominous yet weirdly humorous.
The first season aired in February 2022 with a total of nine episodes—three years before Season Two. We are first brought into the world of the Innies through the eyes of Helly R. (Britt Lower), a new employee on the Severed Floor of Lumon, who is just as confused as we are. She immediately rejects the concept and begins rebelling against her Outie, repeatedly attempting to escape and even threatening to cut off her own finger. After countless failures, her Outie responds with a video stating she will not be resigning, and reminding her Innie, “I am a person… you are not.”
Her three other co-workers on the Severed Floor are more used to their lives within its endless white hallways, although they lack any significant answers to the questions we are constantly forced to ask. After all, they don’t even understand what it is that they are working on—their job is to sort numbers on a computer based on if they feel “scary.” However, their work is “mysterious and important” enough to require the Severance procedure.
Mark S. (Adam Scott), has been working at Lumon for two years and is the first person Helly meets after being Severed. He has become accustomed to work on the Severed Floor, and is relatively cheery and content–though we soon discover a whole other side of him. In Season One, he is the only character whose Innie and Outie portion of his lives are shown. We learn that in the real world, he is an extremely depressed alcoholic who underwent the Severance procedure in order to cope with losing his wife in a car crash.
Spoilers for the Season One Finale
The Season One finale was quite possibly one of the most intense and memorable finales in modern television, leaving the viewers with dropped jaws throughout its entirety. After almost an entire season of getting to know and love these Innies, they temporarily have their consciousness transferred into their bodies outside of work, and we are able to catch a glimpse into the circumstances of every Lumon employee’s Outie.
Shockingly, Helly R. is revealed to be Helena Eagan, the daughter of Jame Eagan–current CEO of Lumon, and the powerfully mysterious figure behind the company’s cult-like lore. We also learn that Outie Mark’s “dead” wife, who was the love of his life and the cause of his decision to sever, is not dead. She is Ms. Casey, another Lumon employee who worked temporarily on the Severed Floor in charge of “wellness.” Innie Mark recognizes her in a wedding photo with his Outie self, and leaves his sister (and the viewers) with his parting words to the Outie world: “She’s alive!”
These were only a fraction of the heart-pounding moments of the Severance finale that led fans to wonder for the next three years: how is Season Two going to outdo this? After all, a large portion of the first season’s appeal was its mystery and suspense surrounding the circumstances of Lumon employees.
Spoilers For Season Two
Something seen in a lot of modern shows centered around a deeply intriguing and mysterious setting (such as Squid Game and Yellowjackets) is that they tend to drag the questions out for as long as possible, creating distracting subplots instead of progressing the main plotline. Sometimes it seems like there might not be any answers to the questions that drew us to the show in the first place, the primary ones being “why are the characters in this situation?” and “how will they get out of it?”
However, Severance is able to retain its allure by maintaining a healthy balance between the main mystery and the dramatic subplots that inevitably stem from it. The intensity remains constant, and our curiosity continues to grow despite the shocking revelations and continuous plot progression throughout. Season Two does an excellent job of dropping us right back into the world we became so immersed in through Season One, feeling entirely new without losing everything that made us love the show in the first place.
Love is arguably one of the core themes of Severance Season Two. It definitely played a role in the first season, as well. After all, the beauty and unpredictability of love are directly at odds with the mundane, controlled lives of the Severance characters. Since the Innies have technically lived extremely short conscious lives, centered almost entirely around work, there are recurring themes of purity and wonder surrounding their experiences. For example, they are rewarded with silly trinkets for completing their tasks, and many of their office conversations are guesses of what the outside world might be like.
Relationships between Innies are complicated, especially since they have no clue what their Outie’s lives are like. For example, Season Two explores Dylan G. meeting his Outie’s wife as a “reward” from Lumon to get him to keep working there. We know that in the real world, his marriage has grown tense, and the moments shared between the couple lacked romance completely. However, when his Innie meets his wife, the spark of love between the two is rekindled once more, to the point where she is almost depicted as cheating on her husband with another version of himself–one that reminds her of the person he used to be.
Innies Irving B. and Burt G. shared a heartbreaking love story in the first season. After falling almost instantly in love at work, finding the beauty in their monotone surroundings, Burt was forced to retire. Innie Irving discovered that in the outside world, Burt is happily married to another man. This was already complicated enough, leading us to wonder if such pure and true love can pass through Severance. However, the second season takes the heartbreak to another level, as their Outies are forced to say goodbye once again. Outie Burt reveals that he severed so that a part of him could be “pure” again; that part fell in love with Irving.
One of the major plot twists of Season Two was that for the first few episodes, Helly R. was being impersonated by her Outie, Helena Eagan, who was watching over the Innies to stop their rebellion against Lumon. However, for many fans, it became obvious that the woman on screen was not the Helly we grew to love. Britt Lower did a fantastic job at subtly altering her mannerisms in order to show the difference between the two characters. Unfortunately, Innie Mark S. cannot tell that she was not Helly, who he fell in love with in Season One, and ends up engaging in a relationship with Helena as well.
Although the Innies are full-fledged characters who we grew to love in the first season, these complex situations show that they lack full autonomy and are seen as only subhuman versions of themselves in a larger context. Season Two does an amazing job of delving further into this concept. Innie Mark and Outie Mark manage to have a discussion, with Outie Mark attempting to engage his Innie in a plan to rescue Outie Mark’s wife, Gemma. However, Innie Mark realizes that if this plan succeeds, and the corruption of Lumon was exposed to the world, his existence as a full-fledged person would be practically over.
Speaking of Gemma, the highlight of the Season is arguably Episode 7. We learn everything we have been desperately pondering surrounding the circumstances of Gemma, Mark’s wife, known as Ms. Casey in the Innie world. We experience their love story in the outside world, which is portrayed so cinematically and beautifully that it almost feels as though we are watching a different show at first. We also learn that Gemma is currently being torturously experimented on by Lumon, and will soon die if Innie Mark completes the file he is working on: Cold Harbor. Lumon is experimenting the extent at which feelings can transcend Severance by continuously Severing Gemma into new existences in which they try to provoke an emotional response specific to her. For example, in one existence, they force her to write Christmas cards over and over, a task her Outie mentioned hating.
Mark does succeed in freeing his wife, but his Innie does not leave the company after all. The season concludes with a beautiful, yet tragic scene, in which Innies Mark and Helly run away into the endless white hallways of Lumon as emergency lights flash red. They run from Gemma, who Mark just freed from her torture, but mostly from the outside world, and their impending deaths. The chaos of the scene perfectly captures the purity of Innies, and their will to exist, and feel, despite everything.
This ending inevitably led viewers to hold conflicting views. After all, these multi-consciousness relationships cannot be boiled down to a simple love triangle. The audience grew to love Helly R. and Mark S. through all the time we spent with them. At the same time, it is impossible to just put aside the tragic and heart-wrenching separation between the married Outie Mark and Gemma. Was Innie Mark being selfish? Or should he have let his Outie reunite with his lost wife, something which means absolutely nothing to his Innie self, ending his Innie’s life in the process?
Overall, Severance Season Two raises the stakes exponentially for the Innies we grew to love and know throughout Season One, with their entire existence being on the line. It masterfully forces us to have conflicting views, and makes it almost impossible to determine what the “right” outcome is for any given situation. Severance manages to be epic throughout, and it seems the stakes will only continue to grow in the next Season.
Most of us have, at one point, dreamed of having the ability to skip the mundane work hours of our days entirely. Severance on Apple TV explores a world in which this concept becomes a reality—workers at a mysterious company called Lumon choose to undergo the “Severance” procedure, which divides their consciousness between their work lives and their personal lives.