5 Things You May Have Missed, From Keanu Reeves to Cold Harbor

Calling all Severance fans! We are so back (to work).

It’s been a painfully long wait since Severance’s epic Season 1 finale aired back in 2022 and Irving (John Turturro) banged on Burt’s (Christopher Walken) door, Helly (Britt Lower) told a roomful of gala guests that innies are miserable prisoners, Mark (Adam Scott) learned his outie’s late wife was still alive, and Dylan (Zach Cherry) flipped the Overtime Contingency (OTC) switch. But the Season 2 premiere of Dan Erickson’s Apple TV+ series reunited us with our favorite Macrodata Refiners and made us feel like we never left Lumon.

Major Severance Season 2, Episode 1 spoilers ahead.

Season 2, Episode 1, “Hello, Ms. Cobel,” gave us the MDR Return To Office we waited literal years for, introduced intriguing new characters like Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), and kickstarted the innies’ search for Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) and the haunting black hallway from Outie Irving’s paintings.

Since Severance is such meticulously crafted show, every Friday until the March 21 finale, Decider will be taking a closer look at each episode and highlighting five moments that deserve to be put under the microscope. Whether they’re blink-and-miss-it details or major scenes that need to be talked through in greater depth, we’re here to obsess, hypothesize, and dissect the series alongside you.

From a mysterious figure at the top of the episode to a bad Photoshop job, several celebrity cameos, and more, here are five things you may have missed from Severance Season 2, Episode 1.

1. Who’s The Man In The Hallway?

   When Mark returns to Lumon’s Severed Floor after his life-changing “She’s alive!” finale scream, he sprints down the blinding white hallways to Les McCann’s “Burnin’ Coal” and heads straight for the Wellness Center in hopes of finding Miss Casey/Gemma. Instead, he’s distraught to learn that her office completely cleared out. As he takes a moment to process *checks notes* everything, the camera pans to reveal a shadowy figure standing in the hallway behind him. Considering Milchick is the new Severed Floor manager, it’s easy to assume he’d be the first to have eyes on Mark. But that man isn’t wearing Milchick’s gorgeous blue turtleneck. He’s not old enough to be Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry). And he doesn’t appear to have Mr. Drummond’s (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) signature beard. So who is he?! And what does he want with Mark!?

   The end credits list “Man in Hallway” as actor Adam Jepsen, but he doesn’t have any additional credits in the series on IMDb at the moment, so her either he has yet to be introduced or is a stand-in for another character we haven’t met yet. What we do know, is the Man in Hallway is likely a major player at Lumon, since he has access to the Severed Floor. It’s someone who presumably has reason to keep tabs on Mark post-OTC and see if he gained knowledge of Gemma on the outside.

2. Bad Photoshop. But Good Try, Milchick.

   As Milchick whisks Mark away to his office for a debrief, he convincingly explains that it’s been five whole months since the OTC fiasco. A time jump? On Severance?! An initially disappointing thought, because we were dying to see what happened immediately after the finale, but considering literal years passed since then, hey — maybe it’s what they had to do! With Wellness shuttered, an entirely new MDR team awaiting Mark’s return, and a new suspiciously young looking deputy editor, the story continues to check out. Those things would take time to achieve, right? When Milchick takes Mark into his new office (Cobel’s old one), however, the story starts to unravel.

   If Milchick’s been manager of the Severed Floor for five months, why is his office full of unpacked boxes, bubble-wrapped decor, a plastic-wrapped lamp, and stacked chairs? If Ms. Cobel truly left five months ago, why does his computer’s welcome screen still display her name? Milchick tells Mark that his team achieved fame in the outside world and became “the face of Severance Reform.” He even hands over a copy of The Kier Chronicle newspaper as proof, with a front page article titled “‘INNIES’ BLOW THE WHISTLE” and a good amount of text redacted. We might believe him, had the photo included in the article not tipped his hand. As someone who has Helly’s group photo (taken in Season 1, Episode 2) in a frame on her desk, I have those facial expressions burned into my brain. So Milchick simply swapped Dylan and Irving, then Photoshopped the group onto a real-life ticker tape parade photo, which Mashable noted was taken during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1960 visit to Rio de Janeiro. It was a good attempt at viewer deception, but not good enough. But if the parade was a lie, was the wide-reaching whistleblowing impact a lie, too? How long has it really been since the OTC? Where do the lies end?!

3. Lumon Is Listening, But Are You?

   Severance‘s Season 2 premiere welcomes Alia Shawkat, Bob Balaban, and Stefano Carannante as Mark’s new, short-lived MDR team. But not all of the show’s guest appearances are that obvious. A far more subtle star-studded moment arrives around 26 minutes into the episode, when Milchick smashes play on a “Lumon Is Listening” video, which gives MDR a rundown of new “Severance Reform” policies and expanded incentives.

   Did you know the Water Tower that appears in the stop-motion masterpiece from animator Duke Johnson is voiced by Saturday Night Live star Sarah Sherman? She’s credited at the end of the episode, and though the voice of the animated Lumon building is uncredited and Apple has yet to official reveal the identity behind it, beloved actor Keanu Reeves is widely believed to be doing the voice acting. If Reeves did make the cameo, hardcore Severance fans know that this wouldn’t be the show’s first iconic (or uncredited) voiceover. In Season 1, Episode 8, director/EP Ben Stiller voiced the animated video of Kier Eagan that praised Helly after she completed her refinement and told IndieWire, “…When we were editing, I just recorded it as a [temporary track]. And then I think Dan and everyone were all like, “OK, maybe we should just keep it in there.” (Read more about the Keanu Reeves cameo theory here, and stay tuned for updates.)

4. Why Is Helly Hellying?

   One of the biggest shocks in Severance‘s Season 2 premiere comes when the MDR team finally gets alone time to catch each other up on the outside worlds they experienced when the OTC was enabled. After Mark tells the group that Cobel was at his sister’s house and his outie’s wife was Ms. Casey, it’s Helly’s turn to come clean about crashing the Lumon gala and learning her outie is Helena Eagan, CEO in waiting. Instead, she straight-up lies. She tells her pals that she lives by herself, “saw the inside a really fucking boring apartment,” and “was watching some nature show on TV wearing sweat pants and a Save The Gorillas shirt.” Then she went outside and found a gardener, told him everything, and he promised to tell his brother, who just so happened to be a cop. When a suspicious Irving presses her about the Night Gardener, she says, “maybe he has a different job during the day,” and everyone moves on. But viewers know that something is undoubtedly up.

   Why would Helly lie? The simplest explanation is that she’s mortified and perhaps fearful to tell the truth, which makes complete sense, given the fact that her family is the reason they’re all there in the first place. On top of the lie, eagle-eyed fans noticed several clues that suggest there could be more to the story. Did you clock a slight moment of hesitation before Helly hugged Mark after exiting the elevator? Or see Helly struggle to find the power button on her computer right after Milchick locates his perfectly without looking? There’s a fierce debate in the Severance fandom about whether the Helly in Season 2’s premiere is the innie we know and love trying to navigate a tough situation or Outie Helena Eagan taking her place. What do you think?

5. What Is Cold Harbor? And What Does It Have To Do With Ms. Casey?

   Seconds before the Season 2 premiere concludes, Mark sits down at his desk and gets back to his “mysterious and important” work. As he refines a new number cluster, which we know makes him feel one of the four tempers — Woe (WO), Dread (DR), Frolic (FC), and Malice (MA) — the completion percentage of his file, Cold Harbor, raises from 67% to 68% and Severance transitions from his computer screen to a different one. The new screen appears to be monitoring his progress and includes a photo of Ms. Casey, which suggests the long-held belief that Ms. Casey and Mark’s mysterious work are indeed connected. So what exactly is Mark doing? What do the numbers truly stand for? And what happens once a file like Cold Harbor reaches 100%? We’re waiting on the edge of our seats to find out. See you back here on Friday, January 24 for a Season 2, Episode 2 breakdown.

New episodes of Severance Season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.