It’s been almost three years since Severance’s first season was released, but we bet the show’s many viewers didn’t need much to jog their memories about where it left off before the second season kicks off. The show’s visuals were so unique, and the story so distinctive, that even the smaller details of the first season likely stuck in viewers’ brains. Now that the second season is finally here, with the Lumon “innies” having gotten a look at the lives of their “outies,” it seems that the stakes — and the potential for creepy scares — are even higher.
SEVERANCE SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: We hear what all of the Lumon “innies” were yelling during the Season 1 finale, including the innie of Mark Scout (Adam Scott) say, “She’s alive!” Then we see Mark S. wake up in the Lumon elevator, in a panic.
The Gist: Mark sprints through the maze-like halls of the severed floor, looking for Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), whom he found out was married to his “outie.” He finds the Wellness room, but is deflated to find it completely empty.
Defeated, he goes back to his office in Macrodata Refinement, and sees three new people in the cubes where Irving B. (John Turturro), Helly R. (Britt Lower) and Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) used to sit. Instead, there’s a guy named Mark W. (Bob Balaban) and two others (Alia Shawkat, Stefano Carannante), one of whom seems to speak mostly Italian. A new assistant manager, Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) appears; she looks like she’s 12.
Milchick (Tramell Tillman) comes in, bearing blue baloons with Mark’s face on them, and brings Mark to his new office; he has taken over for Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) since she was fired. According to Milchick, this news of the department’s innies seeing the outer world was big news, and led Lumon to make reforms for their severed employees. Also according to Milchick, it’s been five months since the incident and the other three members of the team did not want to come back.
Of course, Mark S. doesn’t believe him, and just wants his team back, and he goes to some extreme lengths to get them back.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? At this point, there isn’t a whole heck of a lot to compare Severance to; the stark environment of the severed floor that director Ben Stiller has created is definitely reminiscent of what Stanley Kubrick did in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Our Take: The first season of Severance was so engrossing, with such a thrilling cliffhanger ending, that we wondered how Stiller and the show’s creator, Dan Erickson, would follow things up. We probably didn’t have to wonder, because the first episode of Season 2 starts in thrilling fashion and keeps up the tension throughout. After watching the first two episodes of the season, we suspect that will continue all the way through.
After what we found out about Irving’s and Helly’s outie lives in the last couple of episodes of Season 1, we know that there is a hell of a lot of character material to dive into as the show goes forward. In addition, all four members of the MDR department now know things about their outler lives, things that they’re not all proud of, as we see after the team’s return. Helly completely lies about what she saw of her outer life, mainly because if she told them she was Helena Eagan, daughter of the CEO, she would be totally frozen out. Irv struggles because he got a look at the outside life of Burt (Christopher Walken), and he knows it will never include him.
But we know they eventually will all return to the MDR department, mainly because if they don’t, they no longer exist. Also, it’s the only way they can figure out just what in the heck Lumon does, what they do in MDR, and why everyone treats Kier Eagan (Mark Geller) like he’s Jesus Christ.
As we also see in the second episode, though, the “outies” will get more play. We only saw Mark’s outer life through most of the first season including his no-nonsense sister Devon (Jen Tullock), her ridiculous husband Ricken (Michael Chernus), and the beginnings of Mark’s probing into Lumon and why they offer the severance procedure. But we were always curious about the others’ outer lives, which was one of the other reasons why the first season ended on such a high. We expect to not only see more of these outer lives, but more of the people that are in the lives of the outies.
That second episode also shows how Milchik isn’t exactly above board. Not that we were surprised by that, but it confirmed to us how much more terrifying the usually quiet Milchick is than the more outwardly-scary Cobel. Speaking of Cobel, we’re still not sure where Arquette’s character will pop up after Episode 2, but we know she will and she’ll be in someone’s face.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first two episodes.
Parting Shot: With the team back in place, they sit down to do their work, but Mark sees a reflection of Ms. Casey on his screen.
Sleeper Star: This will be a dual award: Britt Lower proved last season that she was the show’s breakout star, and given how dichotomous the versions of Helly/Helena are, we’re going to see more of both versions’ take-no-prisioners attitude. The other sleeper award goes to the creators of the hilarious animated video the innies are shown about their “revolution” when they come back.
Most Pilot-y Line: None, really. Though every time we see the stark exterior and internal atrium of the Lumon building, we shudder, because we have worked there in the past; it’s the old Bell Labs building in Holmdel, NJ, now a multi-purpose facility called Bell Works.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The second season of Severance promises to be even more creepy, thrilling, funny and frightening than the first, and the first season set a pretty high bar in all of those categories.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
