Where Were We …
Your ‘Severance’ Season Two Cheat Sheet
It’s been three long years since we spent time with the employees of Lumon Industries. Here’s a quick refresher on where things stand with Mark, Helly, and the gang
The second season of Severance, which debuts tonight on Apple TV+, proves that the corporate sci-fi drama has still got it. But it has also been [checks notes] three years since we last got an episode, so you cannot be blamed for feeling a little fuzzy on what was happening back then. Fortunately, we have more compassion for you than Lumon has for its severed employees, so we’ve assembled this refresher course heading into this new season (which we’ll be recapping every week).
What’s the big idea?
In the world of Severance, the powerful Lumon corporation has developed a new medical procedure that allows certain employees who perform sensitive duties to mentally separate their work and home lives. Through a chip in the brain, they essentially become two people sharing the same body: an “outie” who lives in the world away from Lumon, and has no idea what goes on there; and an “innie,” who mentally never leaves the Lumon building’s “severed floor,” and only knows the bare minimum required about the outside world.
Lumon is run by the Eagan family, who have built an entire religious cult around the idea that the company’s founding father, Kier Eagan, is a divine figure worthy of worship.
Who are our heroes?
The show focuses on a quartet of cubicle mates who work in the mysterious Macrodata Refinement department, which even they don’t understand. (Mostly, their job involves staring at a bunch of floating numbers on a vintage computer monitor and placing them in different virtual bins based on how the numbers make them feel.) The foursome are:
- Mark (Adam Scott), the MDR team leader. Innie Mark is level-headed, easygoing, and as happy as it’s possible to be in such a strange and restrictive circumstance. Outie Mark, on the other hand, is a mess, as we find out that he volunteered for severance as a way to cope with his grief over the death of his wife Gemma in a car accident.
- Helly (Britt Lower), the team’s newest addition. Helly instantly hates everything about innie life, and does everything possible to quit, even if that means she will cease to exist. When her outie refuses to let her — coldly telling Innie Helly in a recorded video, “I am a person. You are not.” — Helly attempts suicide, but is foiled by quick intervention on the part of management. She gradually falls for Innie Mark, and kisses him.
- Irving (John Turturro), an overly formal artistic type who is a devout believer in the cult of Kier. He begins a flirtation with Burt (Christopher Walken), a veteran employee from another severed department, and is despondent when Outie Burt chooses to retire, effectively killing Innie Burt.
- Dylan (Zach Cherry), the team member who seems least troubled to be an innie, and who takes the most pleasure doing the job and winning perks. But when he discovers that his outie has a wife and children whom he will never get to know, his entire worldview collapses, and he joins in with the others in their rebellion against management.
Who are our villains?
Besides Helena and the rest of the Eagans, Lumon is represented by the two bosses of the severed floor, who are not themselves severed: Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), a religious zealot when it comes to Kier Eagan, and her henchman Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), who smiles his way through all manner of threatening behavior, including various forms of psychological torture he deploys on members of MDR. For reasons unknown, Ms. Cobel also lives next door to Outie Mark, posing as a soap saleswoman named Mrs. Selvig. Late in Season One, she is suspended for allowing various bits of innie shenanigans, notably Helly’s suicide attempt.
Who else do we need to know?
Mark’s sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and her inspirational author husband Ricken (Michael Chernus) live nearby. Outie Mark thinks Ricken is a pretentious poseur, yet when one of Ricken’s books winds up on the severed floor, Innie Mark is enthralled by it.
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There’s also Petey (Yul Vazquez), who used to work in MDR with Innie Mark, Irving, and Dylan, until his outie decided to undergo an untested “reintegration” procedure that would merge his innie and outie selves. The process didn’t quite work, and Petey eventually died of complications from it.
Petey’s reintegration was performed by Reghabi (Karen Aldridge), a former Lumon employee who claims she installed Mark’s severance chip. She has come to believe severance is evil, and is rebelling against Lumon however she can while living off the grid. Late in the first season, she murders the severed floor’s chief of security in front of Outie Mark.
On the severed floor, everyone enjoyed making visits to wellness counselor Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), and then were sad when she was, like Innie Burt, retired.
Also, there are baby goats on the severed floor. No, we don’t know why.
How did Season One end?
Innie Dylan learns about his outie’s family when Mr. Milchick uses the “Overtime Contingency Protocol,” which allows innies to temporarily assume control of their bodies away from the severed floor. Dylan tells the rest of MDR about the protocol, and they decide to use it to get outside the building and try to tell the rest of the world how awful conditions are for them. While Dylan barricades himself in the room that controls the Overtime Contingency, Mark, Helly, and Irving find themselves in their outies’ lives. Innie Mark is stunned to meet his idol Ricken, and unwittingly refers to Ms. Cobel by her real name, which tips her off that the Innies have rebelled. (She alerts Milchick and briefly kidnaps Devon and Ricken’s baby.) Innie Irving goes off in search of Outie Burt, and is dismayed to see that Burt is in a relationship with another man. Helly is horrified to realize that her outie is Helena Eagan, who has been ordered by her family to undergo severance as a glorified PR stunt. The season concludes with Milchick getting past Dylan to shut down Overtime Contingency, but only after Innie Mark has discovered that Ms. Casey is really Outie Mark’s “late” wife Gemma, and after Helly has given a speech at a Lumon event explaining who she really is and pleading for help to escape the nightmare of severed life.