REVIEW: ‘Severance’ Season 2 Is Dystopian Excess And Excellence

Severance was easily the first time I saw everyone talking about AppleTV+ as a streaming platform. The sci-fi series from creator Dan Erickson, directed and executively produced by Ben Stiller and written by Erickson, focuses on work-life balance taken to the extreme. More importantly, it offers insights into what we do to forget the things that hurt us instead of healing. Severance Season 2 is what happens when you stop running.

In Severance, Mark Scout (Adam Scott) leads a team of office workers at Lumon Industries. Timeless offices that offer small signifiers plucked from different time periods and work cultures are filled with employees who have undergone a severance procedure that surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. A stark work/life boundary line, the procedure creates Innies and Outies, who the person is outside of work and who they are while in Lumon’s building.

The events of last season’s Innie revolution, with Mark, Helly (Britt Lower), Irv (John Turturro), and Dylan (Zach Cherry) all working to use the Overtime protocol to see into the outside, have left a lasting impact on Lumon. The company has repackaged this impact into marketing and employee training that shows they hear you and they care. Yeah, right.

Severance Season 2 brings in new characters while never losing sight of its main ensemble cast.

When Mark returns back to his quad desk, the meek-mannered Macrodata Refinement Chief has decided to make life hard for Lumon until things get back to how they were, with their entire team grouped together. Mark and his friends learn the dire consequences of trifling with the severance barrier. With the mental, physical, and emotional well-being immediately on the line, Severance Season 2 further narrows the boundary line as each of the characters transgresses the severance protocol to cope with their own longing.

This season also introduces new characters, Gwendoline Christie as a character I won’t spoil and Sarah Brock’s Miss Huang, while bringing back old ones, too. Of the peripheral characters that come into focus for Severance Season 2, Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), Devon (Jen Tullock), and, of course, Ricken (Michael Chernus) all have different and substantial roles to play. Ultimately, though, Mark showcases everything the Apple Original series stands for.

Adam Scott delivers a stunning performance that oscillates between determined to intimately broken. He follows up his Season 1 performance by digging even deeper. Scott’s ability to depict the two Marks (Innie Mark and Outie Mark) slowly being pulled into one is excruciating to watch. While the larger mystery as to what work the Macrodata Refinement Team is doing for Lumon is central this season, especially as more deranged working conditions emerge, it never swallows up Mark.

Instead, everything propels Innie Mark and Outie Mark to try and find the truth about his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman), who is on the Severed Floor, working as Ms. Casey.  Yes, even when the obvious romantic tensions between him and Helly begin to rise even higher. Each of the new episodes shows Mark splitting at the seams and doing what he needs to stay together, keep his team together, and piece together the broken parts of himself.

Mark is Adam Scott’s greatest challenge and greatest role as an actor.

In fact, it never swallows any of the cast whole. Even in what is sure to be a standout episode where the group finds themselves taken on an outdoor bonding trip with Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), the eccentricities never feel too much. There is more depth to every character, and with that comes a seizing of story potential. As the audience learns more, so do the innies. When the innies learn more, their existential crises grow. The more information they have about the world on the outside, the more somber and heartbreaking the Innies world becomes.

Next to Adam Scott, John Turturro delivers a gutting performance. Last season, Irv’s Innie fell in love with Burt (Christopher Walken). Originally the strictest of the group, the “death of Innie Burt” turns him into the one who has nothing to lose and, thus, no reason to remain under Lumon’s thumb. Severance Season 2 increases his standing in the narrative, and like the rest of the ensemble, we learn about his struggle, his hope, and his desire. Irving has grown since the first season of Severance. That growth is what keeps breaking your heart.

If Turturro’s Irving and Scott’s Mark take the top marks, Britt Lower’s ability to portray two drastically different people as Helena Eagan/Helly is both mysterious and dangerous. Always brash and dedicated to her own will, Helly’s determination is seen in Helena’s coldness and dedication to Lumon. Two halves of a dangerous whole, she moves through the season as a looming danger.

Of course, Dylan’s retreat into safety and security after the events of the last season runs counter to everyone else’s this season. But Zach Cherry, as Dylan, is just as innocent and endearing as the first time we saw him. However, as the most connected to his Outie of the group, his approach to surviving Lumon is entirely different.

Severance Season 2 brings heartbreaking absurdities and thoughtful commentary.

Talking about Severance Season 2 is to explain that it is a bold swing at ridiculous ideas, imagery, and scenarios. And at the same time, the series is more than weird office jobs. While time-tested tropes like a mysterious colleague or growing corporate threats rise, Severance 2 is built on emotion above all else. This also means that new people added to the ensemble cast’s dynamic don’t always hold the same impact as our core characters both before and after the elevator ride.

Absurdity meets dark comedy when the series flexes its comedic muscles. By being built on a solid foundation of dystopian sci-fi. that comedy makes you want to crawl out of your skin. The series, and particularly Severance Season 2, is a viscerally uncomfortable experience. The concept of innies and outies inherently forces the audience to stand on the ledge and look into the uncanny valley.

The empathy we build for innies cements our feet and keeps us from looking away. The desperation that the outies endure, which makes them want to undergo the severance procedure, creates a connection with us as we learn more about each circumstance. The end result is one of the best takes on the sci-fi genre television has ever seen. It’s made better by the showrunner’s refusal to rest on the laurels of a successful first season.

Instead, knowledge, what each character specifically knows, ramps up the tension. It captures the anxiety that can only come when you know another boulder is about to fall but now knowing when, how close to you, and how big it is.

Knowing that Lumon is evil, knowing that the innies are harmed, and knowing that Mark’s wife is alive all bridge new anxious story threads that are slowly picked at like the small piece of skin on your cuticle. And they offer just as much relief or pain as when you finally pick it clean.

Knowing the Severance Season 1’s twist emboldens Season 2 without becoming a bit.

Severance Season 2 is a deep, dark understanding of how companies exploit people. At the same time, though, it’s also a look at how people will offer themselves up if only it means their own pain goes away for a little while. Balancing corporate satire and bastardizing office comedy tropes in unique ways, Severance Season 2 gets at the root of what makes us regret our choices in life.

The series is able to capture our grief and the way one moment or one aspect of who we are can carry such an imaginable burden that we would rather relinquish our very selves instead of carrying it one step further. The series has always been about the price we pay for coping and how the language of corporate America is built to exploit us.

Somehow, even with increased absurdity in the basement of the Lumon office building or in the blistering cold of Woe’s Hollow, where hallucinations are rampant, Severance Season 2 is wildly more personal than its premiere season. By the end of Season 2, everything feels tautly pulled into place. Heartbreaking chaos, the second season of Severance pushes every storytelling boundary and creates a masterclass in how doing too much is sometimes the right amount.

Severance Season 2 is streaming now on AppleTV+ with new episodes of Severance airing every Friday through, January, February, and March in 2025.