‘Severance’ Season 2 may already be the best show of the year: Review

Three years is an absurd amount of time to wait for a new season of TV. That’s triply true when the TV show in question is Severance, a series whose near-flawless first season left us on the steepest and sharpest of cliffhangers.

For three years, we’ve waited to find out what will happen after the Innies’ daring excursion to the outside world. What will Mark (Adam Scott) do now that he knows his Outie’s supposedly late wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) is actually alive and trapped in Lumon? How will Helly (Britt Lower) react to being an Eagan? And what fresh hell will Lumon rain down upon Mark, Helly, Irving (John Turturro), and Dylan (Zach Cherry) as punishment for their escape?

But as the years crawled by, and as my excitement for Season 2 mingled with the worry of being let down, another question crept in: Could Severance, after such an outstanding first season, really pull off magic again?

Now, we finally have our answer. And it is an absolute, unequivocal, and most enthusiastic “yes.”

Somehow, Severance manages to top itself in its second outing, expanding further on its unique sci-fi premise and always, always keeping us on our toes. Expect the unexpected this season — starting with Lumon’s response to the Macrodata Refinement workers’ rebellion.

Severance Season 2 picks up right where Season 1 left off.

Tramell Tillman in “Severance.”
Credit: AppleTV+

Because Innies perceive time differently, Mark blinks back to the Severed Floor mere seconds after he tells his Outie’s sister Devon (Jen Tullock) that Gemma is alive. Once there, you might think that Lumon would crack down on him and the other MDR Innies for their escape. Yet Mark soon finds that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

As he learns from an ever-smiley Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), the Innies’ stories of their treatment resonated in the outside world, leading Lumon to reflect upon its shameful practices and implement “severance reform.” Now, Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan can work without threat of abuse. Praise Kier!

Of course, Lumon doesn’t have the best track record with telling the truth, so it’s best to take their claims of reform with a grain of salt. (After all, this is the same company that’s been keeping Mark’s not-actually-dead wife in its basement for some reason!) Yet Milchick spends much of the Season 2 premiere trying to convince Mark and co. otherwise. There are new perks to win for completing work goals, new snacks in the vending machines, and an actual break room devoid of psychological torture. In just one of many new, clever production design details, motivational posters even celebrate the Innies and their achievements, including a “hang in there” poster depicting Dylan hanging onto the Overtime Contingency switches from the Season 1 finale.

Still, these are all just superficial changes, ones meant to make the Innies feel like they’ve accomplished something without actually giving them the one thing they desperately want: agency over their own lives. They have no clue about what’s really going on in the outside world following their escape. They just have to trust whatever information Lumon sees fit to share with them.

To hammer this home, Severance cleverly splits its first two episodes between the Innie and Outie worlds, with episode 1 focusing on the Innies, and episode 2 focusing on the Outies. It’s a reminder of the biggest obstacle facing the Innies: the communication barrier between them and their Outie halves. Severance Season 2 relishes in the dramatic irony this barrier creates. For example, both Innie and Outie Mark are trying to understand how Gemma is still alive and what Lumon is doing to her, yet they don’t have a way of sharing their joint goals or knowledge with one another. The result is deliciously infuriating, made all the more so by Severance Season 2’s expansive world building.

Severance Season 2 goes bigger — and weirder — with great results.

Britt Lower, Adam Scott, John Turturro, and Zach Cherry in “Severance.”
Credit: AppleTV+

From the cult-like fervor surrounding Kier Eagan to everything about the waffle party, there’s no denying that Severance Season 1 was willing to get weird. Season 2 keeps that tradition going strong, leaning into Lumon’s uncanniness. Sometimes, that uncanniness manifests itself in small details, like the image of a boxy TV sitting atop a snowy cliff. Elsewhere, it inspires whole set pieces, like a room on the Severed Floor full of rolling hills where goats can graze. (Looks like the kids from Season 1 are all grown up!) Every episode offers new chances for production designer Jeremy Hindle, costume designer Sarah Edwards, and directors of photography Jessica Lee Gagné, Suzie Lavelle, and David Lanzenberg to bring new textures and depth to the office hellscape that is Lumon.

That’s only the beginning of Severance‘s growth this season, as creator and showrunner Dan Erickson widens the scope of the series. Not only do we get a bigger sense of Lumon’s impact on the wider world, we also get a deeper look at Lumon’s inner workings.

So much of Severance Season 2 concerns how Lumon responds to the crisis brought on by the Innies’ escape. Helena Eagan is at the center of this, forced to come up with creative solutions to bring the Innies to heel. We also get more face time with eerie board liaison Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander) and a new arrival in the menacing enforcer Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Somebody Somewhere). As they contemplate the Innies’ fates in sterile board rooms far above the Severed Floor, it’s impossible to forget how little power the Innies actually have. New severance perks may soothe things for now, but they’re just a band-aid concocted by a company that refuses to suffer any consequences for its evil. (Lumon may be fictional, but it’s moments like this that make it feel all too real.)

Elsewhere, Mr. Milchick does his best to fit into a challenging new role and further define himself by Lumon’s principles, while Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) struggles to find out who she is without Lumon. Their stories of how much Lumon has affected their adulthood contrast nicely with new arrival Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), Milchick’s teenaged assistant. Already a master of empty managerial tone, Miss Huang brings an even more disquieting air to the Severed Floor, all while raising questions about why in the world a child would be at Lumon.

Then, of course, there are our beloved MDR employees. Mark and Helly embark on a journey to save Gemma from the unknown horrors of Lumon, yet Dylan and Irving are further removed from their objective. Irving is still grieving the loss of Innie Burt (Christopher Walken), now coupled with the knowledge that Outie Burt is married. Dylan, meanwhile, hopes that clues about his Outie’s family will keep him sustained as he continues working. These stories overlap with their Outies’ lives, which we get to see in some detail for the first time. Unfortunately, Dylan and Irving’s arcs occasionally get lost amid the wider search for Gemma, giving us less time with the MDR quartet dynamic we grew to love in Season 1. But there are still things to love here, like how these plots continue to flesh out Severance‘s world, and how Turturro and Cherry get to introduce us to Irving and Dylan’s Outies in more depth.

All of these storylines are a lot to handle, yet Severance juggles them almost effortlessly. It even takes full episodes to experiment with something new, like a Lumon-sanctioned field trip to the outside world for the Innies. These elements are proof that Severance is still raring to evolve, bringing its unique blend of sci-fi drama and black workplace comedy to new heights. With that comes further questions about the ethics of severance (spoiler: there are none), existential crises about the horrors of being stuck in an endless loop of work, and enough suspense to make you want a soothing wellness session with Ms. Casey.

Severance pulls all of this off while still managing to answer some of our most burning questions from Season 1. That it does so while keeping a firm, grounded focus on its characters’ desire for connection is a remarkable feat in a season full of them. The show may throw everything from surreal workplace dance parties to precious baby goats at us, but at the end of the day, we’re watching a man trying to reunite with his wife. We’re watching Irving pining for Burt, and Dylan seeking crumbs of information about the family he may never know. We’re watching workers fight to be recognized as humans instead of free labor. It’s personal, it’s universal, and it’s absolutely astounding. Yes, three years was a long time to wait for Severance Season 2, but I’ll gladly wait three more for a Season 3 that will leave me this shaken and satisfied. (I just hope I won’t have to!)

Severance Season 2 premieres Jan. 17 on Apple TV+, with a new episode every week.