The second season of Apple TV's "Severance" is here to hopefully pay off all those dangling threads left behind at the end of the first. In case your memory is not all there, here's a reminder of what went down at Lumon Industries.
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00:00The second season of Apple TV's Severance is here to hopefully pay off all those dangling
00:05threads left behind at the end of the first.
00:07In case your memory is not all there, here's a reminder of what went down at Lumen Industries.
00:13The show's title refers to a procedure every employee who works on the severed floor at
00:16Lumen has to undergo as a security condition of working there.
00:20A training video shown to a new employee in the Macro Data Refinement Division, Heli Riggs,
00:24played by Britt Lauer, explains what it's all about.
00:27I have, of my own free accord, elected to undergo the procedure, colloquially known
00:31as Severance."
00:32Before that, Heli is incredibly confused.
00:35She doesn't even know her own name.
00:37That's because Severance is a type of surgery where an implant chip is placed inside someone's
00:41brain.
00:42That implant is activated upon entering Lumen's severed floor, creating two versions of a
00:46person, an innie and an outtie.
00:48The innie works at Lumen, and only remembers what happens at work.
00:51I hate that term, innie.
00:53So enchantilizing."
00:55The outtie is whoever the person is outside of Lumen, with no recollection whatsoever
00:59of what happens on the job.
01:01The outtie we get to know best in Severance Season 1 is that of Heli's boss, Mark Scout,
01:06played by Adam Scott.
01:07While innie Mark is on the way up at Lumen, he was just promoted to department chief.
01:11His outside life is a mess.
01:13A former history professor, he opts to undergo Severance and work at Lumen after the death
01:17of his wife, Gemma, in a car crash.
01:19But the first season ends with Mark appearing to learn that Gemma isn't dead.
01:22In fact, he's seen someone who looks just like her quite a bit at work.
01:26She's alive!
01:28Mark's innie manages to make his way to the outside world thanks to a failsafe called
01:32the Overtime Contingency.
01:33He awakens at his brother-in-law's book-reading party at the home of his sister, Devon.
01:38Mark tells Devon he's his own innie, and she informs him about Gemma's death.
01:41Mark then sees a photo of himself and Gemma, and goes into a panic.
01:45With his innie consciousness, he realizes that Gemma looks exactly like Miss Casey,
01:49Lumen's wellness counselor.
01:51This raises all kinds of questions about whether Gemma and Miss Casey really are the
01:54same person, and why Mark was led to believe she was dead.
01:58Despite numerous attempts from her co-workers to acclimate her to life at Lumen, Heli's
02:02innie never gets comfortable there.
02:04She constantly asks questions about her outer self, which her co-workers obviously can't
02:08answer.
02:09Do you have a family?
02:10You'll never know.
02:12Over time, she tries increasingly drastic ways to get out of working there, including
02:16attempting suicide.
02:17Unfortunately for the high-ups at Lumen, there's a lot riding on Heli's severance experience
02:22going smoothly.
02:23Her outie's identity is purposefully not revealed until the season's last episode, in which,
02:28again, thanks to the overtime contingency, her innie awakens at a gala to celebrate her
02:32undergoing the severance procedure.
02:34Out there, she's Helena Egan, the daughter of Lumen CEO Jayme Egan.
02:38She allowed herself to be severed as a means to get the procedure legalized and disproved
02:42of many critics who call it unethical.
02:44Lumen's corporate culture doesn't just respect the company's executives, it reveres them.
02:48There's an entire wing of the company's headquarters devoted to neo-religious worship of Lumen
02:53founder Keir Egan and his successors.
02:55So it's definitely a shock when innie Heli, speaking as outie Helena Egan, begins railing
03:00against severance as being inhumane.
03:02We're not happy, we're miserable.
03:06Almost assuredly, the fallout from her remarks will play a big role in season two.
03:10The main antagonist of much of the first season of Severance is Patricia Arquette's
03:14Harmony Cobell, who is not only the manager of the severed floor at Lumen, but also outie
03:18Mark's neighbor, Mrs. Selvig.
03:20It's pretty clear from the start that Harmony is not severed.
03:23In fact, she almost always seems to be on the clock, keeping tabs on Mark's outie when
03:27he's not at the office.
03:28Apparently, she went too far, though.
03:30After spending all season doing the bidding of the mysterious Lumen board, which is only
03:34ever heard through a speaker on Harmony's desk or PR rep Natalie, they fire her.
03:38The main reason for her removal is an attempted cover-up of Heli's suicide attempt, which
03:42the board discovers through surveillance footage.
03:45But they also mention her activities as Mrs. Selvig, which includes posing as Devon's lactation
03:49consultant.
03:50We also know that you've been spending time at the home of Mark Scott's sister.
03:55After she's let go, Harmony initially seems to rebel against Lumen.
03:58When Mark's outie tells Mrs. Selvig he's thinking of quitting his job, she encourages him.
04:03Get away from them, Mark.
04:06But then his activated innie accidentally calls her Ms. Kobel, so she contacts Seth
04:11Milchik, the Severed Floor supervisor, and tells him to shut down the overtime contingency.
04:16It seems she's trying to get her job back, or maybe she's been working for Lumen the
04:19whole time.
04:20Throughout the first season, employees of the Macrodata Refinement Division are often
04:24shown working at old-fashioned computer terminals.
04:27To the viewer, what they're doing looks like a weird numbers-based game of some sort.
04:30In the second episode, Mark explains to Heli that they're grouping lines of code into five
04:35buckets.
04:36Heli doesn't really understand how she's supposed to know what numbers go into what
04:39categories, and Mark explains that it's really just a gut feeling, since everything comes,
04:43already encoded, from upstairs.
04:45"...each category of numbers presents in such an order as to elicit an emotional response
04:51in the refiner."
04:53There's a ton of pressure from management for the team to hit productivity quotas, and
04:56the team is sometimes given rewards in the form of little charchies, or odd dance parties,
05:01for meeting them.
05:02Reasons for missing them, or otherwise breaking the rules, include being sent to the Break
05:06Room, which is essentially a psychological torture chamber.
05:09Yet the team never really has any idea what purpose the work they do day-to-day serves.
05:14Maybe it's nothing but a test of their severed brains.
05:16The other department we get to see a bit, the Optics and Design Division, has at least
05:20a little more of a clear purpose.
05:21It's there to catalog and display the building's art, most of which depicts Kia Egan and other
05:26key figures in company history.
05:28It's pretty quickly revealed that Mark's promotion to department chief is the result
05:32of the sudden departure of the former head of Macro Data Refinement, P.T.
05:36Kilmer.
05:37On the outside, P.T. finds outy Mark, and explains that he reintegrated from its severance
05:40thanks to some mysterious helpers.
05:42But the reintegration causes a severe illness that makes P.T. woozy and experience hallucinations.
05:48Mark is confused by all of this, since only his innie knew P.T., but still allows P.T.
05:52to stay in his house.
05:53P.T. sees Mrs. Selvig and recognizes her as Harmony, so he leaves Mark's house, eventually
05:57collapsing at a gas station.
05:59He ultimately dies from his reintegration sickness, but leaves behind a cell phone.
06:03On the back of a photo in the office, P.T. also leaves a map of the labyrinthine, severed
06:07floor, which is forbidden by company rules.
06:09With the recreation of the map, Mark and Heli find a one-person department where a man is
06:13feeding baby goats.
06:15On the outside, Mark also goes to the concert of P.T.'s daughter's band, and hears their
06:18anti-Lumen lyrics.
06:20After reading his brother-in-law Rickon's self-help book, which contains some anti-corporate
06:24messaging, Mark decides to answer P.T.'s phone.
06:26"...I want to understand."
06:32"...Can you meet me now?"
06:33The caller on the other end of P.T.'s cell phone is Rigarbi, a former Lumen surgeon who
06:37is revealed to be the person who performed the severance procedure on Mark and reintegrated
06:41P.T.
06:42Alty Mark goes to meet her at the university where he used to teach.
06:45She tries to convince him to undo his severance, but they're quickly interrupted by Lumen's
06:49severed floor head of security, Doug Grainer.
06:52Before he can do much, though, Rigarbi kills Grainer with a baseball bat.
06:55She takes his access card and gives it to Mark, telling him to give it to his innie.
06:59She takes back P.T.'s phone and tells Mark to go home, marking the entirety of her time
07:02on screen in the first season.
07:04Surely, though, Rigarbi is set to be a key figure in the second season.
07:07Not only does she make clear that she's the only person with the ability and willingness
07:11to reintegrate people who have been severed, but Lumen's definitely going to be on the
07:15lookout for the person who killed their head of security and stole his keycard.
07:19Initially, Dylan George, played by Zach Cherry, is the Macro Data Refinement team member most
07:23excited about getting quota perks, but his loyalty wanes over the course of the season.
07:28First, he becomes very curious about the inner workings of the Optics and Design Division,
07:32which is much larger than it initially seemed.
07:34Milchick catches Dylan in surveillance footage, pocketing a card from O&D, and wakes up his
07:39innie at home to confront him about it.
07:41In those few moments, Dylan's innie sees his outie's son, and becomes enraged at the office
07:45the next day that he doesn't know anything about his child.
07:48What is his name?
07:49Get him off me!
07:50His name!
07:51Dylan tells the rest of the team about the overtime contingency.
07:55With this knowledge, Mac uses Grainer's keycard to access the security office.
07:59After learning that the overtime contingency requires that two switches be held down simultaneously,
08:04Dylan volunteers to stay behind while the rest of the team's innies operate on the outside.
08:09After getting the tip from Harmony, Milchick runs to the security office and stops him.
08:13Consequences for Dylan are sure to follow.
08:15There are some signs in the first season of Severance that the title process may not be
08:19perfect.
08:20In particular, another Macro Data Refinement employee, Irving, played by John Turturro,
08:24seems to remember at least flashes of his work life at Lumen on the outside.
08:27Looks at Irving's outie life are few and far between, but there is a quick look at the
08:31start of the eighth episode where we can see Irving spends much of his free time in his
08:35apartment, repeatedly painting a dark corridor leading to what looks like an elevator with
08:39a red light above it.
08:40Throughout the season, Irving sees black goo, similar to the paint whenever he nods off
08:44at work.
08:45Later in that episode, we see full-on what that painting is based on.
08:48After Marquette's final wellness session with Miss Casey, where they don't seem to recognize
08:52each other from the outside, Harmony sends Miss Casey to what's referred to as the testing
08:56floor.
08:57Do you know if I'm happy up there?
09:02Of course.
09:04You do all sorts of wonderful things.
09:05The hallway Miss Casey walks down looks nearly identical to the one in Irving's paintings.
09:10It seems clear he's been here before, and his outie has at least some memory of it.
09:14In another example, Inimark makes a sculpture of the tree his outie visited after Gemma's
09:18funeral.
09:19It seems Severance can't quite get rid of memories expressed through art.
09:22Burt Goodman
09:23Burt Goodman, played by Christopher Walken, is the head of the Optics and Design Division.
09:26Throughout the first season, he and Irving build a sweet romantic relationship that serves
09:30as one of the series' emotional cores.
09:32The audience really ends up rooting for these two senior gentlemen to find love with each
09:36other in the confines of Lumen, so it's all the more shocking when Irving discovers near
09:40the end of the seventh episode that Burt is retiring.
09:43This news, which Burt never shared, makes Irving furious.
09:46He lashes out at Milchak about how severed employees are treated, to the point where
09:50Burt has to make a case for Irving staying for the rest of the retirement party.
09:54While Irving behaves for the remainder of the gathering, he can't let go that the Burt
09:57he knows is effectively dead.
09:59Let's burn this place to the ground.
10:02When the overtime contingency is activated, Irving immediately goes searching for Burt's
10:06outie, only to discover that he's got a whole different life out there, with what looks
10:09to be a husband at home.
10:11Pretty inadvisably, he goes to knock on the door anyway.
10:14One wrinkle that's only briefly touched upon in Season 1 of Severance, and could definitely
10:18be a much bigger factor in the second, is how the severance process is being used outside
10:23the confines of Lumen.
10:24In Episode 5, Devon goes to a lodge to give birth to a baby.
10:27There, she meets Gabi, the wife of a state senator who is a proponent of legalizing severance.
10:33Devon happens to run into Gabi at a park in the next episode, but Gabi quite simply does
10:37not remember her.
10:38That weird interaction leads Devon to believe that Gabi's husband may have arranged a severance
10:42procedure for her to forget the pain of childbirth.
10:45She has two other kids, and it's heavily implied she was severed for those births as well.
10:49Wow, three kids.
10:50Couldn't have done it without a little help.
10:53I mean, the idea that people would want to outlaw severance.
10:57If severance is being used for that, what other potential uses could there be?
11:00It seems inevitable that the answer is coming.