“Severance” is finally back for Season 2 after a long three-year hiatus, but there’s a lot to remember before jumping back into the mystery.
In the broad overview, “Severance” follows a number of employees at the mysterious Lumon corporation. Lumon radiates cult-like energy as it constantly praises the ideals of it’s founder Kier Eagan. What exactly Lumon is working on to make the world a better place is kept under wraps by having a number of employees undergo the severance process — which separates a person’s consciousness into an outie and innie when they are at work vs. at home. The innie is active and responsible while on Lumon property working for whatever team they are assigned while the outie leads the person’s day-to-day life and is none-the-wiser to what goes on at the company.
This leads to the innies feeling like they’re constantly at work and the outies constantly on vacation – though neither are truly living a full life. They remain completely cut off and uninformed of any real information on what their counterpart gets up to. Restlessness and desire for the truth ensues as the innies begin pushing for a way to experience the outside world.
Dive into our “Severance” Season 1 recap for everything you need to know to get ready to clock back in at Lumon for Season 2.
The Severed Floor
Season 1 begins with Mark S. (Adam Scott) getting an unexpected promotion to Team Lead of Lumon’s Macrodata Refinement department after the former boss – and Mark’s best friend – Petey suddenly leaves the company. Mark’s first order of business is to introduce a newly-severed employee named Helly (Britt Lower) to the severed floor and the rest of his team.
Helly immediately wants to leave. Her many attempts to leave are denied by her Outie and she finds herself re-entering the floor seconds after leaving. After many in and out exits in the stairwell overseen by supervisor Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), she agrees to go with Mark. She meets the other two members of the Macrodata Refinement team: Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry). Helly also learns what she’ll be doing day-to-day – essentially they group seemingly unrelated numbers together on a screen based on feeling and “bin them” in one of five digital locations. Nobody on the team knows what kind of data they’re working with.
The monotony gets to Helly and she increases her efforts to “resign” from the severed floor. She goes to such extreme measures as filming a video for her outie threatening to cut off a finger and even hanging herself in the elevator where the switch from outie to innie takes place. Despite all of this, Outie Helly refuses the resignation and sends Innie Helly a video saying so and that she’s in complete control of her own choices.
Petey and the un-severing process
The only person viewers spend time with outside of the severed floor is Mark. Outie Mark is plodding along a miserable day-to-day life following the death of his wife in a car accident a few years earlier. That death pushed him to go through the severance procedure. Mark’s ho-hum life is upended by Petey – the former team leader for Macrodata Refinement – who explains that he underwent an un-severing process and knows he worked with Mark. He tries to explain how dangerous Lumon actually is based on what he remembers.
Fearing for Petey’s wellbeing – despite having no idea who he is – Mark lets him sleep in his basement. It’s revealed while Mark leaves him at home to go to work that Innie Mark’s boss Harmony Cobel is secretly spying on him posing as Outie Mark’s neighbor Mrs. Selvig. Cobel isn’t severed and is keeping tabs on Mark for unknown reasons.
Petey burns time in Mark’s basement drawing maps of the severed floor’s confusing layout and creepy hallways until he hears Cobel enter the house. She doesn’t manage to find him but does take a book written by Mark’s brother-in-law, a prominent voice in the anti-severed movement. She confiscates it to make sure there are no secret notes.
Petey manages to get away without also being discovered but his condition reintegrating into the real world takes a toll. He has an aneurism resulting from the un-severing and dies. Mark later finds Petey’s phone and gets in contact with an ex-Lumon surgeon who was responsible for Petey’s un-severing – which many higher ups at Lumon said was impossible. The surgeon was followed and is attacked by Lumon security. She gives Mark the guards pass and tells him his innie will know why he has it.
Mysteries around Lumon
There are many mysteries floating around Lumon’s severed floor that are drip-fed throughout the season but start to snowball midway through. The first big one is the Perpetuity Wing. The entire MDR team goes there when Helly’s first resignation outbursts begin. This part of the floor recounts the life of Lumon founder Kier Eagan and the many Eagon CEOs that came after him. There’s also a full-scale recreation of Kier’s home on the wing. It’s the place where Dylan’s waffle party happens late in the season.
Another mystery is the reveal that there are other departments dotting the labyrinthine floor. The main one the MDR team interacts with is Optics & Design. O&D is responsible for the art placed around the floor and is run by Burt (Christopher Walken). Burt and Irving begin to bond over their love of art and it becomes clear quickly that the pair have developed feelings for one another. It’s during these interactions that the two teams reveal they heard stories from the past that MDR and O&D had attacked one another.
Another of the more imposing mysteries surrounds Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman). She serves as a counsellor to the innies of the floor. She is assigned to help Helly accept her new position and Mark as he begins digging deeper into what’s really going on at Lumon. During one of Helly’s more intense sessions with Ms. Casey, Mark intervenes and asks to have a one-on-one chat with his co-worker. The two take a long winding walk through the halls and in the course of their conversation realize they’re in an unrecognizable part of the floor. They stumble into a room and bizarrely find a man tending to a bunch of young goats.
Some of the mysteries come to a head when Mark discovers the book Cobel found at his home that was unknowingly written by his brother-in-law. This spurs MDR and M&D to work together amid growing suspicions of upper management. Cobel and Milchick put a stop to things and as a punishment informs the innies they’re no longer allowed to roam the halls and Burt is pushed into retirement.
Season 1 ends on a cliffhanger
The very tense Season 1 finale is kicked off after MDR learns about the Overtime Contingency after Dylan is woken up out in the real world and accosted by Milchick after picking up a self-defense card at the office. During this time he learns his outie has a family.
The group agrees that Dylan could activate the contingency and the three of them could experience the outside world and maybe get a message out. The plan works and Mark, Helly and Irving all wake up and learn a lot about their outie experience.
Mark is at a party for his brother-in-law’s book launch. He quickly notices Cobel at the party and it isn’t long before she figures out that the innies are in control of the outies’ bodies. Cobel had been fired earlier for letting the book get into MDRs hands and calls Milchick to warn him in a play to get her job back.
Irving wakes up at home and finds that the black ooze he’d been hallucinating for weeks likely stems from the dark paintings of severed floor hallways his outie has been painting. Examining a trunk in the closet, he learns he used to be a part of the Navy and his outie had been researching Lumon and other employees. He finds Burt’s outie address and rushes over to see him.
Helly awakens to find out that there is a full art display and gala being held for her. She learns she’s the daughter of current Lumon CEO Jame Eagan, which means she’s a member of the Eagan clan herself. Her joining the severance program was a play to prove the procedure is safe to use on a broader scale around the world.
Milchick rushes down to the severed floor and tries to break into the control room to stop Dylan from keeping the overtime contingency active. Irving gets to Burt’s home and sees he is happily married – which doesn’t stop him from going up and banging on the door.
Helly, meanwhile, is put onstage at her gala and begins warning the party goers of what it’s really like on the severed floor.
Then back at the launch party, Mark shockingly learns that his outie’s dead wife is actually Ms. Casey, who is alive and well working as the counsellor to the innies at Lumon. He runs out to the party shouting, “She’s alive!,” just as Dylan is tackled by Milchick and the overtime contingency ends along with Season 1.
“Severance” Season 2 premiere is now streaming on Apple TV+.
