The music dance experience is officially canceled—but Severance returns. After three long years, the macrodata refinement crew is back on our screens. Follow along each week as we break down each episode of Severance Season 2. In the process, we’ll try to piece together what the heck is going on at Lumon Industries.
It’s been nearly three years since the first season of Severance ended. That’s a long wait for viewers, who were left to wonder what would happen next in the Apple TV+ series as the second season’s production was delayed due to rewrites and the 2023 Hollywood strikes. But for Mark S., it’s been only a matter of seconds since the thrilling Season 1 finale concluded with him and a pair of his macrodata refinement teammates experiencing the outside world for the first time.
Season 2 of Severance finally kicked off on Thursday night, and the season premiere features an exhilarating opening sequence that finds Mark stepping back into the office after discovering all sorts of information about his life outside the confines of Lumon Industries’ severed floor. The show’s dynamic and dizzying camera movement captures Mark’s frantic state of mind as he sprints through the office’s labyrinthian halls until he reaches wellness—where Ms. Casey used to work—and realizes that it’s gone. When Mark returns to the macrodata refinement department, he’s in for another surprise: Dylan, Helly, and Irving have been replaced by a new trio of Lumon employees, and Mr. Milchick is there to greet him with a bundle of balloons bearing Mark’s face.
“Welcome back, Mark S.,” Mr. Milchick says, in a statement that could double as a direct address to the audience. “Been a minute.”
Crunching the Numbers
After the season premiere’s heart-pounding opening sequence, Mark does his best to piece together everything that’s happened since he and his team triggered the overtime contingency, which activated their severed personas in the outside world. As he follows Milchick to the management office and peppers him with questions along the way, Mark learns that five months have passed since what Milchick refers to as “one of the most painful moments in the history of this company.” Not only are wellness and the rest of the macrodata refinement team gone, but all sorts of other changes have occurred: Ms. Cobel is no longer with the company, Milchick has been promoted to manager of the severed floor, and there is a literal child, named Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), working in Milchick’s former role.
It’s a head-spinning amount of new information for someone who’s just returned to consciousness after recently discovering that his outie’s supposedly dead wife, Gemma, happens to be the woman he knows as Ms. Casey. And in Milchick’s fancy new office, Mark receives still more updates. The macrodata refinement team’s brazen actions have allegedly earned each of its members international fame, as they’ve collectively become known as the so-called “face of severance reform.” Milchick even hands Mark a censored copy of The Kier Chronicle, which shows the four macrodata refiners being honored with a parade, as evidence. As for Cobel, Milchick claims that the leading theory at Lumon as to why she was involved in outie Mark’s life was because she developed an “erotic fixation” on Mark and had plans to pursue him and his outie in a “throuple.” (Milchick delivers this spicy piece of information with such a bizarre and distinct conviction that actor Tramell Tillman should be up for Emmy consideration for this scene alone.)
But what Mark most wants to know is what happened to his team, and Milchick deflects each of his attempts to find out more until he finally reveals that their outies didn’t want to work for Lumon anymore. Although innie Mark was once a faithful corporate shill, embracing everything Lumon told him at face value, his journey in the first season of Severance—including reading the revelatory words of author Ricken Hale—opened his eyes to the lies he had been fed in his brief, two-year existence. Mark is now wise enough to see through Milchick’s deceptions and questionable explanations, so he wastes little time in taking matters into his own hands.
After his encounter with Milchick, Mark meets the members of his new macrodata refinement team: Mark W. (Bob Balaban), Gwendolyn Y. (Alia Shawkat), and an unnamed Italian employee (Stefano Carannante) who is described simply as “Italian Employee” in the episode’s subtitles. (We need to get this Italian guy and Dylan into a room immediately.) Even after a team-building exercise led by Miss Huang, Mark remains focused on finding a way to see his old squad again, so he conceives a flimsy plot to sabotage the new refiners, starting with Mark W. Although he gets caught, Mark still manages to state his request directly to Lumon’s board. About 20 minutes into the episode, Mark steps out of the elevator to start a new day at the office and is soon followed by Dylan, Irving, and Helly—the whole gang, finally reunited.
Unlike previous episodes of Severance, the Season 2 premiere limits its focus to life within the walls of Lumon’s severed floor. Each time Mark’s shift ends and he exits in the elevator, the show stays with innie Mark as his next day at the office begins instead of following the subsequent events from outie Mark’s perspective. It’s a clever narrative decision that keeps the audience’s access to information as siloed as it is for Mark’s innie, preventing viewers from learning anything beyond what he’s hearing from his superiors at Lumon. When the rest of Mark’s team eventually joins him a little less than halfway through the episode, he and the others are eager to stitch together everything that happened at the end of Season 1.
However, before Mark and Co. have a real opportunity to catch up with each other, Miss Huang escorts them to the new-and-improved break room, where Milchick welcomes them with one of his trademark smiles. While the old break room was a place where severed employees were punished, this new space is considerably friendlier, and very purple. Milchick shows the MDR team a video that will supposedly be shown to every new innie who steps into Lumon.
“Lumon Is Listening,” which is seemingly narrated by the legendary (and uncredited) Keanu Reeves, is a remarkable piece of Lumon propaganda that retells the events of what Lumon historians have apparently dubbed the “Macrodat Uprising.” The video uses claymation characters to depict the MDR crew—incorporating audio clips of their actual voices—as it recounts how their revolt unfolded in Season 1. And narrator Keanu goes on to reveal the “bounteous reforms” that their uprising yielded, including new snacks and incentives, none of which seem particularly enticing. (The “playful mirror room” looks about as fun as the hall of mirrors in Us.) After the video concludes by thanking the MDR team for their bravery, Milchick presents them all with a choice.
“By end of day, each of you will choose whether you want to remain here,” he says. “Not your outies, but you. If you start work on your file, I’ll assume you want to stay. If not, I’ll send you to the surface. No ill will. Maybe I’ll even buy you a drink at a bistro one day.”
Of course, this is hardly a choice for an innie; choosing to quit would effectively end their life. But even with all the shiny, new incentives and a promise of increased privacy, backed up by the purported removal of all cameras and microphones, not everyone feels like staying. Irving, of all people, decides that he wants to retire.
After Mark tells the others about the party at his sister’s house and the truth about Ms. Casey’s identity, Helly makes up a story about what she saw on the surface, withholding the bombshell discovery that she’s an Eagan. But all Irving says about his overtime experience is that “it’s not our world up there” before leaving the break room and preparing to exit the office for good. Heartbroken by the sight of Burt’s outie with another man, Irving wants nothing to do with Lumon anymore—and it takes some serious convincing by Dylan for him to ultimately change his mind.
Meanwhile, Mark isn’t going anywhere until he finds Ms. Casey, and Helly decides to stay and help him. As for Dylan, Milchick pulls him aside to privately show him a blueprint for an upcoming addition to the office: the outie family visitation suite. As if there weren’t enough perks for Dylan to strive for, Lumon is preparing a place where severed employees like him can see their families—or so they’d like him to believe.
And with that, the episode comes to a close with our four macrodata refiners returning to their desks to continue crunching those scary numbers at the start of a new quarter. After all, the work is mysterious and important, whatever it may be.
Unanswered Questions
What’s a mystery box show without them?
At the beginning of the episode, who is watching Mark from the hallway outside of the vacated wellness department?
As Mark discovers that Ms. Casey’s former workspace has been completely removed save for its waiting room, a man suddenly appears in the background, lurking in the hall just outside of Mark’s view. Mark seems to sense the eyes of the strange figure upon him, but when he turns to look, no one is there.
The episode’s end credits refer to this unknown character simply as “Man in Hallway,” played by Adam Jepsen, adding further intrigue to the mystery. Whoever this hallway man may be, it’s clear that Mark is still being monitored—even if Lumon claims to be beyond any form of surveillance.
What’s Miss Huang’s story?
This is probably the biggest question from this episode—to the point that several severed employees ask it in some form. Here’s Dylan’s reaction when he sees Miss Huang for the first time:
Severance has a tendency to be extremely random at times before it supplies the audience with answers, and the sudden emergence of this prominent child worker is a prime example. During the team-building exercise, Mark W. bluntly asks her, “Why are you a child?,” and Miss Huang replies, “Because of when I was born.” (Fair enough!) But she does give an intriguing piece of information about herself: Before her new job as a supervisor, she was a crossing guard. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that her first day was scheduled just in time for Mark’s return.
Is Miss Huang an example of some new form of severance? Could she be the daughter of a prominent Lumon executive, like Helly? Does she have the mind of an adult in a child’s body? Is this not child labor? There are dozens of other questions we could ask about Miss Huang alone as this new and incredibly bizarre mystery takes root within Lumon’s walls.
Why did Helly R. lie about what she saw in the outside world?
This is the rare Severance question that doesn’t seem too difficult to ascertain the answer to, but it’s an important question to raise nonetheless. Helly makes up a story about how she woke up in her outie’s home while watching a nature TV show and later spoke to a (night) gardener about Lumon’s atrocities. It’s completely unconvincing and way less compelling than what actually happened. Not only did Helly discover that she’s an Eagan and meet her father in person, but she went on to deliver an impromptu speech about Lumon’s lies to an audience packed with Lumon executives and supporters of the severance procedure.
Ever since Helly woke up on the severed floor in the series premiere, she’s had a difficult time adjusting to the reality of her existence and a contentious relationship with her outie, to put it mildly. She’s still processing the fact that she’s a member of Lumon’s first family. It makes sense that Helly isn’t ready to share with the group that her outie is complicit in the very nature of their entire miserable existence as severed employees, and how she grapples with this newfound knowledge appears to be an important piece of character development to follow as the season progresses.
How does Irving know about the black hallway that leads to Lumon’s testing floor?
Out of the four macrodata refiners, Irving’s outie remains the biggest mystery—even more than Dylan’s, who didn’t appear in the Season 1 finale but we know is married with children. Outie Irving lives alone, save for his dog, Radar, and he’s obsessed with painting the same image of a black hallway that leads to an elevator, over and over again. He appears to have been investigating Lumon and its severed employees even before his innie fell in love with Burt and decided to fight back against their bosses when Burt was forced into retirement. But the real question is: Why?
In Season 1, we learned about Lumon’s testing floor when Ms. Casey was sent there by Cobel and Milchick after she was effectively fired from her position, with Milchick leading Ms. Casey to the same dark, ominous hallway that outie Irving can’t seem to stop painting. Except we still don’t know how Irving’s outie became aware of it. In this latest episode, innie Irving tells Dylan about seeing these paintings in his outie’s apartment, yet he doesn’t recognize the hallway that they depict. It seems increasingly evident that Irving was sent to the testing floor at some point and has no recollection of it, likely because Lumon has somehow wiped his memory. Irving’s connection to the testing floor could be the missing piece to finding Ms. Casey.
What happened to Ms. Casey?
Speaking of Ms. Casey, her fate was one of the biggest questions leading into the new season, and the latest episode does a good job of reestablishing that mystery as one of the primary plot drivers of Season 2. Mark keeps seeing images of her face in his head, and he’s already recruited Helly to join in his search for her. What Mark’s real-world marriage means for his innie’s fledgling romance with Helly remains to be seen, but they’ll have to face that awkward conundrum after saving Gemma.
Reddit Theory of the Week
As a mystery box TV show, Severance invites tons of fan theories by nature. From baby goats to whatever happened to former Lumon surgeon Reghabi, there are so many strange, lingering unknowns left over from the first season—and there are clearly plenty more to come. As The Ringer’s Miles Surrey mentioned in his recent Severance refresher, one of the more popular and convincing theories out there is that Lumon Industries and the Eagan family are effectively using the severance procedure to achieve immortality (and maybe even bring Kier Eagan back to life) by transferring consciousnesses between bodies through the severance chips.
Producing satisfying answers to intriguing questions is the biggest challenge for any twisty sci-fi TV series like Severance, and Lumon Industries’ true intentions—and the work that it’s having severed people like Mark do—are perhaps the show’s greatest mystery. In the Season 1 finale, Jame Eagan told Helly how she would be sitting with him at his “revolving” one day, which sure sounds like it could be related to some sort of technological reincarnation process.
In the Season 2 premiere, there isn’t really any evidence to support or refute this theory or to tell us more about what Lumon is up to. But it’s clear that the shady tech company wants to keep its severed employees happy—or, at least, create the illusion that they are. Finding out what happened to Ms. Casey, and everyone else who’s visited the testing floor, will be a crucial next piece of the puzzle.
Employee of the Week: Miss Huang
With respect to the new (and suddenly dismissed) trio of macrodata refiners, there’s only one new Lumon employee who could make the flying ghost of Kier Eagan proud by earning this prestigious honor this week: Miss Huang.
She may be young, but she’s fierce and dedicated to her new role as deputy manager. When Mark offers the fun fact about himself during the red ball game that he’s “made four new friends today,” including her, Miss Huang sternly corrects him: “That’s nice, Mark. But I have to remind you that I’m a supervisor, not a friend.” There’s a lot we don’t know about her, but we do know this much: Miss Huang doesn’t mess around. (She’s even mastered Milchick’s fake smile already.)
Miss Huang’s only workplace demerit in this episode is when she sneakily plays a handheld game that shoots up little rings around the hands of an underwater Kier Eagan, but I think we can forgive her for this one minor lapse in judgment. She’s still a child, after all.
Design Porn
Severance isn’t just a story; it’s an atmosphere. Each week we’re highlighting our favorite looks captured by the show’s eerily gorgeous production design and cinematography.
To introduce this final section of our weekly recaps, let’s take a tour of Lumon’s severed floor at branch 501 after all the changes that have been made to it in the five months since the so-called Macrodat Uprising.
First up, Mr. Milchick’s new office. It’s received a substantial makeover since Milchick stepped into Ms. Cobel’s old role, including a new coat of blue paint on the back walls, some wood paneling, and a very zen vibe about it all. (There’s even a bonsai tree to set the calming mood.) Now, all Milchick has to do is unpack his boxes and see about fixing that pesky welcome screen on his computer that serves as the title of this week’s episode: “Hello, Ms. Cobel.”
This room may have already existed when Cobel was running the show, but this is the first we’re seeing of it. Tucked away in Milchick’s new office, this blue back room is incredibly spacious. It’s where Milchick unveils the designs of the forthcoming outie family visitation suite to Dylan. Who knows what else is hidden in here?
The old break room was used to break the spirits of naughty Lumon employees. Now it has a fancy projector and these sweet purple chairs that look like they belong on a spaceship. Plus, there are some fun balloon lights and a pair of machines (whose purposes are currently unclear), and the walls are lined with motivational posters. Progress!
Positioned as the very first thing that severed employees will “wake up” to every day, this new entrance painting is stunning—and very disturbing. Its placard reads, “Kier pardons his betrayers,” and it was put up on the same day that the full MDR team returned together after their overtime contingency stunt. It’s certainly one way for Lumon to remind its workers of the company’s mercy.
OK, I know this isn’t exactly design porn. In fact, it’s really the absence of any design at all. (Lumon could have at least thrown in a vending machine or two full of those new fruit leathers and Christmas mints.) But it’s an important final reminder of what’s at stake in the second season of Severance. Ms. Casey is gone, and so is every trace of her ever having existed. Mark and the macrodata refinement team are back, and with a renewed sense of purpose.
