Television is still very much indebted to Lost, and two mystery box dramas airing this year have invited parallels to the series: Severance and Yellowjackets. For Yellowjackets, the Lost similarities are baked into the premise, which explores what happens to the girls on a high school soccer team—plus one unlucky assistant coach—when they’re stranded in the woods for 19 months and whether some ominous supernatural force has followed the survivors into the present day. Of course, if you’ve been keeping up with Yellowjackets, the series has lost (sorry) its luster with some bonkers twists that even its own actors seem to question.
Without spoiling too much of what’s in store for the rest of Season 3, Yellowjackets is caught in a bind: By the seventh episode, “Croak,” the teens have encountered outsiders who can, in theory, lead them back to civilization. But viewers already know that the Yellowjackets will spend one more winter in the wilderness—Pit Girl awaits her fate—before their ordeal is over. In other words, there has to be a very compelling reason for the teens to stay in place and prolong their suffering; anything less, and Yellowjackets runs the risk of polarizing a fan base that’s already lamenting the static direction of the series. It’s a strange predicament for Yellowjackets to find itself in: The wilderness setup that reeled audiences in is starting to creatively hamstring the series.
Is this something Severance can relate to? Unlike Yellowjackets, the Apple TV+ series has avoided a sharp decline in quality, delivering a second season that was worth the excruciating three-year wait. What’s particularly thrilling is how Severance gave viewers answers to some of its biggest mysteries rather than drawing them out; we discovered what Lumon Industries has been doing to poor Gemma and how Harmony Cobel invented the severance procedure. As Severance creator Dan Erickson previously explained in an interview with The Ringer, he wants to learn from the mistakes of Lost and avoid leaving too many dangling threads. This sense of momentum carried over into the Season 2 finale, “Cold Harbor,” in which the innie and outie versions of Mark Scout work together to spring Gemma free from Lumon’s grasp before the company ends her life.
In a vacuum, “Cold Harbor” is like a greatest-hits collection of what we love about Severance, combining more sinister revelations about Lumon—your baby goat questions have been answered—with some amusingly surreal flourishes. (Let’s pray for one Seth Milchick dance sequence per season; in the spirit of Lumon, I promise to enjoy them equally.) By the end of the finale, both halves of Mark have succeeded in their Gemma rescue mission, but innie Mark hesitates to leave the severed floor along with her—doing so could essentially erase his existence, as well as the love he’s cultivated there. Instead, Mark embraces Helly, with the episode’s final moments lingering on an image of our beloved innie couple running through the severed halls, their fates yet to be determined. The duo will, presumably, deal with the consequences of their actions in Season 3, including, but not limited, to: freeing Gemma, killing Mr. Drummond, trapping Milchick in a bathroom, and inspiring the choreography and merriment division to question its corporate overlords. And while it’s not quite as tantalizing a cliff-hanger as the end of Season 1, how things are left in “Cold Harbor” reflects how Severance has continued evolving for the better.
This season, one of the biggest takeaways was how Severance was willing to widen its scope, whether it was sending the MDR quartet on an Outdoor Retreat Team Building Occurrence or having Cobel return to her hometown. Like the innies discovering what’s beyond their cubicles, every revelation gives the audience more details about the universe of Severance. Now, in addition to all the mysteries within Lumon, there are questions related to how the company fits into the rest of the world: the ether mills, the destruction of small communities, the breadth of Lumon’s political influence, the fact that the town named after Kier Eagan is located in a fictional U.S. state, Miss Huang being sent to [checks notes] Svalbard, Norway. This is the good stuff.
But can Severance continue satisfying the fan base’s appetite for more without—excuse the Eagan terminology—betraying its core principles? As we saw in “Cold Harbor,” innie Mark’s existence isn’t just limited to Lumon HQ: It begins and ends on the severed floor. Even taking the elevator down to the testing floor to rescue Gemma leads Mark to switch consciousnesses. Granted, this restrictive setup was crucial to Severance’s initial appeal: The series was built around the MDR crew’s attempts to escape Lumon, just as Yellowjackets hinges on its teens trying to leave the wilderness and Lost depends on the survivors getting off the island.
At this stage, however, Severance finds itself at a crossroads. On the one hand, it feels like the show has moved past the confines of the severed floor—look no further than Irving, who’s hopped on a train to parts unknown after his innie self was effectively killed off. At the same time, the heartbeat of Severance remains the relationship between innie Mark and Helly, and the two are, quite literally, stuck in place. For all the show’s high points, in its current form, Severance risks being suffocated by the rigidity of its premise.
Given the painstaking detail that goes into every aspect of Severance, Erickson and his creative team have certainly thought this all through; next season could provide an exit route of sorts. One avenue the series could explore is Mark’s reintegration process, which stalled after Reghabi’s abrupt exit. While innie Mark expressed his reservations about reintegration in “Cold Harbor”—and how much of him would exist alongside someone who’s lived decades longer—it would allow the characters to move through the world together. The same can’t be said for Helly, however, whose outie is an Eagan progeny who pretended to be an innie for the first chunk of the season. But perhaps Jame Eagan’s creepy insistence that he “sees” Kier in Helly and doesn’t care much for Helena will allow her to continue existing in some capacity beyond the severed floor. (Another tidbit that could be important: Jame confessing to Helly that he “sired others in the shadows.” Are any characters that we’ve already met secret Eagans?)
In any case, it does feel inevitable that Severance will undergo some kind of metamorphosis in its third season. When it started, the series was, not unlike its MDR employees, of two minds. There was the side of Severance that was a surreal corporate satire, complete with music dance experiences and waffle parties. Then we have the mystery box elements of the show: a twisted rabbit hole exploring identity, free will, baby goats, and possibly even immortality. Severance has barely put a foot wrong in either direction across two seasons, but for the series to grow, it shouldn’t rest on its laurels. Going forward, Severance doesn’t have to be boxed in by its premise: It just requires reintegration.
