Severance season 2 review: a return that exceeds expectations

It’s been almost three full years since Severance wrapped up its first season. The Apple TV+ sci-fi drama about a group of workers who literally live two different lives between the office and home captured viewers’ imaginations when it debuted in 2022. There was its alluring, constant thrum of dystopian sci-fi mystery, sure, as well as conspiracies surrounding the show’s central, seemingly diabolical corporation that always seemed to lurk just beyond the edges of the frame. But there was also Severance‘s pristine aesthetic and the high level of visual execution provided by directors Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle that made looking away from it seem impossible.

The series also stuck the landing — delivering a breathless season 1 finale that left viewers anxious to see what would happen next. Making those same viewers wait three years for any kind of continuation has been a tough pill to swallow, one that has come with questions about whether or not Severance‘s second season would be able to live up to the expectations raised by both its last episode and its prolonged hiatus. It wouldn’t be like Severance, though, a show that thrives on disorientation, to return with a second season that simply answered viewers’ questions. It is with a profound sigh of relief then to report that Severance season 2 doesn’t just live up to the hype, but that it does so while introducing new questions and expanding the series’ already thorny thematic landscape.

Severance season 2 picks up where its predecessor left off — more or less. To say much about how the season’s first two episodes play out would be to spoil part of the pleasures of watching Severance‘s return unfold, but it is enough to say that the season’s opening is split in two in a manner slyly befitting the series. The season’s premiere brings viewers back into the labyrinthine, oppressively fluorescent offices of Lumon Industries as severed hero Mark Scout’s (Adam Scott) innie is awoken and welcomed by Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman), the Lumon henchman whose PR friendly smile somehow feels even more devious than it did before. Seth reveals that he has been promoted to supervisor of Lumon’s severed floor, replacing the scheming Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), and introduces Mark to his new team of co-workers, which include Alia Shawkat and a prickly Bob Balaban.

Mark, for his part, is desperate to reunite with his former team members, Dylan (Zach Cherry), Helly (Britt Lower), and Irving (John Turturro), and find out whether or not their overtime rebellion at the end of Severance season 1 has really had the impact Milchick says. At the top of his mind, of course, is also Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), the missing wellness counselor he discovered last season to be Gemma, his outie’s believed-to-be dead wife. Given the nature of TV, it shouldn’t be considered a spoiler to say that it doesn’t take long for both Mark and Severance to get the band back together. Once reunited with his team, Mark then sets out to find Ms. Casey and discover the truth of what happened to her in the outside world and why Lumon has been hiding it — and her — from his outie. His search leads him, Irving, Dylan, and Helly to new corners of the severed floor that beguile and delight, and which only make Severance‘s debt to Twin Peaks all the more obvious. (Note: not a criticism.)

Severance doesn’t rush to return to a recognizable status quo, though. Its new season begins with a nightmarish, reality-warping sequence that effectively hurls viewers back into its darkly funny, surreal world only to take its time from there on out. Questions are answered, though not always truthfully, and characters start to once again find new mysteries in the silences of others. Building off its season 1 finale’s game-changing revelations about Irving, Helly, and Burt (Christopher Walken), Severance season 2 invests more time in its characters’ outie lives. In doing so, the show gives itself more room to explore some of the same questions about the lines between our work and personal lives that it prompted in its first nine episodes, but it also presents interesting new dilemmas for viewers and its characters to consider. Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving’s innie selves are specifically forced to grapple with the fact that beating Lumon will almost certainly result in their own destruction.

This possibility injects new dramatic tension into Severance exactly when it needs it most, and it allows the series to deepen its ideas about the people we are away from and at home, as well as the insidiousness of corporations that want us to value our work lives over our personal ones. In an early scene, Tillman’s Milchick convinces Mark’s outie self to resume his severance lifestyle by speaking positively about his innie’s office existence. “He’s found love,” Milchick reveals, referencing Mark and Helly’s season 1 kiss. Milchick paints a portrait of Mark’s innie life that is happier than his grief-stricken existence in the outside world and, therefore, worthier of living than the one he has at home. It’s a darkly affecting scene, and one that powerfully spotlights Lumon’s desire to make its workers feel as though they’ll find greater fulfillment in their halls than they ever could outside of them.

All the while, Severance remains one of the most sharply composed, lit, and directed shows on TV. Every frame is precisely blocked, and the season’s directors, which include a returning Stiller, make greater, heightened use this time around of the shadows that permeate Severance‘s chilly, snow-covered outside world. This aesthetic works in conjunction with the show’s overly bright interior office scenes to create not only a dynamic, striking visual look, but also a constant mood of corporate-driven intrigue. Severance season 1 standout Britt Lower, meanwhile, remains as compelling a screen presence as she was three years ago. She’s given even more room to play in Severance season 2, as she’s asked to explore further not just Helly, but also her potentially villainous outie self, Helena, the daughter of Lumon’s CEO.

It is hard to watch Severance without thinking about the deteriorating state of America’s current corporate world. As work creeps closer and closer every year to completely taking over everyday people’s lives, Severance‘s themes just grow more potent. That was the case when its first season was airing in 2022, and it is again three years later. The series is a modern TV rarity — a high-concept sci-fi drama that asks challenging questions without ever hitting you over the head with them. In its second season, it remains just as intelligent and thought-provoking, and it has returned to reclaim its spot among the best shows on television right now. Fingers crossed it won’t take another three years for it to do so again.

The first episode of Severance season 2 is streaming now on Apple TV+. New episodes premiere weekly on Fridays.