What to remember about ‘Severance’ Season 1 before the Season 2 premiere

Severance, Apple TV+’s darkly funny dystopian thriller about workers at a sinister tech company, finally returns for Season 2 this month. It’s been almost three years since Season 1 debuted, so you might need a refresher about what’s happening at Lumon Industries. Here’s what you must remember about Severance Season 1 before Season 2 premieres. 

What’s Severance about? 

From creator Dan Erickson and executive producer and director Ben Stiller, Severance follows Mark Scout (Adam Scott), an employee of the enigmatic and controversial biotech company Lumon Industries. He has undergone a Lumon-developed procedure known as “severance,” which separates his consciousness while he’s at work from his consciousness outside of work via a location-sensitive microchip implanted in his brain. “Innie” Mark inside of Lumon has no memory of “Outie” Mark, and vice versa. This allows Mark to do mysterious, highly confidential work that is so secret he does not even know what it is. The main reason why Mark has undergone the severance process is because he wants to escape the pain of grieving his wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman), who died before the events of the show — or so Mark thinks. 

Mark works on a restricted floor with other Innies, newcomer Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro) doing something called “macrodata refinement” that involves moving numbers around on a computer screen. They are miserable, trapped inside a prison-like existence where all they do is work for Lumon, which psychologically tortures them. Their bosses are supervisor Milchick (Tramell Tillman) and manager Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette). Michick and Harmony are not severed, and Harmony’s identity outside of work, Mrs. Selvig, is Outie Mark’s neighbor so she can keep her eye on him. 

Mark has been promoted to head of the macrodata refinement team after the mysterious disappearance of his friend and coworker Petey (Yul Vazquez). Outie Mark is visited by Petey, who tells him that he has reversed his severance procedure and left Lumon. Still, he dies of “reintegration sickness” before he can reveal the truth about what’s going on at Lumon to Mark. Separately but working in tandem even more than they realize, equally disillusioned Innie Mark and Outie Mark try to figure out how to communicate with each other and get free from the cruel, exploitative tyranny of Lumon. 

How did Season 1 end? 

Season 1 ended on a tense cliffhanger. The innies figure out how to initiate a protocol called “overtime contingency” that allows them to wake up in the outside world, which Dylan activates inside of Lumon so the other three can try to get word to their Outies about the horrible conditions the Innies live under. Innie Helly, who has spent the season trying to escape from Lumon, realizes that she is the daughter of Lumon’s CEO, and her Outie underwent severance to try to shore up public and political support for widespread legalization of the procedure. Innie Helly takes over as Outie Helly is about to give a pro-severance speech at a Lumon gala and tells the attendees about the Innies’ oppression and anguish. 

Meanwhile, Innie Mark takes over while Mark is at a party at his sister Devon’s (Jenn Tullock) house. Harmony/Mrs. Selvig is there, and she realizes that Mark is in Innie form when he calls her by her Lumon name. In the moments between when Harmony alerts Milchick that overtime protocol has been activated and when Milchick stops Dylan, Mark tells Devon some of what’s going on. He sees a wedding photo of himself and Gemma, whom he recognizes as Ms. Casey, a severed Lumon employee who never leaves the building. Realizing that Gemma is still alive and trapped, he tries to alert Devon, but all he manages to say is, “She’s alive!” before Milchick deactivates overtime contingency. 

What are the biggest questions still to be answered going into Season 2? 

What is Lumon really doing?

This is an umbrella for a bunch of other questions. Why all the secrecy and dishonesty? What is “macrodata refinement,” really? Why are the numbers scary? What is happening in Burt’s (Christopher Walken) Optics & Design department? Season 2 will have to get deeper into all of these questions.

How will Mark save Ms. Casey?

Innie Mark reverted to Outie Mark immediately after saying, “She’s alive,” so he won’t even remember what happened. And Devon won’t know what he meant. So it’s up to Innie Mark to figure out how to get his wife out of the sinister “testing floor” where she’s being kept. The good news is that Mrs. Selvig didn’t hear him, as she had already left to try to stop Helly from giving her speech. 

Will Irving and Burt start a relationship?

Irving and Burt fell in love inside of Lumon, but Burt could not commit to a relationship and plans to retire from Lumon, leaving Irving heartbroken. When Innie Irving takes over in the outside world, he finds Burt’s house and tries to talk to him, only to find that Burt is in a relationship already. It’s a tender subplot, and we hope something goes Irving’s way in Season 2.

What’s up with the goats?

While they were exploring the Lumon building, Mark and Helly stumbled upon an unknown department consisting of one man in a suit caring for a flock of baby goats. He admonished them to leave, telling them the goats weren’t ready to be taken yet. The show did not revisit the goat department in Season 1, but it will have to in Season 2.

What awards did Severance win? 

Severance Season 1 had a strong showing in the 2022 TV awards season. It won two Emmys for Best Music Composition (Theodore Shapiro) and Best Main Title Design (Oliver Latta and Teddy Blanks) and was nominated for 12 more, including Best Drama Series, writing, directing, editing, casting, production design, and acting nominations for Scott, Arquette, Turturro, and Walken.  

Severance also earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Drama, Best Drama Actor for Scott, and Best TV Supporting Actor for Turturro. It received SAG nominations for the ensemble and Scott individually. Stiller and Aoife McArdle were both nominated for a DGA Awards. The series also won WGA Awards for Drama Series and New Series.

What have Stiller & co. said about what’s to come in Season 2? 

Creator Erickson told Vanity Fair that Season 2 is “darker” than Season 1, as Lumon punishes the characters for their insolence. “We very much wanted to put our heroes in a scarier place because season one ends with them poking the bear,” he said. “They form this little rebellion, and they’re able to achieve a modicum of success with it, but the question with season two was: What happens when the bear pokes back? What’s the fallout of this victory that they had? I think, without giving much away, the fallout is dire.” He also said that in Season 1, the Innies were like children, and in Season 2, they are akin to adolescents. “There’s more of a sense of finding your own autonomy and deciding who you are going to be, as opposed to who you’ve been told you are.”

Stiller said that Season 2 took a long time to write, rewrite, prep, film, and shoot for 186 days. Erickson noted that sets were built and discarded as scripts were rewritten during production. Adam Scott was profiled in The New Yorker, and in the article, Erickson said that part of why Season 2 took so long, in addition to the 2023 strikes, was Stiller’s perfectionism. He later walked back the delay claim but reiterated that Stiller is a perfectionist. Stiller oversees editing and postproduction. 

Erickson and Stiller also said that Season 2 will kick off with an all-Innie episode and an all-Outie episode, and the season will explain what the goats are for. 

When does Severance Season 2 premiere? 

Severance Season 2 premieres Friday, Jan. 17 on Apple TV+. It will consist of 10 episodes, released weekly through March 21.