Severance Season-Premiere Recap: It’s Been a Minute

In the world of Severance, to be an Innie is to have little to no control over one’s life. Innies are perpetually trapped at work. They don’t sleep, don’t get much of a choice about what they eat, and are stuck performing data-processing jobs they don’t understand. And when they’re finally given a real choice in the season-two premiere — choose to leave, and your wish will be granted permanently — it’s not much of a choice. If the Innies leave Lumon, they stop existing. So, effectively, their choice is to continue to endlessly toil in a harshly lit basement or die.

Severance is interested in a lot of Big Ideas®, chief among them the impact of trauma on an individual. One very loose definition of trauma is feeling a sustained lack of control in a stressful or distressing situation, and the Innies certainly meet that requirement. A Kier maxim that’s often shown in print or spoken aloud on the show is “We must be cut to heal.” In fact, Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) says it as he brings Mark S. (Adam Scott) up to speed early on in this episode. This begs the question: Has Lumon intentionally designed suffering to be a key part of the Innie experience? And, if so, how do we reconcile the idea that the Innies would continue to choose a life of a million cuts versus simply not existing?

Welcome back to the world of Severance, my friends. I’ve missed you! As Mr. Milchick states to Mark S. in the opening sequence of this episode, “It’s been a minute.” And we have much to talk about.

After an almost three-year hiatus, Severance has finally returned, delivering a winning hourlong episode that focuses solely on the Innies in the wake of their mental jailbreak. The first moments of the premiere remind us just exactly what Mark S., Helly R. (Britt Lower), and Irving B. (John Turturro) were doing when Mr. Milchick broke through the security-room door and tackled Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), ending their visit to the real world. But Innies don’t experience time like we do. And, while Milchick claims that it’s been five months since the Innies rebelled, to them it feels like no time at all has passed. (How jealous are we that they got to skip the break between seasons, am I right?)

After finding that Wellness has disappeared like a glitch in a surreal video game, Mark heads to Macrodata Refinement. And, instead of finding his friends, he finds three newbies: Gwendolyn Y. (Alia Shawkat), Dario R. (Stefano Carannante), and Mark W. (Bob Balaban, looking like Orville Redenbacher for some reason) are there to greet him. Gwendolyn is eager to learn about Mark’s time on the surface, peppering him with questions about the sky and the air. Dario is mostly concerned about ink for his pen, and Mark W. hilariously refers to Mr. Milchick as “Mr. Milkshake” and worries about two refiners having the same name. It’s a curious bunch, and their interactions are very fun. They also exchange information about their various branches. It seems as if Gwendolyn and Mark W. came from a more state-of-the-art building — their Perpetuity Wing had animatronic Eagans, a fact that triggered Chuck E. Cheese nightmares from my childhood — but that branch has since closed. It feels like Lumon expanded their severed project too quickly, and due to people not wanting to be severed (shocker), they’re having to shutter some doors. Interesting.

Alternatively, Dario mentions that he came from a branch that had no tech whatsoever. (Where? How? Did they fly him in special from Italy?!) The Eagans in his Perpetuity Wing were brooms, and the elevator was a rope. The rope bit makes me wonder how on earth they managed to hang on when transitioning from Innie to Outie and vice versa, but no matter. We also see that he has an award-head just like Mark’s holographic glass cube, but his is crudely carved into a block of wood. And, while these shiny new refiners are gone by the end of the episode, the head leads me to believe that we might see these folks again at some point in the future.

The new crew plays the getting-to-know-you ball game, and we meet another newbie: Miss Huang (Sarah Bock). She’s the new Milchick, and everyone is very curious as to why such a young person is working on a severed floor. Fun Fact: Sarah Bock is 18 years old in real life, so she’s technically an adult, but costume designer Sarah Edwards has her styled like a young child. Later in the episode, Dylan guesses that she’s 8 years old. This is a comedically low estimate, but to me, the barrette in her hair and eerie Catholic-school-uniform vibes telegraph that she’s in the neighborhood of 11 to 14 years old. That’s still shockingly young for a Lumon employee, much less one who might be severed.

During this team-building exercise, Mark snaps. He can’t and won’t comply anymore. That night, he writes a note on a Post-it, referring to Milchick as a “shambolic rube,” and slips it into Mark W.’s coat pocket. When Milchick reads the (very funny) note out loud, it feels like Mark’s immature Iinnie brain came up with an ineffective, high-school-level plan, but then he turns their attention to the kitchenette, allowing him to run off and make contact with the board via the speaker in Milchick’s office. Smart! He frantically connects the speaker and cries, “Please! They’re my friends! You can’t just make them disappear!”

And even though the board can do just that — see Burt’s (likely) forced retirement — they listen. Despite Milchick’s insistence that the board doesn’t converse with Innies, they grant Mark’s request to see his friends again. The next day, they come down the elevator, one by one, reuniting for the first time in who knows how long. I love them so much it hurts. The sci-fi mysteries and the overall atmosphere of the show are undeniably fabulous and captivating, but it’s the robust humanity and fading innocence of these four Innies that have emotionally tied me to this show for life. I’m always rooting for them, and seeing them all in the same place again gave me a pleasant jolt.

Once the gang is back together, they don’t have much time to chat. Milchick summons them to the new-and-improved break room, which no longer contains the dreaded compunction statement booth. Instead, there’s a different kind of torture — walls dotted with inspirational posters. Ugh. Milchick proudly introduces a video, which turns out to be the most bonkers training video on the planet, including recordings of the Innies, a Keanu Reeves–like voice as the voice of the Lumon building, and oodles of surreal Claymation sequences. The visuals in the film are so busy and heightened that it almost feels like Milchick used ChatGPT to make it. The narrator details the Innies’ plans for rebellion and then lays out a plan to ensure that the Innies will be happier moving forward. The slogan “Lumon is Listening” is meant to illustrate that the company is listening to their concerns, but it also doubles as a threat, seeing as how the video is generously peppered with recordings and visual reenactments of the Innies.

After the video, Milchick also tells them that today is the day that they get to choose to stay or leave and that there will be no hard feelings either way. This gambit feels like a page pulled directly from Cobel’s playbook. Last season, she told Milchick, “The surest way to tame a prisoner is to let him believe he is free.”

Finally alone, the group huddles in the break room, recounting their outside experiences. Helly goes first and shares a mumbly-mouthed and ill-conceived story about waking up in a crappy apartment and meeting up with a gardener. On the surface, it seems like she’s embarrassed to admit that she’s an Eagan, but the Helly we know is honest and overtly vocal, so this feels like a deviation somehow. Why is she protecting her Outie? Irv is immediately suspicious of her story and then becomes cagey about his own experience. Mark is the only one who truthfully shares what happened to him.

Irv scampers off, looking for an exit. Dylan follows, and they share a sweet scene in which Irv tells him the truth. He tells him about the elevator paintings and then tells him about Burt and, more specifically, Burt’s husband. In a heartbreaking line, Irv says, “I want the pain to be gone. If he’s gone and I’m gone … then, somehow, we can be together.” Dylan cannot accept this. The friendship between Irv and Dylan has been one of the secret weapons of this series, and their relationship gets a moment to really shine here. As Dylan begs Irv not to go, Irv begins to smile like a goofball. Turturro imbues such love and affection into his expression as Irv realizes that he’s found more than just romantic love on the severed floor. He giddily says, “I’m your favorite perk.”

This is true. However, Milchick then calls Dylan to look at a new perk: a set of blueprints promising a family visitation suite where he could conceivably meet his wife and kids. This all feels like an empty promise designed to keep Dylan working at Lumon — he is very good at his job, after all — but I guess we’ll see!

Elsewhere, Helly agrees to help Mark with his quest to find Ms. Casey. But she has a decidedly different take on it than Mark does. While Mark feels he owes it to his Outie to find his wife because, technically, she’s his wife too, Helly vociferously rejects the idea of her Outie being a part of her at all. Mark seems a bit taken aback by her declaration, but ultimately, he accepts her offer of help.

At the end of the episode, all the refiners return to work on their files. They confidently switch on their workstations and start corralling numbers. If they work, they get to stay and solve the mysteries of Lumon. They also get to keep existing. The focus quickly switches to Mark as he scrolls and clicks on a file named Cold Harbor. As he guides a batch of numbers into a bin, the perspective shifts, images fluttering in the frame. We see an accompanying file titled Cold Harbor, and it’s monitoring vital signs in real time. The screen zooms out to take in the whole screen, and it’s an image of … Gemma.

Is … Mark refining his wife?! Has he been refining her, over and over again, this entire time? And, if the refiners are coding something in humans, who have the other three been working on?

It looks like it’s time for my staggered exit, so I’m going to go grab the elevator. Until next time …

Severed Sentiments

• I’m thrilled to be back on the Severance beat, and I truly cannot wait to see what this season will bring us. Last time, the comments section was a treasure trove of thoughtful notes, awesome theories, and delightful conversation. Now, I’m passing the red ball to you all. I’ll be peeking in on the comments throughout the season, and I can’t wait to discuss everything with you.

• In the minutes following Mark’s entreaty to the board, Milchick marches him back to the elevator. He intones: “Good-bye, Mark S.” and then, in the gap of time between Outie and Innie worlds, there’s a full second of a black screen, followed by his reboot. This transition felt different to me, as every other transition we’ve seen hasn’t included a fade to black. This show does nothing by accident, and I’m wondering if Milchick sent Mark elsewhere for a period of time? I could definitely be wrong here, but it feels like there are shades of Inception to the severance process, and how far the team at Lumon can push a brain is yet to be seen.

• The fact that the speaker in Milchick’s office is somehow always connected to the board is very weird, lending credence to some of the theories that the board might be a non-human entity.

• Fans of Parks and Recreation will certainly recall that Adam Scott’s character on that show, Ben Wyatt, dabbled in Claymation, or “Claymaish,” whenever he drifted into depressive periods, and I’d like to think that the medium of the “Lumon is Listening” video was chosen as a slight nod to that character.

• Cobel is absent from this episode, but her presence can be felt, most obviously in the “Hello Ms. Cobel” welcome message that floats on Milchick’s computer screen. There’s a very funny bit where he calls for tech support to fix the issue and he hangs up in exasperation. The cogs of corporate culture move quickly for no man!