‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 2 Review

The second episode of AppleTV+’s thriller ‘Severance’ shows us what’s happening outside Lumon.

In the first episode, last week, we saw what happened to the Innies after they woke up, which to them seemed like just a moment ago. Now, we find out what their alter egos, or Outies, have been doing.

The whole situation very nearly got out of control, and it was only by Lumon using their extensive resources, and Milchek’s ruthlessness, that they managed to salvage the situation, and prevent it from becoming a bigger scandal, as they desperately do damage control to try and get back on track.

Dylan, Irving and Helly’s Innies are all fired for what they did, leaving Mark as the only member of Macro-data Refinement to be allowed back to work, though as we saw last week, he refused to do as he was ordered until all of his coworkers were reinstated.

What is it about him that’s so important? If they had fired him with the others, they would have had a better chance of putting all these problems behind them, so whatever they want him for, it must be important enough to risk ruining everything, and going through another revolt.

Clearly it involves his wife, Gemma, who was supposed to be dead, but appeared to be working at Lumon under a different name before she was fired last season. But it was his wife’s death that prompted Mark to get severed, so is there something particularly special about him that the company is so eager to have him on their staff? All throughout season one, no matter how many mistakes he made or rules he broke, Lumon always allowed him to stay on.

One person who the company isn’t keen to get back is Kobel, who was fired, despite her devotion to Lumon and her idol Keir Eagan. It would seem like a bad idea to have her as an enemy on the outside, rather than as an ally on the inside.

It’s interesting to see in this episode how being severed affects these workers beyond their day jobs. Last season showed that a lot of people were uncomfortable around Mark when the subject of his work came up, but here we see that Dylan is refused a job at a new company when they find out he worked on the severed floor at Lumon, which makes both their Innies and Outies dependent on the company, though they clearly didn’t spend five months unemployed before they were brought back, like Milchek said.

Now, though, there’s been a big shift, as both of their personalities are aware that something isn’t right at Lumon, and with Mark already making some efforts to crack what was really going on last season, after the death of his colleague Petey, there’s a chance he’ll get back to work on that, if he thinks there’s a chance his wife is still alive.

It’ll be interesting to see how these two parallel stories will unfold as the series continues, as the characters try to uncover the same mysteries, by can’t ever come together to share what they know. So far, I’d say the Innies had the more interesting side of the story, but there’s still time for that to be balanced out in future episodes.