‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 4 Review

The latest episode of ‘Severance’ goes even weirder than usual, as the MDR team is allowed outside the office for the first time.

As part of the “perks” now offered to them by Lumon, Mark and the team are sent outside, to a forest dedicated to Kier Eagan’s brother Dieter. Like most things involving his family and his company, things aren’t quite normal. 

Kier has always been treated as next to a god, with his writings looked on as holy works, to be studied and adhered to by the employees at Lumon, but now things are even weirder, with the final book he wrote having a dark undertone that suggests he killed his brother, and made up an elaborate story to cover it up and relieve his guilt.

This raises the question of what else is made up by him. The team are told a whole bunch of lies, as Milchik says the small waterfall is the biggest in the world. Naturally, the Innies wouldn’t know this wasn’t true, but it adds to the way that Lumon exaggerates anything to do with Kier, and constantly lies to its employees.

And this episode raises more questions about what the company is doing, and whether they are capable of human cloning, with the “twins” they made of the MDR team. Maybe they are just robots, but we didn’t get a close enough look to be certain, and if they can clone, that could explain who Ms Casey really is.

This is the first time the Innies have been outside, apart from when they took over the OverTime Contingency machine at the end of last season. It’s clear Lumon has its own purposes for doing this, but it does seem likely to make them discontented with having to spend their entire lives trapped in an office, after seeing the outside world.

The most important thing revealed this episode is that Helly is actually still her Outie, Hellena Eagan. This is something Irving discovers, and goes so far as to almost kill her so she’ll admit it, which leads to him being fired. This doesn’t mean he just loses his job, though, he essentially loses his life, as the severed Irving B will no longer exist, and all record of him will be destroyed.

At least, that’s what Milchik says, though he and Dylan were fired before, but never “terminated” in this way, though they hadn’t actually tried to kill one of their colleagues. Maybe this is just another lie, then, and he could be brought back, at some point.

This episode was certainly different from most others, with a lot packed into it. Occasionally it strayed into horror territory, which is a good fit for a show that’s an unsettling psychological thriller, and is a big turning point for the show, with Irving gone, and potentially having to be replaced next episode, which would mark a big change for the team.