‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 5 Review

The fifth season of AppleTV+ thriller ‘’Severance’ takes us back to the office, as the team deals with the effects of last week’s ORTBO.

After everything that happened last episode, we get back to the severed floor, where the MacroData Refinement team have to deal with the “death” of Irving, and the revelation that Helly is actually an Eagan, and has been masquerading as her innie to spy on them.

After he’s permanently dismissed, the team decides to hold a funeral for Irving. It’s interesting to see how they view this as a death, even though his outie will still be alive and well. He was a different personality while at work, and had different relationships, and different beliefs, all of which are now gone. It’s not something that people on the outside seem to feel, as few of the workers even have feelings for their innie, or care what happens to them,

There is a possibility that he could return in some way, partly because Lumon could have a failsafe, so they can reactivate him if need be, but also because he’s acting suspiciously, calling someone at night from a public phone. Could he have reintegrated too? It doesn’t seem to be the case, I don’t think, as he was genuinely surprised when the OverTime Contingency awoke him, but it looked like his outie was trying to find out information about Lumon and who worked there, so he could be in touch with Reghabi, who might be able to do something about recovering his severed personality.

This episode felt a bit lacking in something. Maybe it’s just in comparison with last week, where a whole lot of weird stuff happened, and really took some wide swings. Now we’re back in the familiar office environment, and things have returned to “normal”. But I think it’s more than that, there wasn’t really anything big to take from this episode, more like just a few crumbs that we’ve already had before, like Mark’s reintegration beginning to work.

To keep the tension in a thriller like this, there has to be either a new twist added, or some piece of new information revealed every episode, but that just wasn’t there this time. It’s a common thing with a lot of shows that they drag in the middle, and with luck things will pick up again towards the finale, but right now, this was one of the more forgettable episodes.