Television Show: Severance (Apple TV+)
Director: Ben Stiller
Rating: ★★★★½

With Severance’s highly anticipated second season concluding last month, it’s fair to say that this season left us with more questions than it did answers.

First airing in 2022, the Apple TV series follows a team of Lumon Industries employees who have surgically ‘severed’ their brains to consciously divide their work selves (the innie) and personal life (the outie)—adding a whole new meaning to the corporate work-life balance.

However, the series’ primary intrigue comes from the mystery of what it is their innies are really doing at work beneath the Lumon concrete floors. 

Last season left audiences with the cliff-hanger reveal that Mark’s (Adam Scott) late wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman), was secretly alive and being kept captive in Lumon’s ominous testing floor - a floor we’ve only seen in Irving’s (John Turturro) outie’s eerie paintings.

Now that you’re all caught up, let’s talk about season two.

Considering the prior season concluded with a major plot point, this season does very little to drive the story forward from where it previously ended. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Echoing The Bear’s recent season, director Ben Stiller has prioritised character depth and relationships over the plot. 

Stiller has successfully seized this season as an opportunity to not only flesh out the captivating lore of the series, but also dissect its enigmatic characters that are so integral to the series' success.

Whilst this dictatorial decision made Apple TV’s weekly release schedule gradually more tantalising each Monday, the various sides of characters, innies included, on screen this season was truly riveting. 

A notable character was former supervisor now manager of the severed floor, Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) or Mr Milkshake, as other Mark’s (Bob Balaban) innie calls him. 

Rather than blatantly ignoring Milchick being one of the very few People of Colour who have been working at Lumon, particularly in a leadership role, this season leans into the external pressures and personal conflicts that arise from his identity in this new role.

For a character that was collectively disliked by fans, season two does a brilliant job in rallying the viewers to almost root for our favourite Lumon villain. Viewers start to see him in the same light as we do with the innies; victims of Lumon. He, like the innies, has feelings and is fed up with Lumon’s ​​pedantic rules and microaggressions.

Another mentionable character is our protagonist, or protagonists, Mark and Mark S., his innie.

In the season finale, ‘Cold Harbor’, there was a 10–minute conversation between the pair as they go back and forth arguing through a video camera. 

It’s through this vital scene, that we finally stop viewing Mark S. as an extension of Mark, but as a separate person entirely with his own needs and desires. Throughout this season, we’ve witnessed Mark’s gruelling attempt to reintegrate, with the hope that he’ll be more successful than his former peer Petey (Yul Vazquez) from the prior season.

However, we never considered what reintegration meant for his innie nor his feelings about it.

That’s what makes the final scene of Mark S. and Helly R. (Britt Lower) ditching Gemma in the outside world and running down the Lumon halls together madly in love so much more bittersweet as viewers. 

Should we be devastated about Mark and Gemma, or cheering for Mark S. and his work wife Helly R?

This season brilliantly tackles the complexity attached to the autonomy of the innie.

Through subtle hints and character interactions, the series questions the ethical boundaries of creating and controlling these fragmented consciousnesses. 

Aside from the stellar performances by the cast, one honourable aspect of this season that cannot be glossed over is the elevation in set design and cinematography. 

Aesthetically, season two effortlessly expands Lumon’s distinct cold, sterile visual identity beyond the office, whilst also offering a first glimpse into what Mark’s life looked like before Lumon.

The outstanding camerawork in the seventh episode ‘Chikhai Bardo’— the second-highest rated episode—directed by the series' cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné plunges viewers into almost an entirely different visual world than the fluorescent overhead lighting we’re used to.

Cleverly switching mediums to film capturing Mark and Gemma’s relationship pre-Lumon, ‘Chikhai Bardo’ felt like the personification of a love poem.

It’s gorgeous, intimate, and heart-wrenching. Not to mention the awesome lack of CGI and reliance on tedious camerawork. 

Overall, this season was worth the wait, giving us some memorable memes, a Mark and Gemma reunion (sort of) and best yet a sequel Milchick dancing sequence. 

Let’s just hope season three comes out sooner, we simply cannot wait that long to find out what’s going to happen to our girl Gemma?!