Severance Continues Its Return With an Awesome, Outie-Focused Episode

So we saw what happened with the innies, but what about the outies? The second episode of Severance season two is basically the inverse of the premiere, focusing on events immediately after the first season finale but this time viewed exclusively from the outies’ perspective. What was the fallout of a Lumon executive telling everyone severance is torture? What about one of their employees realizing his dead wife might actually be alive? All is—well, not answered, but at least recontextualized in a fantastic episode called “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig.”

When Mark screamed “She’s alive!” at the end of season one, we all knew he was referring to his wife Gemma, aka Ms. Casey at Lumon. But think about it from his family’s perspective. How could that even be possible? What or who was innie Mark referring to? “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig” starts there, at the party, but makes us wait just a few minutes before really jumping into it. Instead, things focus on the second most intriguing thing from season one’s finale: Helly’s outburst in front of everyone at Lumon.

Once her father confirms his daughter is actually herself again, Helly and the rest of the Lumon executives put a plan into place. Milchick must check on all the outies while others work to control the media and confiscate any footage from the event. Helly herself even films an apology video blaming the outburst on alcohol mixed with non-Lumon drugs and says the whole thing was a joke. “We’re being tortured!” Super funny joke.

Most importantly, Helly deals with Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who makes her season two debut. Remember, Harmony was fired last season but when she realized innie Mark was at his sister’s house, not outie Mark, she was the one who ratted them all out to Milchick. The choice destroyed any chance she had of being Mark’s friend and neighbor, but also proved her loyalty to Lumon. So, now, she’s being “rewarded.” Lumon wants her to come back, but to a job that’s not on the severed floor. They want her to work on something called the “Severance Advisory Council,” which she’s never heard of. She says she’ll think about it.

Meanwhile, after speeding away on his motorcycle like something out of a James Bond movie, Milchick fires both Dylan and Irving, thereby revealing that he lied to innie Mark in the first episode about why they didn’t return to Lumon. It’s far from the only lie we discover in this episode.

© Apple TV+

Following the return of the awesome, revamped-for-season-two opening credits sequence (with plenty of little hints at what’s to come this season), we pick up with Mark talking to his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and her husband Ricken (Michael Chernus). Their consensus is “she’s alive” must have been referring to the couple’s briefly missing baby, because the alternative simply seems impossible. The issue still lingers in the air when Milchick arrives. Devon, in particular, greets him coldly after everything Mark’s innie told her about Lumon, but Milchick just wants to know what happened. He assures them that Harmony won’t bother them again and they do not reveal that Mark implied someone is alive.

At this point, Lumon may think it holds all the cards, but clearly it doesn’t. The executives don’t know that innie Mark said anything about his wife being alive and they don’t know that Irving went to see Burt. At least not yet. There is a certain obsession with what happened, though, as evidenced through some very telling scenes of outie Helly watching footage of her innie kissing Mark. She’s enjoying the footage, maybe even too much. Maybe Helly the Lumon executive isn’t used to that type of emotion and is jealous of her innie. The scene also adds a bit more intrigue to last episode’s lie about the night gardener.

Without the job at Lumon, Dylan attempts to gain employment at a door store, before being denied once it’s revealed he was severed. It’s another insight into how the outside world views the severed.  Devon and Mark meet up again too where the impossibility of Gemma being alive is discussed. It’s a fraught, emotional scene in which Mark reveals he’s going to quit Lumon and ends with the reveal of Lumon’s own Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) being in the booth next to them, hearing everything that was said.

Armed with that knowledge, Milchick arrives at Mark’s house with an offer. He apologizes for the intrusion the previous night and promises a raise and regular wellness checks if Mark returns to work. When that doesn’t work, Milchick asks about Gemma. We initially think this might have something to do with Lumon having her, but instead it’s about Mark’s emotional state. Milchick tells outie Mark that innie Mark is both happy and quite possibly in love. That’s not 100% true but the realization a part of him could be happy does convince Mark to go back to work.

About here is where the episode caught up to the previous one as we watched Mark get ready to start his first day back. That happened in tandem with a discussion between Helly and some other Lumon executives, which reveals it’s only been two days since the previous incident. Basically, Lumon did everything in its power to get Mark back so he can finish “Cold Harbor,” the project he’s been working on with the numbers. And no, we don’t know what it means, nor do we have any guesses.

Mark goes back to Lumon for one day, two days, and after leaving on the third day we realize that’s the day he ran to Milchick’s office to contact the board about bringing his friends back. Milchick told innie Mark it had been five months since the incident— but in actuality, it had been less than a week. It’s odd that they lied but not so odd now that we know how badly Lumon needs Mark. So Milchick returns to both Dylan and Irv’s homes with the same fruit basket he gave Mark and hires them back. Helly is back too, though, we are even less sure than last week which version of her this actually is.

© Apple TV+

As episode two finally moves forward in time, Mark arrives home after work to see that Harmony—who his outie knew to be named Mrs. Selvig, before he realized she was also his boss at Lumon—is next door packing up her car. He confronts her but she refuses to answer any questions. Questions like “Who are you” and “What the fuck is this all about?” No answers. Then Mark hits her with the big one: “Do you something about Gemma?” A clearly flustered Harmony blasts her horn at him and speeds off, having answered none of Mark’s questions and only one of our own. I guess we know she didn’t take that new job at Lumon.

While telling the same story from a different perspective, Severance’s second episode this season felt almost like a totally new show. The outside world has a different intensity about it. A scarier, more immediate feel. One that was sewn into each and every scene of Lumon attempting to control the situation and the outies trying to reconcile what they’re experiencing. But now, after two episodes, Severance is locked and loaded to move ahead.

Additional thoughts

• Did you notice that all the cars at Lumon are super old? Why is that? We have no idea but it certainly speaks to the weirdness around this company town.
• And speaking of cars, we once again got a glimpse of a local license plate, this time on Milchick’s motorcycle. It says “Remedium Hominibus” which apparently means “A cure, for mankind.” Very creepy.
• Mark’s new MDR team at Lumon gets one last moment here as Milchick reveals he put the group together in 48 hours and that Bob Balaban and Alia Shawkat’s characters were both from the “5X” branch. Which, apparently, is not a good thing. Balaban’s character is then seen being taken out angrily as he screams about breaking a lease in Grand Rapids to only work at this Lumon branch three days.
• That’s one of several places the show is specific to let us know about the passage of time. So, why would Milchick lie about it? Was a few days not enough time to plausibly seed the idea of them actually being celebrities?

New episodes of Severance arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.

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