Severance, Season 2
The innie, the outie and the existential dismay
SPOILERS AHEAD
Now that the dust has settled (or rather, floated gently in stylised, symmetrical slow motion), it’s time to talk about Season 2 of Severance. A season that arrived with great anticipation, wandered into experimental terrain with the confidence of a first-year art student, and finished by smashing our collective hearts into tiny, surrealist pieces.
Let’s begin where the season did: on a high note. The first few episodes reintroduced us to the luminous bleakness of Lumon and its cheerfully traumatised employees. Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan all returned to their grey-carpeted purgatory, one by one, their faces a little more worn, their eyes slightly more haunted. And then—just when we were getting comfortable with the eerie fluorescents and perfectly-timed corporate dread—the show said: “Hold my Kier e-candle.”
Cue in: The Experimental Middle Stretch™.
Several episodes veered into arthouse territory—not badly. On the contrary: they were beautiful. Gorgeous, even. Directed with such visual precision you half expected a coffee-table book to appear alongside the end credits. But narratively? Let’s just say if you blinked during Episodes 6, 7, or 8, you may have spent the next 40 minutes wondering if you’d accidentally switched to a Scandinavian crime drama. One of the standout episodes—both visually stunning and narratively gutting—was the one exploring Gemma and Mark's backstory. Their quiet joy, their shared silliness, and the gradual, devastating fallout after learning they couldn’t have children—this was the emotional core of the season. Heartbreaking, intimate, and perfectly restrained.
On the other hand, Ms Cobel’s backstory—haunting and poetic—felt more like a self-contained tone poem. It was the shortest episode, yet paradoxically rich. Could it have been spread out in flashbacks across the season? Probably. But instead, perhaps that runtime could’ve been given to characters who spent most of this season loitering in narrative limbo: Rick and his delightfully suspicious reading club, the enigmatic Reghabi, outie Burt, and basically everyone who wasn’t trapped inside Lumon’s tastefully oppressive interiors.
Then, as if remembering it was, in fact, a story with momentum, the final two episodes said: “Let’s make up for everything.” And make up they did. Blood? Check. Murder? Of course. Dance sequence? Naturally. Existential horror? Served cold. Surrealism dripped from the walls like a leaky pipe in a metaphysical boiler room. We got humour so dry it should have come with a warning for dehydration, and heartbreak so pure it made your soul emit a small, defeated sigh. Which brings us to poor Gemma…
She got out. She got out. The woman who was once just a file in Mark’s grief folder managed to cross the threshold… thanks to innie Mark himself, no less. But because he’s still a toddler in Lumon years, he didn’t realise the weight of what he was doing. Not fully. So, as she steps into uncertain freedom, he steps back in—returning to Helly R., unaware he’s just abandoned the very thing his outie once mourned. It’s poetic. It’s cruel. It’s Severance.
And finally, the question of Lumon itself. What are they actually doing? Why were there so many innies activated simultaneously? What is the deal with the goat—and more importantly, why did Gemma have to be sacrificed alongside it? The show has always embraced ambiguity, but Season 2 flirted with outright obfuscation. It's one thing to raise questions. It's another to scatter them like breadcrumbs into a dark forest, then set the forest on fire and ask the viewer to find meaning in the ashes. Also—who raises goats for sacrificial purposes in a corporate basement? A deeply twisted company, that’s who.
Final verdict? An uneven, beautiful, emotionally devastating triumph. Is it perfect? No. Was it worth the existential whiplash and occasional narrative detour? Absolutely. And if Season 3 starts with interpretive dance in the break room followed by corporate-themed metaphysics, well… count me in. Coffee in hand. Heart slightly bruised.
Lastly, a PSA: I’m happy to report that Emile is fine. Emile is the name of the goat. I wouldn't dream of leaving you hanging on that front.
Score: 8.7/10, adjusted for innie bias.
PS: Minor nuisance (to me): Irving’s arc. His outie, who had been carefully piecing together Lumon’s dark secrets with the quiet tenacity of someone who alphabetises his vinyl collection, suddenly finds himself metaphorically and literally riding off into the sunset. And while it made for a beautiful, melancholic image, it also felt oddly disconnected from the path his character had been treading. After all that build-up, he simply… leaves? No final confrontation? No deeper dive into his knowledge? A gorgeous moment, yes—but a narratively frustrating one.