Tonight, Apple TV+ will air the season 2 finale of Severance, and I don't know if people are ready. The penultimate episode, "The After Hours," set up some pretty crazy plot developments. The big one is that Mark's sister Devon (Jen Tullock) called in former Lumon true believer Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) to help her brother through the reintegration process. And she now knows that Mark's wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) is being held in the bowels of the Lumon building, where they're performing experiments on her.
Asking for help from Ms. Cobel seems like a huge risk, since she used to be a steadfast agent of Lumon and has told plentiful lies during her time as manager of the severed floor. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Jen Tullock said that Devon's decision to bring her in was inspired by "pure desperation." Her brother Mark (Adam Scott) was suffering from the reintegration process, and there aren't too many other people who know anything about it.
"Look, if anyone threatened my [real life] brother or his partner, I would turn into a full Euripides character: blind fury. Wild eyes. Questionable ethics," Tullock said. "Devon has been pushed to the brink, so by the time Asal [Reghabi] tells her the truth about Gemma, this [still breastfeeding, exhausted] woman is ready for battle. I think she trusts Cobel as far as she can flick her, but ultimately knows it’s this plan or nothing at all."
In a show full of characters who have had their personalities split in two, or who work for a weird cult company like Lumon, Devon is a more-or-less normal person. "I was excited to peer a bit deeper into Devon’s interior world this season," Tullock said. "So much of her story in season one is focused on her care and concern for Mark, so getting to broaden that scope a bit to include her own history was really exciting."
Ricken Hale scene were cut from Severance season 2
One of the new things we saw from Devon was some tension in her marriage with her husband Ricken (Michael Chernus). In the first season, his self-help book The You You Are helped some of the Innies on the severed floor find their own identities, but this year, Lumon convinced him to rework it so it's more palatable to their aims. Basically, Ricken sold out, and Devon isn't happy about it.
"We’ve definitely met Devon and Ricken at a particular moment in time, so my love for them as a couple is colored by my understanding that they shared several years of humor and levity and love before Lumon came stomping in," Tullock said. "If we get to keep going, I’ll be interested to see how their marriage fares in future storylines and I hope whatever that may look like, it’s what’s best for them both."
Tullock also revealed that there were at least a couple of scenes with the couple that got left on the cutting room floor, which is a shame considering that pretty much everything that comes out of Ricken's mouth is comedy gold. "It’s inevitable that things get the axe if they don’t serve the story or aren’t working, and I do think we lost one or two scenes with a (very fussy) baby in Devon and Ricken’s house," she said. "Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that Michael Chernus could fill an entire season of Ricken ad libs. The guy’s a national treasure."
As for whether we'll get to see Devon and Ricken in "future storylines," I'm going to guess that Severance will get renewed for a third season without incident; this season has been great and the best may be yet to come. "I’m excited at any possibility of continuing to tell her story. And you better believe I’d love to meet Devon’s innie," Tullock said. "I think she’d be a real trip."
For now, we'll see what Devon and company get up to in the season 2 finale. "[A]s Ricken has acquiesced to Lumon’s pitch for his book, she’s so activated that by the time she discovers what they’ve done to Gemma, she’s ready for blood," Tullock said. We have now entered the splash zone.
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