The season 2 premiere of Severance took place entirely within the basement of Lumon, where we watched Mark and the other innies run around without any idea what was happening in the outside world. In Episode 2, "Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig," we flip the script and discover what the outies were doing.
As predicted, pretty much everything Mr. Milchick told Mark in the season premiere was a big fat lie. The outies for Dylan and Irving didn't refuse to come back; Milchick fired them. The innies didn't get famous after their jailbreak, and Lumon hasn't adopted any new policies in response to public backlash; all the bullshit reforms the innies heard about last week were done to placate those four specifically. In the real world, Lumon is trying to sweep everything under the rug. Recording a message for the public, Helly's outie lies and says that everything she did at Lumon's black tie event at the end of season 1 was the result of her getting drunk and making bad jokes.
Honestly, I thought there would be some grain of truth to what Milchick told Mark in the premiere, but it ends up that everything was made up. It feels like the innies are now wise enough to know that, but we won't find out for sure until next week; they don't show up at all in this episode.
We do spend time with their outies, though, including the outies for Dylan and Irving, a first for the series. Dylan has the most interesting journey. He's a family man in desperate need of funds, and apparently working as a severed employee at Lumon doesn't pay very well; I get the idea that his wife may have some kind of expensive disease. He interviews at a door factor, drawing directly from showrunner Dan Erickson's own personal experience. He does alright in the interview, but the second the hiring manager realized he's severed, he turns to ice.
Severed employees really have it rough; when they work for Lumon their innies are treated like child slaves, and when they don't they're discriminated against by polite society. I loved the dynamics of the door scene, with Dylan endearing himself to the hiring manager by faking a genuine interest in doors. I also loved watching the active conveyer belt of doors in the background. A lot of effort went into this brief sequence!
So it's no surprise why Dylan would jump at the opportunity to return to Lumon after crashing into the hard wall of the real-world job market. We learn less about Irving's life above ground, although he purposefully conceals from Lumon that he woke up pounding on Burt's door, and that he's spending a lot of his time painting compulsively painting a long black highway. Add that to the pile of mysteries this season will delve into.
Severance season 2, Episode 2 review, "Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig"
Mark is at the center of yet another new mystery. After the jailbreak, Lumon didn't fire him like it did Dylan and Irving, instead bringing in new workers to help him complete whatever it is he and his team were doing in the Macrodata Refinement Department. And when that didn't work, they hired back Dylan and Irving. Apparently, they need Mark to complete something called "Cold Harbor." I don't know what it is but I'm sure it's sinister.
Helly is also back in the bowls of the Lumon building. If she doesn't return, Mark won't keep working and Cold Harbor won't get finished; Cold Harbor must be really important if Lumon is forcing Helena Eagan, a major player at the company, to put herself at risk again by turning her body over to Helly R.
That said, I'm still not convinced it's our Helly, innie Helly, Helly R, who is now working with Mark. I think it might be Helena going undercover. And I think the show knows I think that, because the episode ends with a long meaningful shot of Helena getting on the elevator. The doors close before we see whether she transforms into Helly R. Way to tease us, Severance.
Or maybe Helana is willing to put herself at risk by turning in to Helly; whatever mission these people are on, they believe in it very strongly. Kier Eagan, the founder of the company, has a death grip on their wills. The idea of a CEO as a cult leader seemed a little far-fetched to me when I watched the first season of this show, but after a year of seeing Tesla CEO Elon Musk make an erratic spectacle of himself as her adherents willingly put themselves at risk to prove that his dodgy products are safe, I think I was being naive. We're already there.
A mystery wrapped in an enigma split down the brain
Like the premiere, this episode gives us far more questions than answers. If that goes on too long, it will get annoying, but here at the start of the season I'm more than willing to roll with it. Severance has a lot more going on than just the lure of mystery, after all. The characters can stand on their own. Take Mark Scout's lack of interest in everything going on at Lumon. He, his sister Devon and his brother-in-law Ricken Hale try to piece together what happened the night of the jailbreak, but Mark seems like he just wants to forget the whole thing and move on. He's still not over his wife's death and he's still looking for solace in the worst possible place, accepting Milchick's lie that some of the optimism and joy that Mark S summons beneath the Lumon building will eventually find its way up to him.
We don't know enough about Dylan and Irving to make this call yet, but for Mark and Helly, their innies are the best versions of themselves, which raises all kinds of knotty questions about identity. Helly R. is one of the my favorite characters on Severance, but Helena Eagan is the one I most want to see fail. And yet they both share the same body and are played by the same actor. That's the kind of weird dissonance you can only get from this show.
While Mark Scout is numb to the world, his sister Devon is now on the case after speaking with Mark's innie. It feels like she's going to start making inquiries at Lumon, which could be a death-defying course of action. If she's in danger, hopefully that will snap some sense into Mark.
Finally, we have Harmony Cobel, or Mrs. Selvig, or whatever's she's going by these days. Helena offers her a new job at Lumon as thanks for helping out during the jailbreak, but it sounds like a figurehead position and it has nothing to do with managing the severed floor. It's unclear if she takes it. Yet another thing to check back on next week. But she does have a fun scene with Mark where she seems on the cusp of maybe revealing something, but then honks her horn like a freak and drives into the snowy sunset. Her destination? F*ck if I know.
So this episode is all about set-up. We got a lot of new information but also a lot of new questions about that information. Again, that will get frustrating if it goes on too long. But right now, I'm happy to soak up the weird, eerie vibes.
Severance Bullet Points
- I love how while Mark and Devon are discussing the sinister inner workings of Lumon, Rickon Hale is just flattered that someone enjoyed his trashy self-help book. Rickon is hilarious, although I have a hard time believing Devon puts up with his foolishness; they don't seem to be a great match. How did those two find each other?
- After Milchick fires Dylan and Irving, he has to find people to replace them. Two of the replacements were laid off from "5X," which is apparently very scandalous within Lumon. Naturally, we don't find out why.
- Burt's outie is tracking Irving's outie. No, we don't know why. I'm guessing that something transpired between outie Burt and outie Irving after the jailbreak ended, something we don't know about yet.
Episode Grade: B
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