The first season of Severance landed on Apple TV+ in 2022, coming out of nowhere to blow everyone's minds with its brain-bending story about office dwellers who couldn't remember anything about their lives from the outside when they were at work, and vice versa. Has the "severance" procedure effectively created a bunch of a new people? If so, what is the company's responsibillty towards them? I can't wait for the second season to dig deeper into those questions.
Season 1 ended with Mark S. (Adam Scott) and some of his fellow severed workers finding a way to explore the outside world. They managed to make contact with folks on the outside, but the managers at Lumon Industries figured out what they were doing and put a stop to it before it could get too far.
What happens next? We'll have to wait until the season 2 premiere on January 17...OR DO WE? If you're an Apple TV+ subscriber, you can go watch the first eight minutes of season 2 right now!
Apple hasn't officially released the footage online, but we can describe it. Here's your last chance to get out before we start SPOILING things.
What happens in the first 8 minutes of Severance season 2?
The episode opens with Mark S. coming to in the elevator going down to the basement of Lumon, which is what happens whenever his consciousness comes online. This is the first time Mark S. has been woken up since the end of season 1, and he is confused. There's a great sequence where he runs around the uncanny corridors of the Lumon basement while light jazz music plays; you can see bits of that in the season 2 trailer above.
Mark runs into Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), a Lumon manager who has since been promoted to running the whole floor, the position formerly held by Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette). Milchick, who's acting like everything is normal and fine rather than confusing and terrifying, catches Mark up on what's gone down since the events of the season 1 finale: Mark and his friends were able to get the word out about the severed employees being mistreated, and are now the faces of the severance reform movement. It looks like the company is in the middle of a PR spin; they've blamed the whole thing on Ms. Cobel's mismanagement, essentially going with the "one bad apple" theory of corporate malfeasance, and are outwardly promising to institute reforms.
We in the audience know the rot goes much deeper than than that, and so does Mark. Clearly, weird things are still afoot and secrets are still being kept. For instance, Mark's friends Helly R (Britt Lower), Irving B (John Turturro) and Dylan G (Zach Cherry) are nowhere to be found. Instead, Mark is introduced to a new team of severed workers played by Bob Balaban, Alia Shawkat, Stefano Carannante and Sarah Bock. Milchick claims that the outside-the-office versions of Helly, Irving and Dylan all refused to come back, and that Mark's "outie" is the only one who chose to return. Knowing this show, I'm betting the full truth is a lot more complicated.
The first eight minutes of the season 2 premiere are very much in keeping with the first season of the show: creepy, funny, tense and engaging. Unlike the first season, which had nine episodes, the second season will have a full suite of 10. Bring 'em on!
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