Severance Season 2 Review: The Desire to Regain Possession of One’s Identity and Suspense!
From 17 January 2025 Severance Season 2 landed Almost three years after his debut with the first, hallucinating and brilliant, TV series produced by Ben Stiller which combines genres such as science fiction, thriller, and the so-called workplace comedy (of The Office, for example) to tell the story of a company where some workers underwent surgery that completely separates the memories of personal life from those of the experiences lived in the office. If you happened here by chance and have never seen Severance you are doubly lucky, because you have discovered an unmissable series and because you have plenty of time to recover from season 1 before dedicating yourself to Severance Season 2, but you should stop here reading to avoid spoilers. If, on the other hand, you are on par and are looking for opinions to decide whether or not to return to the spooky offices of Lumon Industries, know that Severance Season 2 is, at least in the first half that we have seen in the preview, perfectly up to the long and almost exhausting expectations, but in our opinion, you should still have some patience before watching Severance Season 2.
Why do we explain it later but first let’s briefly recap where we were left and anticipate the plot of this second season without spoilers. TV returns and second chapters are never easy, especially when crushed by the weight of growing expectations. Success opens up new possibilities but is full of expectations and stories born far from the attention of the public, critics, and the press. To give a very recent example over time, Squid Game is only the latest victim of the pressure generated by this system, unable to tame magnified expectations, to repeat and improve. Director Ben Stiller and showrunner Dan Erickson took it instead 3 years and a budget that is rumored to have few precedents, but they put a second miracle on the Apple TV plate +: chapter two of a series that started with a stellar season at the height of its predecessor. Severance Season 2 manages to revive ambitions, double the stakes, and even, at times, do even better in terms of complexity and emotions. A miracle that the streaming platform, very rich in high-quality series but unable to make them breakthrough on a planetary level, is desperately needed.
Severance Season 2 Review: The Story Plot
Where did we stay? The finale of the first season of Severance left us all with bated breath, with the Mark Scout (Adam Scott) inside the Lumon who had managed to unlock the separation barrier that Severance them between private life inside the offices and external life, to tragically come to find out that his wife, in life out of work, she was not dead and that the fate of the latter was probably linked to Lumon. With the start of the second season, we realize how much this information acquired by Mark “inside” will be the emotional catapult to implement a silent limelight plan against his mysterious superiors and discover the truth about his wife. With the help of his usual department colleagues, once again played by John Turturro, Zach Cherry, and Britt Lower. We do not go into more detail on the pure and hard plot of Severance Season 2 because we want to let the loyal TV viewers discover how the delicate narrative balance conceived and set up by Dan Erickson will develop in the second pin on Apple TV + starting from Friday 17 January, but we try to enter the discussion already courageously with outstretched legs: Severance Season 2 maintains the very high expectations and promises of the first episodes of three years if not even exceeding them. A real artistic and television miracle that should be celebrated with greater media visibility.
The story picks up exactly where we left it, with those stylish atmospheres of Lost (another heir, already, in his way), who through a compassionate rhythm and a well-balanced tension increased the curiosity in the spectators about the twists and turns about the true identities of the protagonists: Mark’s late wife (Adam Scott), or the reason why he had chosen that double life, is alive (Dichen Lachman) as well as the wellness manager at Lumon (the company that launched the title project). Helly (Britt Lower) is an Eagan, the powerful family in charge, so it’s undercover to experience that experiment firsthand. Dylan (Zach Cherry) has a wife (whom we will know in the new episodes) and a daughter and must keep that job at all costs. Finally, Irv (John Turturro) found that his beloved Burt has a family and is happy outside the workplace. Finally, the employees-leaders of the company – Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) and Mrs. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) – both had their gain to follow.
Severance Season 2 Review and Analysis
It has been a very troubled three years for Severance’s production. Between real strikes by Hollywood actors and screenwriters and alleged quarrels between the authors of this series that would have involved the creator of the first subject of 2016, Dan Erickson, and the other showrunner Mark Friedman, with consequent entry into the writers’ room of Beau Willimon (creator of House of Cards is Andor), we almost feared that the day of exit of Severance Season 2 would never come. But now that we’re here, we recommend that you still stay away from the creepy Lumon building. Mind you: Severance Season 2 has fully convinced us, and how we liked it (in case you didn’t trust it) has already obtained a consensus among the international critics on the levels of the first highly acclaimed season. The psychological intrigues (shown on the screen and induced in the mind of the public) and their ethical implications are always the top elements of this series which, even in the lock of an office (not to mention the outdoor scenes), manages to be visually impacting.
The interactions between the characters, the Severances of the protagonists, and the curiosity to discover how this singular challenge continues between the interiors and their exteriors make Severance Season 2 a narratively impeccable and extremely compelling season. And that’s why, if you make it, we advise you to wait a little longer before seeing the second season: because Severance Season 2 is a series to be seen in one breath, immersing your mind in this distorted and disturbing reality without the ” distraction “of another film or another series that confuses your ideas. So, since with one episode per week, Severance Season 2 goes on until March 21, if you want to enjoy it at best, wait a few more weeks, take care of the first season, and then dedicate yourself to the new one in time so as not to have long breaks until the final. For such a compelling TV series, it will be worth it.
The second season of the Severance is phenomenal, as much as the first. In his first six episodes (the four final episodes were not provided to the press) he compensates for every smudge or small impasse with as many moments in which, strong of what was done in the first season, dig even deeper, hover even higher. Sometimes it is possible to anticipate some twists, but this makes the vision even more tense, in a narrative universe that is a spectrum of awareness among the various actors on the field, where it is not only the Severance that has a partial vision, but that also comes manipulated. As per the request of the broadcaster, understandably worried that those who have seen the preview episodes may reveal too early, I will refrain from any specification on the plot, so as well as the hymns of Lumon you will have to take what will be revealed to you as true. Or that Severance manages to keep the advancement of the plot together and the exploration of the underground of the Lumon with the maintenance of the complexity that has always characterized this fun scientific title.
The answers arrive – in quantity – but every revelation is veined with the colors of doubt. His horizons are broad in the plan of Severance employees and the lives of their outies, carefully exploring the fallout of the OTD, the protocol through which at the end of last season the innies managed for the first time to take a look at the life of the versions of themselves living outside the Lumon. As in really well-orchestrated stories (and as in the reality of the United States and the world dominated by the ultra-capitalist logics of supranational corporations), the truth tells such a complex reality that it is difficult not to end up prey to paranoia. Once again there are passages on Lumon’s staff management of a brutal one who wonders with amazement how they can come from one of the great Big Tech sisters that Lumon calls so closely. The short trip to the world “out” gave the hymns Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan shreds of truth that they precisely have only the growing awareness of their impotence concerning their company.
As spectators, we have an overview that allows us to grasp more of the depth of the machinations and manipulations with which Lumon manages this image and the trust crisis of its Severance employees. Yet at the same time, Severance shows us how many outies are also manipulated, monitored, and moved like pawns in a game that becomes more and more exciting, and more complex. How much even we, who follow the story from both sides of the barricade, are caught off guard by the pervasiveness of a corporate vision that from totalizing becomes almost totalitarian. Alternating the point of view of who is outside and who is inside the Lumon, the hymns, the outies, and all the people who interact with them, Severance provides a brutal commentary on the pervasiveness that the working sphere ends up having on people’s lives, even on those who are part of the management. Among the merits of this second season is that of digging into the logic of those who watch the hymns, of those who consider them pawns in their game, refraining from easy moral judgments but underlining how, perhaps, you can’t sell a lie so well without self-deceiving yourself.
Our statement is quite strong, but we believe with conviction. With the first season of Severance, screenwriter Dan Erickson had created a contemporary world for small screens dangerously too close and twinning with ours, with echoes and narrative touches of dystopian science fiction that in the years following the debut of the first, glorious season had meant that many critics of the sector and simple enthusiasts combined it with the supernatural puzzles of cult series such as Twin Peaks, Lost, The Leftovers and the most recent From. A company did not bid the one they have joined Severance in recent years, which instead of generating unequal and often unflattering comparisons, this time is the mirror of what the television product created by Erickson and directed in part by Ben Stiller is in all respects a model that has made and will probably continue to make school. Even more than in the first season, Severance Season 2 is a narrative matryoshka of playful, intelligent, and always original emotions and narrative paths.
If Erickson’s show was born as a dystopian vision of a contemporary society (ours) in which dependent work was told with touches of disconcerting Orwellian matrix (every reference to the literary masterpiece 1984 is strongly desired by the creators of the series), now the narrative universe and twists multiply by productive and narrative needs, amplifying the ultimate meaning and the message of Severance to levels so deep and unexpected that it made us pleasantly displaced. From these words that link the fundamental concept of Severance, it is then to be taken into account how much the series starring Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, and Christopher Walken is the most intelligent and autonomous product born on and for the small screen following the most precious teachings of the great puzzles of the past. Above all, proudly seems to follow the trail of the mysteries between contemporaneity and esotericism of The Secrets of Twin Peaks by Lynch and Frost, and of The Leftovers which was created by Damon Lindelof himself who was the author of years before one of the greatest television puzzles of all time: Lost, of which Dan Erickson’s show is often indebted, in structure and ambitions.
So, as it was for the first season, also the second television event of Severance is a masterpiece of balances and ambitions, miraculously kept up from a narrative plan developed by its creator that seems not to let go very soon (an idea seems to be already in the pipeline for a third, already highly anticipated season for AppleTV+). After all, it was not easy to replicate the enthusiasm and originality of the first season of this increasingly expanding small TV phenomenon. Instead, with the arrival of the second television appointment, Severance is reconfirmed as one of the most satisfying and accomplished hidden jewels of the small screen in recent years. A small television masterpiece still far too little known to the general public of streaming users, which instead should invest more in the highest quality products of the Apple platform and (re) discover the masterpiece in the making created by the extraordinary Dan Erickson.
With intelligence and skill, they are introduced to new characters who immediately enter the connective tissue of the season, asking new questions and making it even more complex. The best monologue is reserved for a character who appears only in the most advanced stages of the narrative (and it is a coup d’état to be left speechless), but the real revelation of the season is Miss Huang (Sarah Brook), a girl who welcomes the protagonists on their return to the Severance plane that acts as Milchick’s right-hand man. The hymns, like the spectators, continue to ask her astonished that a little girl in the office will make us: the answers are sparse, but the character is incredibly charming in his being unsettling and disturbing for implications, strong of a performance that looks extraordinary. Implications have a lot to do with feelings and families, starting from the Kier, who among them do not seem less influenced by the bizarre manuals of conduct that created the cult of the founder at Lumon.
After the kiss between Helly and Mark and the separation between Irv and Burt, the series deepens even more the complexities of these relationships, comparing them with their outie counterparts. The loneliness of some outies contrasts with the hymns that are measured by their decisions, making their own. On a technical level, Severance remains flawless and makes it clear from the very first scene. The opening of the first episode resumes the start of the series, transforming it into a sort of fake dizzying sequence plan for length and complexity, with continuous changes of lenses, directions, and shots, with the camera chasing Adam Scott and then the interpreter who, on the contrary, entering and leaving his field, as if to say: we are back and few can keep our rhythm. Get ready for the race. Just to reiterate the concept and make the most of an even richer budget, the series has an episode set on the outside with a new setting.
A change that allows you to breathe a series played on the duality between blinding corridors in their being white and non-descriptive and equally impersonal and anonymous houses and streets. Even the acronym is renewed in its images, anticipating that the bizarre dimension that permeates the evangelical symbolism of Lumon will return to give us great surreal moments. Individualism and team spirit are the two forms of (non) collaboration that are most frequently seen in the workplace: the serial sui generis continues to talk about these aspects too. What makes us truly unique as human beings and above all distinct from us, and how we deal with confrontation with others. Philosophy, sociology, and anthropology: here are the lands where the Apple series moves, where it tries to find roots and fertility to blossom. There is not only the excellent performance (a confirmation) of the cast chosen for the inaugural season but also that of the important one new entry: from the girl (!) played by Sarah Bock who inexplicably is a new office manager, definitely over the top Gwendoline Christie which has to do with the mysterious goats; until always sweet and wonderful Meritt Weaver in a role that we don’t reveal to you.
And if then the great chariot of the Lumon has returned to move, it will be up to you to decide whether to place it in front of or behind the oxen (indeed, the goats). After all, the big series does this: ask the right questions at the right time. With the important caveat that the writer is not given to know if Severance will be able to maintain this impressive narrative complexity until the end of the second season, what was seen in the first six episodes suggests that he has all the credentials to close big and confirm himself as one of the best series of the past 10 years and more. One of the few capable of creating a totalizing vision and putting a lot of restlessness on them when, in the real world, an event or detail reminds us of how much Lumon was created starting from a vision that is not so dissimilar to what has taken foot in our way of thinking about work and relationships today. In a couple of steps, the spectator’s suspension of disbelief is put a little to the test, but otherwise, Severance does not miss anything: never an interpreter, a directorial choice, or a relaunch. It remains a fantastic series, to be seen or recovered with the highest priority.
Severance Season 2 Review: The Last Words
It was not easy to replicate the enthusiasm and originality of the first season of Scission. Instead, with the arrival of the second television appointment of the Dan Erickson show, it is reconfirmed as one of the most satisfying and accomplished hidden jewels of the small screen in recent years. A small television masterpiece that should be discovered by multiple users. Composed of ten episodes, Severance Season 2 is masterfully interpreted by Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Patricia Arquette, and the rest of the cast. Between corridors and minimalist rooms, Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle perform the real wonder at the direction, with the use of lights and machine movements – like the cart backward – which create dynamism and make the sensation of a claustrophobic environment, disturbing and distressing experienced by the characters. The incredible soundtrack – which also belongs Eminence Front of the Who – contributes to increasing ’emotional experience of the spectators. The meticulous script makes new narrative arcs extraordinarily interesting, especially thanks to the ability to spread clues in a not-insignificant emotional crescendo.
Cast: Adam Scott, John Turturro, Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette
Created By: Dan Erickson
Streaming Platform: Apple TV+
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4.5/5 (four and a half stars)
