Apple TV+’s Severance astonished viewers in 2022 with its high-concept premise and eerie exploration of work-life boundaries and corporate control. Now, after a lengthy hiatus extended by Hollywood strikes, the series returns for a visually stunning yet occasionally vexing second season. While it maintains the surreal beauty and Kafkaesque workplace absurdity of its debut run, season two risks leaving viewers as adrift in its maze-like plot as its memory-wiped characters.
For the uninitiated, Severance unfolds in a world much like our own but with one key difference: the titular procedure allows employees to sever their memories, creating distinct “innie” identities for work and “outie” selves for their outside lives. It’s a chilling extrapolation of the work-life divide taken to a biotech extreme.
At enigmatic mega-corp Lumon Industries, Mark (Adam Scott) leads a team of severed employees—Dylan (Zach Cherry), Helly (Britt Lower), and Irving (John Turturro)—in the cryptic “macrodata refinement” department. As the innies start to question their circumstances and what their outies have signed them up for, a slow-burn rebellion ignites against their cultish corporate overlords.
The Stunning and the Bizarre
Director Ben Stiller and cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné continue to craft an uncanny retro-futuristic world, all stark whites, muted earth tones, and disconcerting symmetry. Every visual is meticulously staged for maximum unease, from the humming fluorescents of labyrinthine hallways to the toyland kitsch of the perpetually empty “perpetuity wing.” Watching Severance makes you feel like you’ve slipped into a dream that could at any moment tilt into nightmare.
That’s especially true this season as the show ventures beyond Lumon’s sanitized corporate confines. One standout episode unfolds in an otherworldly rendering of an outdoor party, lush greens and vivid sky distorted just enough to feel not-quite-right. It’s a relief to escape the cubicle farm, but there’s little normality to be found even under the vast open heavens.
The Emotional Undercurrents
Stiller and his uniformly stellar cast have always excelled at threading genuine emotion through the Orwellian bizarro-world of Lumon. Despite their bifurcated personas, each character pulses with wounded humanity, grasping for connection, meaning, and selfhood in a system designed to deny them exactly that.
That struggle takes on new intensity in season two as the “innies” make contact with their “outies” and begin to question whether reintegration is possible—or desirable. Turturro’s repressed company man yearning to express his true self is a particular standout, his hangdog countenance harboring glimmers of rebellion beneath a mask of obedience. And relative newcomer Tillman continues to impress as the ever-smiling manager Mr. Milchick, his facade of enthusiastic corporate servility barely containing an undercurrent of menace.
Lost in the Maze
Yet for all its strengths, season two of Severance stumbles at times under the weight of its own ambition and opacity. The non-linear storytelling and reality-questioning twists that felt refreshingly bold in season one occasionally veer towards convolution here. Mysteries multiply faster than answers, and character arcs meander through the dim corridors of Lumon in search of a clear narrative throughline.
Severance lures us through its labyrinth like Lumon’s innies—desperate to find coherence in the chaos and purpose in the void.
To be fair, this disorientation feels at least partly intentional, trapping us in the same unmoored purgatory as the severed employees. We’re meant to feel their confusion, their yearning for an ever-elusive truth. But there’s a fine line between artful ambiguity and frustration, and Severance doesn’t always fall on the right side of it. Sometimes watching feels like wandering a maze, marveling at its masterful construction while fearing you may never find the exit.
Still, even when it meanders, Severance remains a uniquely compelling creation—one part corporate satire, one part philosophical thought experiment, and one part perverse workplace sitcom. It’s never less than gorgeously crafted and boldly strange, a singular vision of late-capitalist dystopia viewed through the cracked looking-glass of the subconscious.
The Final Verdict
Season two of Severance may test the patience of viewers hungry for concrete answers and narrative momentum. But for those willing to lose themselves in its hypnotic rhythms and revel in its unsettling mysteries, it remains an utterly unique experience. Like Lumon’s hapless innies, we may feel adrift in the enigma, but there’s undeniable beauty in the journey—even if the destination remains maddeningly out of reach.
- Stunning, unsettling visuals that push the boundaries of the ordinary
- Outstanding performances injecting humanity into a cold corporate hellscape
- A daring experiment in non-linear, perception-bending storytelling
So surrender yourself to Severance. Let it split your mind with its hallucinatory visions of work and self. Just don’t expect easy answers or straightforward plotting. In Lumon’s world, as in ours, coherence is a precious and elusive commodity. For better or worse, season two leans hard into that destabilizing truth. How eagerly you embrace the disorientation may determine whether you feel severed from the show’s appeal or only more deeply immersed in its beguiling, disquieting layers. Either way, you’ll never look at corporate drudgery—or your own sense of self—quite the same way again.
