Severance Season 2 Review: A Different Show Entirely

Severance Season 2 is a completely different, more psychologically intriguing kind of show than the first, taking us to much darker places and delving into human nature.

The show revolves around four co-workers at the mysterious Lumon Industries who agreed to undergo a procedure that surgically divided their memories, creating two separate versions of each person: an “Innie” who spends their entire life at work, and an “Outie” who gets to have a life, and who has no idea of what happens at Lumon. The first season began with the arrival of Helly R. (Britt Lower), a new severed employee who joined Mark (Adam Scott), Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving’s (John Turturro) team, making them question anything from the nature of their work to their own identities. Determined to find a way to reach out to their Outies, our Innies devised a plan that led to even more shocking revelations: Helly is related to Lumon’s first CEO Kier Eagan, and Mark’s Outie’s wife, whom he thought dead, might actually be alive on the severed floor.

With Season 2, not only did Severance have to match the sheer beauty and creativity of Season 1, but it also needed to find ways to keep the intrigue going after the shocking revelations of the finale, which gave us one of the best cliffhangers in television history but also uncovered some of the mysteries of its titular procedure. This means that viewers would be going into this second season knowing a lot more about what goes on at Lumon, but still expecting to find the same kind of addictive, mind-bending storytelling we got in the first – the kind that makes you want to start a new episode the moment the previous one ends, so strong is the need to find out what happens next.

Season 2 of Severance takes a while to get going and is, in some ways, less rewarding than the first: just when you’re beginning to be truly blown away by it, it puts on the breaks and starts setting up more mysteries for the already in development Season 3. This ultimately leaves us with more questions than answers, which is particularly frustrating given how long we’ve been waiting for these new episodes. Yet, at the same time, it’s also exciting to see Severance dive into new territory and evolve into a completely different kind of show – one that may not hold as many puzzles to solve and that still doesn’t give us much insight into what Lumon does, but that’s so much darker and so much more psychologically compelling than Season 1 was.

If the series started as an analysis of work-life balance and an exploration of one’s identity in and out of the workplace, Season 2 has us pondering the very nature of humanity, dedicating equal time to the Innies and Outies and ultimately asking us: who would our Outies – Mark Strong, Helly Eagan, Irving Bailiff, Dylan George, and even Lumon managers like Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) and Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) – have turned out to be without the trauma that came from the outside world? Who would the Innies have become without the loneliness that came from their confinement? If memories are what make us who we are, are each Innie and Outie the same person or are they two completely different people? And if the time came to make a choice, which one should keep living, and which should cease to exist?

Creator and writer Dan Erickson, and directors Ben Stiller, Samuel Donovan, Uta Briesewitz and Jessica Lee Gagné play with all the possibilities set up by the show’s premise, presenting us with a much more complex, much bleaker scenario than what we expected, and which seems to have no solution. To make the story even more urgent, each character gets to evolve in significant ways that make us grow even more attached to them in Season 2. We are taken to the darkest depths of their minds but also shown us just how much each of them would deserve to live; yet, at the same time, we are reminded of their impossible predicaments.

Dylan and Irving in particular are given beautiful arcs in this season, and Zach Cherry and John Turturro will break your heart in different ways with their impressive displays of emotion. Adam Scott also gets to really showcase his range as an actor in Season 2, and two scenes in particular, in episode 5 and in the finale, are so riveting that you’ll find yourself rewinding them multiple times.

Helly R. is epic in this new season: she has so much more screen time and Britt Lower makes the most of it with impeccable delivery, reminding us just how different her character is from her Outie. There’s a speech in episode 6 that will give you goosebumps thanks to Lower’s performance, in what is also one of the best episodes of the series as a whole. And as for her Outie, Helly Eagan is a lot more involved in her Innie’s life than she was in Season 1, which makes for some of the most psychologically interesting (and slightly worrying) developments in the show.

There are so many more characters in Season 2, each important to the story in a different way. Mr. Milchick and Ms. Cobel/Selvig, both played to perfection by Tramell Tillman and Patricia Arquette, get really interesting arcs this season and I can’t wait to find out how their stories will evolve in Season 3. Burt, who had a brief romance with Irving in the previous season, returns in Season 2, and all I’m going to say is that you’ll find out exactly why Christopher Walken was chosen for the role.

Jen Tullock and Karen Aldridge, who play Mark’s sister Devon and former Lumon employee Reghabi, are both excellent in Season 2, and both are essential to making the story as riveting as it is. As you’ll already know if you’ve been paying attention, new cast members also include Gwendoline Christie, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, John Noble, Alia Shawkat and Merritt Wever, and though I can’t tell you who they play, Wever is absolutely the standout and her character, and what she means to the show, will haunt you for weeks.

As for the answers we do get, there are some truly iconic moments in Season 2 that definitely get us closer to the truth, as well as some wonderfully weird scenes that we’ve come to expect from the show. It’s best if you go into the series knowing as little as you can, so all I’m going to say is that you’ll find most of the weirdness in episode 7, though the moments involving goats (yes, actual goats!) and the Lumon management behaving in puzzling ways are a close second. We (sort of) find out what the numbers are, we (sort of) get to meet Mark’s wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman), and something truly unexpected and iconic takes place in the finale that gives us an idea of what might come next.

Severance takes a little while to really get going in Season 2, but once you reach episode 3, that’s when you’ll start to find the kind of gripping storytelling that defined Season 1, and things will only get more captivating and complex from there. By the time the finale’s credits roll, you won’t have gotten all of the answers you were hoping for, but you will have been on a much darker journey to the very core of what makes us human, and left with an impossible choice to make that you’ll spend months thinking about. Season 3 couldn’t come any sooner.

Severance Season 2 will be available to stream globally on Apple TV+ from January 17, 2025, when the Season Premiere will be released. The remaining episodes will follow a weekly release schedule, with the Finale airing on March 21, 2025. Read our recap of Severance Season 1!

Loud and Clear Reviews has an affiliate partnership with Apple, so we receive a share of the revenue from your purchase or streaming of the films when you click on some of the links on this page. This won’t affect how much you pay for them and helps us keep the site free for everyone.