WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Apple TV+’s “Severance.”
1,064 days.
It took 1,064 days for us to learn the next steps of Mark S. and his quest to find the truth about Lumon. 1,064 days to find out whether Ms. Cobel might turn to the good side. 1,064 days to find out what on earth was going on with the baby goats.
I’m of course talking about “Severance,” the psychological thriller show that first premiered in Feb. 2022 – and released a second season on Jan. 17 of this year, postponed by the 2023 Hollywood strikes. Some episodes were directed by Ben Stiller – sharp contrast to his Night at the Museum era.
The finale came out on March 20, and each new episode outdid the previous. The creators came and blew me away time and again.
The show’s idea follows the lives of captive employees who work at Lumon, an ambiguous medical/technology company. They lead double lives: one remains inside the workplace and can never escape, and the other will only live in the outside world, oblivious to the company’s sinister secrets. Mark S. (Adam Scott), our protagonist, is an indecisive, depressed man on the outside, but he becomes a passionate yet stubborn leader when he severs.
Think about The Truman Show – characters blocked from the outside world because of a secretive higher power that captures them.
I couldn’t count on my fingers the number of unsolved riddles, red herrings, and mysteries “Severance” casually dropped each episode, and the most tense element of the season was that much of those plot points weren’t resolved until the final episode.
Coming out of season one we had a lot of questions – they quadrupled them! Pineapple gift baskets, chikhai bardo, macro data refinement uprising, “The You You Are,” Kier’s heir, Millchick’s potential redemption, Cold Harbor, Allentown, and goat breeders all being in the same season, all unresolved, makes me sound crazy. I’m not crazy! This show is crazy!
You can talk all you want about the relentlessly unnerving-yet-genius sets, flawless music choice and sound design, or the casting that makes us feel emotions from compassion to intense suspicion. But it’s the way they tell a puzzle-like story that latches fans onto “Severance’s” episodes. Now imagine it’s a 1000 piece puzzle where you can find a couple pieces that fit together, the corners and edges straightened out, and nothing else for nine grueling, mysterious hours. That’s how it felt for the first eight and a half episodes in season two. We only started to put pieces together when Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) allied with Mark (supposedly?) and told him the secrets of his work inside Lumon.
The rollercoaster of emotions that the creators elicit out of us is remarkable. We feel such pure joy watching Gemma (Dichen Lachman) fall in love with Mark as a happy relationship blooms. But that turns into a wave of sadness when we realize how Lumon tore them apart. We feel anger when we realize Ms. Cobel actually invented severance and her ideas were taken. We feel panic when Gemma attempts her escape.
Yet aside from the constant, perfectly controlled intensity that you expect to see from a psychological thriller, the most present emotion in my eyes was uneasiness.
Congratulations, Mr. Stiller – you orchestrated the most aromantic sex scene in television history. Seeing the literal heir of the villain, Helena Eagan (Britt Lower), infiltrate Mark’s oblivious trust through intimacy was top tier brilliance – and top tier discomfort. Thanks for that.
And as an incredible season finale, serenaded by a marching band (did I get that right?), wrapped up with the same rollercoaster of bravery, nerves, joy, and despair, I remembered why I loved the show so much – flawless production and incredible plot and character development.
I advise everyone to watch the show, unless you don’t want to think – this isn’t brainless television. This is absolute cinema. Thank you, Apple, for renewing “Severance” for a third season. I’ll be waiting patiently.
