As fans of the Apple TV sci-fi thriller Severance, we have held our collective breath for almost three years since the exhilarating season 1 finale. Our patience will soon be rewarded on Friday, Jan. 17, when the second season returns with the first of 10 new weekly episodes culminating in a season finale on March 21.
On Lumon Industries’ severed floor, the employees of the Macrodata Refinery team cope with brain chips that have permanently separated their work personalities from the rest of their lives. Severance’s first season featured thrilling twists and turns, juicy melon bars, one bonkers musical dance experience, an extremely revealing waffle party and a cavalcade of questions.
CNET spoke with series star Adam Scott, director and executive producer Ben Stiller and series creator and showrunner Dan Erickson over Zoom during the show’s official press day. Our chat gave us further insight into what might come next for the MDR crew. Below, we’ve compiled five of our most burning questions for season 2.
It might go without saying, but stop reading now if you haven’t caught up on Severance season 1. Major spoilers are below.
Read more: Apple TV Plus Review: Small Library but the Quality Is Top Notch
Why did the Macrodata Refinery team decide to get severed?
Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, John Turturro and Adam Scott return to Lumon Industries in season 2 of Severance, coming to Apple TV Plus on Jan. 17.
We know that Mark (Scott) chose severance because he was grieving the loss of his wife, and Helly (Britt Lower) joined because of her family connection with Lumon, but what about Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry)?
We’ve seen very little of Dylan’s life, but we know he lives with his three kids, and they seem to have a decent relationship. Irving is obsessed with the elevator to the testing floor and lives a cloistered life with a dog named Radar.
When Severance first premiered, audiences were left wondering what it would take to sever their own minds if such a technology really existed. What sort of trauma or toxic living situation would motivate such a choice?
Each character surely has their own heartbreaking story behind their decision to be severed, and it’s almost certain that we’ll get answers to this question in season 2.
Is Gemma really alive?
Dichen Lachman stars as Ms. Casey in season 1 of Severance on Apple TV Plus.
One of the biggest reveals of season 1 came at the end of episode 7, Defiant Jazz, when we learn that Ms. Casey — Lumon’s wellness director — looks exactly like Outie Mark’s wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman), whom everyone in the outside world believes died in a car crash.
How the heck did Lumon pull that one off? Was dead Gemma a fake or a lookalike? Is Lumon in the practice of cloning humans?
Cast members debunked that last theory in the aforementioned YouTube video, but it’s clear that Ms. Casey (whose innie has only been alive for 108 hours) is much different from the other severed workers.
One fan theory suggests that Gemma is in a coma from the car accident and her innie version is only able to awaken occasionally. But she shows no physical indications of a serious accident.
The real truth of Gemma/Ms. Casey seems like one of the biggest writing challenges for the show. This mystery will most certainly be addressed in season 2. According to Scott, it’s a plot point that fuels his character’s storyline this season and provokes a struggle between Mark’s two selves.
“He feels like he has to help his outie and get Gemma somehow out the door,” the actor said. “But is that where his emotional ties and his emotional interests are? The really interesting thing about the Innie and the Outie Mark this season is how aligned their interests are. At what point are they either going to come together or move further apart?”
Why is Harmony Cobel so obsessed with Lumon Industries?
Patricia Arquette plays Harmony Cobel in season 1 of Severance.
As the manager of Lumon’s severed floor, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) takes her job extremely seriously. She is cult-like in her devotion to Lumon’s founder, Kier Eagan, and the nine core principles. Her home basement includes a shrine to Kier and personal artifacts from her mother, Charlotte.
Harmony is unsevered, like Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) and Doug Graner. Still, unlike the two of them, she maintains a separate persona in the outside world — Mark’s neighbor, “Mrs. Selvig,” who makes atrocious lavender cookies and constantly screws up Mark’s recycling and trash bins.
One of the running themes of the show’s first season is Harmony’s conflict with the Lumon board about “reintegration,” the controversial practice of fusing workers’ personalities back together after removing the brain chip. The board insists reintegration is impossible, while Harmony has firsthand evidence that Petey Kilmer accomplished it (before it killed him).
After keeping Helly’s suicide attempt a secret, the board fires Harmony, who responds by trashing her basement and collapsing in dejection at her shrine, which we now see holds a ventilator tube and a medical bracelet that reads, “Charlotte Cobel” with a birth date of March 17, 1944.
Harmony and Mrs. Selvig dress in a way that covers their necks, which are never seen. Could Harmony be Charlotte, who has scars from a tracheotomy or other neck surgery? Does she have a personal investment in reintegration?
Cobel is genuinely an interesting character. There has to be a lot more to her story. We have a few more out-of-the-box questions that we’ve been pondering: Is Harmony holding a historical grudge and playing the long game to avenge a mother or sister? Could Lumon be experimenting with life-extending technologies? And does Harmony talk so strangely because she’s actually the reincarnation of Kier Eagan’s wife, Imogene?!
We could go on, but you get the point. The questions surrounding Harmony Cobel abound, and it’s almost certain that we’ll learn much more of her backstory in season 2.
Why is Irving painting that hallway and elevator?
John Turturro as Irving in season 1 of Severance.
When we see Outie Irving, we learn he loves to listen to Motorhead and repeatedly paints the elevator down to Lumon’s testing floor. Dominated by thick black, these paintings fill Outie Irving’s home and explain why Innie Irving’s nails are full of dark gunk.
But what’s Innie Irving’s connection to that desolate hallway and elevator? Has he been to the testing floor or lost someone to it? We never see him in that elevator area at Lumon. In fact, the only person we do see using that elevator is Ms. Casey.
One fan theory claims Innie Irving has visited the testing floor and been “reset” by Lumon several times, which could explain why he says he’s been there three years, but his badge indicates nine.
Irving’s John Turturro has personally “debunked” that theory in a Severance cast promo video. Perhaps Innie Irving’s trauma from the testing floor has leaked into his outside persona. Or is Outie Irving trying to send a message through his unconscious to Innie Irving?
How much of a sociopath is Helena Eagan, anyway?
Britt Lower portrays both Helly R. and Helena Eagan in the Apple TV Plus show Severance.
As her story arc in season 1 made clear, Helly wanted nothing to do with Lumon. In fact, she threatened self-harm to escape. Things didn’t go her way. In one of the more brutal scenes of season 1, Outie Helly sends a video message to Innie Helly, saying, “I am a person. You are not. I make the decisions.”
During the season finale, we discover that Outie Helly is Helena Eagan, the daughter of current Lumon Industries CEO Jame Eagan, and has undergone severance as a PR campaign to ensure the severing practice remains legal. During our Zoom chat with Erickson, it was teased that maybe Outie Helly has drunk too much of the Lumon Kool-Aid.
“The Innies feel closer to the true, authentic version of the self for each of the characters, in part, because they wake up as a little bit of a blank slate,” Erickson said. “In a way, she [Helly] represents a truer version of that person than her outie probably would.”
Tramell Tillman plays Mr. Milchick in season 2 of Severance.
Instead of solely focusing on the stuff inside Lumon, which is how season 1 mostly played out, it sounds like Severance season 2 will expand its scope and explore the homes and personal lives of the MDR outies. According to Erickson, things will get darker and scarier.
This begs the question: Now that the innies have seen a piece of the outside world, what sort of repercussions are on the horizon? “There is no victory without pushback and without pain,” Erickson teased.
“We wanted to see what would happen to the characters once they had sort of poked the bear,” he added. “What happens when the bear pokes back?”
