Those worries were unfounded: I’m delighted to report that the second season, which debuted on Friday, expands with confidence and integrity on what the first did best.
Created by Dan Erickson and executive produced by Ben Stiller, this ferociously stylised, wonderfully weird piece of TV retrofuturism follows Mark Scout (Adam Scott), a depressed middle-aged widower.
He copes with his grief by undergoing a procedure - spearheaded by a cult-like corporation called Lumon - that neurologically “severs” his work self from his home self.
Neither Mark can access the other; they have no shared memory or experience. “Innie” Mark, while sentient, is effectively trapped inside the company. His work is, quite literally, his world.
The show’s first season digs into that thought experiment with humour, curiosity, and admirable range, rendering “outie” Mark’s despair with a miniaturist’s precision while teasing viewers with clues about the sprawling mystery at its heart.
The big question was whether Severance could reconcile some of the deeper philosophical issues its premise raises (about identity, labour, trauma, ethics, exploitation, and memory) with the rather sensational dystopian thriller it was also obviously trying to be - and the touching human drama at its core.
Rather than assuage those concerns, the season one finale, titled The We We Are, raised the stakes by delivering a riveting cliffhanger. Too riveting by half, I thought.
Mark and his three fellow “innies” broke out of Lumon by hacking their “outies” long enough to learn who they were on the outside. Some revelations were so sensational I was worried they might permanently destabilise the show.
Plenty of lesser series have got in trouble building out their puzzle-box side at the expense of the story side, throwing out twist after twist until they lose track and never quite write their way back to sense (Westworld, anyone?).
To be specific: I was worried that the series’ much-anticipated second season would reveal it didn’t actually have a plan for how to integrate its small-scale drama with its epic lore.
The show’s quieter, private tragedies, like Mark’s bereavement and another character’s unrequited yearning, seemed poised to connect to the megacorporation’s plans in a tidy paint-by-numbers way that felt more convenient than believable - and untrue to the show’s core ethos.
Severance, while manifestly interested in doppelgangers and dualities of various kinds, has always been refreshingly un-schematic in its approach. There are no evil twins.
Viewers can watch Adam Scott switch from one Mark to the other as he takes the lift to the “severed” floor, which activates the chip in his brain, but Scott’s performance of that transformation is excellent precisely because it isn’t simple or easy to summarise.
There are differences, to be sure. Mark’s “outie” is a sardonic ex-academic and loner who merely tolerates his few remaining links to the world - including his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and her amiably pompous husband Ricken (Michael Chernus), whose best-selling pabulum he scorns (his latest inspirational tome is titled The You You Are).
“Innie” Mark isn’t exactly a bushy-tailed go-getter, but he’s certainly less beleaguered, more responsive to corporate incentives and generally appreciative of his role in a network he genuinely strives to uphold.
As the leader of the Macrodata Refinement Department (MDR), Mark is regularly annoyed by his co-workers Irving (John Turturro), Helly (Britt Lower) and Dylan (Zach Cherry) but he takes their wellbeing seriously, routinely forgoing perks so they can enjoy them and taking punishments in their stead.
He also turns out to love The You You Are - his brother-in-law’s hacky self-help book - in one of the first season’s greatest and broadest jokes.
Even Lumon has its good points. Sinister though he may be in his capacity as their supervisor, Mr Milchick (Tramell Tillman) is cheerful and knows how - in Lumon’s creepy corporate parlance - to “make his eyes kind”. Also, the man can dance.
Milchick fans will be gratified by the screentime he gets in the second season, and by the nature of his metaphysical as well as practical struggles. Fans of Mark’s sinister ex-manager, Harmony Cobel (a magnificent Patricia Arquette), will be happier still.
Puzzle-box aficionados will find much to enjoy in the new details we learn about the sinister Eagan family (Lumon’s founders), and so will those wondering about Mark Scout’s past.
But the best stuff in Severance is quieter. This is a really terrific group of actors; dissertations could be written about the microexpressions on display as the show patiently unpacks the “innies’” reactions to what they saw on the outside - and their evolving understanding of their “outies”, each other, and what they owe and are owed.
One of the new season’s finest dramatic sequences features an “innie” and an “outie” arguing via increasingly heated, videotaped monologues.
There is also, I’m pleased to report, more terrifying corporate art. And yet another extremely uncomfortable dinner party - this one featuring Turturro’s Irving as the guest.
And while some dots remain unconnected, the peculiar, number-based work that Mark S once described as “mysterious and important”, even though it’s unintelligible to the “innies” doing it, comes into focus. Sort of.
That said, as someone who relished learning the rules of Lumon’s bizarre world, with its clinical white halls, infantilising “perks”, baroque break room punishments and Alice in Wonderland logic, I missed the stultifying regularity the first season captured so well.
The second season is (necessarily) driven by disruption. Interesting though it is to watch chaos reign as the “innies” get more sophisticated, existential, and reflective, I did find myself missing the oppressive sameness - and structure, and simplicity - that made the first season so compelling. (The smartest thing about Severance is how well it demonstrated why the procedure might hold some appeal!)
But plenty of workaday surrealism remains, including the appearance of a literal child as one of the severed floor’s supervisors. And a number of remarkably well-chosen cameos I won’t spoil.
It is also, of course, a visual masterpiece, with an aesthetic so punitively symmetric and specific it feels delicious but bad for you, like candy.
Not since Twin Peaks has a show built a world this wonky but wholly believable.
Half drama, half thriller - I’d call it a driller but that’s a bit on the nose, considering how the operation is done - Severance explores huge philosophical questions by setting a small and moving human story in a brutalist behemoth laden with lore that constantly threatens to overwhelm it.
To its credit, it never does.
Severance can be streamed now on Apple TV+.
