Back when its first season debuted on Apple TV+ in early 2022, Severance blew my mind in a way that TV shows so rarely do anymore. It's thanks, in part, to the way the show takes a mind-bending exploration of work-life balance to dystopian extremes. Who knew that so many quotidian aspects of a corporate environment -- from a breakroom to board meetings, an employee handbook, and data-entry quotas -- could be combined to produce a gripping sci-fi masterpiece that also has something profound to say about the way our professional selves encroach so relentlessly upon the rest of our lives.
Moreover, as a superfan of the show starring Adam Scott, I'm not surprised at all to see Severance having already secured a perfect 100% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its highly anticipated Season 2 debut next week on Apple's streamer (on Jan. 17). I'm also breathing a huge sigh of relief. After all, the show was waylaid by the writers' strikes as well as internal pressures to get everything right. And so many spellbinding mysteries were teed up in the first season, including Scott's Lumon team leader Mark Scout ending the season by realizing his dead wife is actually alive, that it would have been a shame to see the follow-up rushed to fruition.
As an aside, I'm sure that other OG fans of Severance can sympathize with my slight jealousy at the way new fans of the show from director and executive producer Ben Stiller will now be able to discover Season 1 and can then plow straight ahead into Season 2. Completely oblivious to the two-year wait the rest of us had to endure to get answers to questions like these:
What's Milchick's deal? He's one of the few Severance characters whose backstory we haven't gotten a glimpse of yet. And why is Ms. Cobel so fixated on Mark, to the point that she lives next door to him and even cozies up to his sister? We know she was off the reservation in doing so, because the board actually fired her over those actions.
Among the many other unresolved teases from Season 1: After the Macrodata Refinement team triggered the Overtime Contingency at the end of the season, we saw that Irving's outie seems to be investigating Lumon. He's got a collection of documents and maps at home, and he also knows where his work crush Burt lives on the outside. To the point that Irving actually shows up at Burt's house, banging on the door.
Also, do the computer-based numbers that comprise MDR's daily office work really mean anything? Or is it simply meant to keep them on a kind of observable hamster wheel, while the bosses study the effects of severance? (Remember, the MDR employees are being watched through their computer screens.)
That suspense-filled Season 1 finale also revealed that Helly is the daughter of a Lumon board member, which explains why her outie refused to let her innie resign. Meanwhile, one of the biggest mysteries revolves around Mark’s discovery that his supposedly deceased wife, Gemma, is actually alive. Without realizing it, he’d been working around her at Lumon — within the severed workforce, she was known as Ms. Casey and handled employee wellness checks. That’s even though we thought Gemma had died on the outside in a car crash.
So -- did Gemma actually die? Is the severance implant the only thing keeping her alive? Honestly, for these and so many other reasons, Jan. 17 can't get here quickly enough. So many questions, and so much emotional depth and razor-sharp social commentary, make Season 2 of Severance a can’t-miss example of television at its finest.
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Season 2 of Apple TV+’s best sci-fi show debuts with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 7 Jan 2025 at 14:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
