Severance: what time is it on, how can I watch, and what are the theories explained?

The second season of Severance has already delivered twists and shocks. We’re almost halfway through the season, with episode five airing on Friday 14 February, but there are still more mysteries than you can shake a maraca to Defiant Jazz at. Executively produced and directed by Ben Stiller, the series follows a group of employees at cult-like company Lumon that have undergone surgery to sever their working memories from their lives outside the office.

Outies and innies share one body and one brain, but can’t share any personal memories, effectively cleaving them into two separate people taking turns to pilot a body and a mind. It’s a mind-twisting premise that sees actors gifted the opportunity to play both sides of themselves as they – and the audience – try to work out what the hell is going on. Spoilers ahead. Season two episode four, Woe’s Hollow, featured a dramatic showdown after Mr Milchick (Tramell Tillman) took the rebellious Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team on a snowy wilderness excursion aka the ORTBO (Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence). Episode five, tantalisingly named Trojan’s Horse, will presumably have to deal with the fallout.

But what’s going to happen next?. Well, the next instalment of Severance drops on Apple TV at 12am Pacific Time, which is 8am in London. But when did an episode drop get in the way of a good bit of speculation? Until it airs, please enjoy all these theories equally. Heir to the Lumon fortune Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) has been screwed over by her terrible cover story about a night gardener. Helena clearly couldn’t countenance letting her rebellious and loveable innie Helly back onto the Severed Floor, so went down herself on a terribly researched undercover mission to spy on the MDR team. And maybe for a chance to smooch Mark’s innie (Adam Scott) again (she was certainly fascinated while watching the footage of their first kiss).

But her inability to improvise, or learn the nuances and catchphrases of the team, aroused Irving B’s (John Turturro) suspicions. Now she’s accountable for two screw-ups: her innie escaping and trying to raise the alarm about the terrible stunted existence of Lumon’s severed employees at the end of the first season; and almost getting herself killed on the ORTBO, resulting in Helly’s re-activation.

Oh, and she had sex with Mark S while pretending to be Helly, which is legally rape by deception and definitely against The Compliance Handbook. Stills from Trojan’s Horse show Helena facing The Board’s human conduit Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander) and the menacing Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson). Can she recover from this cooperate snafu? And how can she come to terms with the fact that her innie is far more courageous and beloved than she ever was?.

Oh Irv. Already heartbroken over the retirement of his office crush Burt (Christopher Walken), Woe’s Hollow ended with his noble sacrifice to bring back Helly R. After almost murdering the Lumon heir under a spiritually significant waterfall, Milchick unceremoniously fired him by forcing him to walk out into the woods and flipping the switch. Without access to the Lumon-controlled tech to re-activate the chip in his brain, Irving is now a full-time outie.

Unless, that is, he re-integrates. We know that outie Irv has a pretty dark and potentially military past, and is actively investigating Lumon employees and the mysterious elevator. If he teams up with Mark’s outie, he might well attempt Dr Reghabi’s back alley brain surgery too. Outie Irv is also a highly compelling character. In season one we found out he lives in a house full of war memorabilia and a dog named Radar, where he intentionally sleep deprives himself with coffee and Motorhead to try and send a message to his innie. His torture enhanced interrogation techniques don’t end there. His innie immediately jumped to casual waterboarding to blackmail Helena and Milchick into releasing Helly.

If anyone has the skills to bring down Lumon, it’s Irving, although he’d probably be horrified to learn that his innie spent a lot of season one reciting Keir scripture as a faithful work-cult disciple. In a bit of a pickle! The last true interaction between Mark S and Helly R was at the end of the last season, when Helly grabbed him for a kiss before the MDR overtime contingency mission. Ever since then, Mark’s been making goo-goo eyes at Helena, a literal descendant of Lumon founder Kier Eagan. Helly is also about to discover that Mark hooked up with her evil outie, who was essentially holding her hostage, in what will feel like an hour since they kissed.

Oh, and it looks like Mark’s reintegrating, if the glitch-out in the ORTBO tent that transposed his dead(?) wife’s face onto Helena’s. With his outie determined to find and save Gemma, we now have a love hexagon on our hands between Mark Scout, Gemma, Mark S, Helena and Helly R. That’s the same number of participants at a weird Lumon Waffle Party, but it probably will take more than a Keir-themed sexual ritual to untangle.