Severance season 2 on Apple TV+ review: the return to this mind-melting corporate hellscape is more addictive than ever
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There’s a delightful incongruousness to the fact that Severance is directed by Ben Stiller. This sci-fi thriller feels diametrically opposed to the Meet The Parents actor’s mostly frothy fare; but isn’t one of the key messages of Severance – Apple TV+’s cult hit show which now returns for a second season – the effectiveness of masking and how we adopt multiple personas every day of our lives?.
If the first season’s loopy existentialism seemed mad, try the second, which lays down even more narrative u-turns and wild scenarios. We’re back at Lumon Industries, where Mark (Adam Scott) works as one of the ‘Innies’, a group of people who have been microchipped as part of a severance process which means they have two sets of memories and personalities: one at work and one outside of it.
Mark and his colleagues wake into their work consciousness in the lift into Lumon but have no memory of their day when they go home, nor the potential traumas caused by it. Equally, when they’re at work they have no recollection of their family and friends in the ‘Outie’ world.
Picking up five months on from the end of season one, we still have no solid idea what the purpose of Lumon Industries is, although this time we get a little closer to understanding the type of oppressive force the company might be. Mark is still trying to find out what's happened to his wife, and has returned to work to be told by Milchick that his former colleagues have decided not to return to Lumon after their briefly successful attempt to turn their 'Innie' selves on in the real world.
