How Did “Severance” Season 1 End? Here’s Everything Your Outie Needs to Remember About Those Shocking Cliffhangers Before Watching Season 2

Warning: Severance season 1 spoilers ahead!

Severance’s first season ended with many unanswered questions.

The critically acclaimed psychological office thriller — which was created by Ben Stiller and includes a star-studded cast led by Parks and Recreations’ Adam Scott — received 14 Emmy nominations for its first season. The series, which returned for season 2 on Jan. 17, is named after the fictional severance procedure in which employees of the company Lumon receive a chip implant to separate their work selves from their real selves.

In Severance, innies and outies refer to an employee’s self at work and their self outside of work, who both know nothing of each other’s lives despite occupying the same body. While many employees get the procedure to forget about their problems outside of work, it turns out they have no freedom when working at Lumon and are regularly punished, wondering what their outies are like while their innies are miserable.

Scott leads the cast as a grief-stricken Mark Scout, who opts for the severance procedure so he can forget the pain of losing his wife for eight hours a day, five days a week. But, by the end of the first season, he and his co-workers realize that the severance procedure isn't an easy out and there may be more sinister motivations behind Lumon.

So, how did Severance season 1 end? Read on to find out more about the cliffhanger ending and how it will affect season 2.

How did Severance season 1 end?

After Dylan (Zach Cherry) learns his outie has a child and Helly’s (Britt Lower) frequent attempts to resign are rejected by her outie, they make a plan with Mark and Irving (John Turturro) — their macrodata refinement co-workers — to take over their outies as their innies.

While occupying their outies’ bodies, the innies plan to let people know they’re being held hostage at Lumon, are punished frequently and are miserable at work.

When Dylan activates the overtime contingency, Irving, Helly and Mark have about an hour as their innies in the outer world. Mark awakens at his sister’s house during her husband Ricken’s book launch event. In one of the biggest twists of the episode, he learns that a woman from work named Ms. Casey is actually his outie’s wife Gemma, whom he presumes to be dead.

When Helly awakens, she learns that she is Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Eagan — who is a descendent of founder Kier Eagan — and that is she about to give a pro-severance speech at a gala. The news is an even greater shock as her innie, Helly, has been miserable at work and even tried to quit and die by suicide.

When Irving’s innie awakens, he learns that he has a U.S. Navy background and lives in an apartment with his dog Radar. He is also surrounded by his own paintings of Lumon’s testing floor hallway, hinting that his subconscious still remembers parts of his innie's life.

As their supervisor Milchick (Tramell Tillman) enters the security room to stop Dylan, Mark’s innie is yelling “she’s alive,” referencing Gemma, Helena is telling a crowded room of people that severance is a prison and Irving is knocking on his co-worker/lover Burt’s (Christopher Walken) door. Milchick successfully stops Dylan as Mark, Helly and Irving become their outies again and the season ends filled with suspense.

Stiller explained to Rolling Stone in 2022 why they decided to leave viewers on a cliffhanger.

“Originally, we were going to go further and answer more questions, but I felt really strongly that there’s something about the mystery of the show that you want to live in. It is that balance of answering enough questions, but not too many,” he said. “We settled on this because, in a way, it was the most emotionally resonant idea.”

Why did Mark, Irving, Dylan and Helly make a plan to leave work?

Mark, Irving, Dylan and Helly planned to explore the outer world as their innies because they felt trapped at work sorting numbers all day without having any idea what the data meant.

They were frequently punished by being sent to the break room, where they had to continuously repeat the same apology. Mark is also frequently harassed by his boss, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), and sent to the break room.

Irving’s innie loves the company, but he too grows suspicious and wants to go through with his co-workers' plan to tell the outside world about Lumon after his love interest, Burt, is forced to retire. Dylan wants to help with the plan after learning his outie has a child.

For her part, Helly has the most challenges adjusting to severance as she tries to quit from the start, and her many, even violent resignation requests, are denied by her Lumon heiress outie, who tells her that she is not a real person.

Lower told Vogue in 2025 that she thinks her character is "essentially trapped by the same company in both circumstances, but in different ways."

“I started the process of differentiating the two characters with what was the same—which is that these are both strong-willed parts of this person," she said. "They’re both fiercely loyal. They also share the same body, and that body is carrying the trauma and joy that both of them are experiencing on the inside and the outside.”

How did the innies get into their outies’ bodies?

Earlier in the season, Milchick awakens Dylan’s innie in the outside world to find out where he hid an Optics and Design ideographic card while at work. Milchick explains to Dylan that Lumon can awaken employees’ innies outside of work when required by using a process called “the overtime contingency.”

However, Dylan’s child, whose existence was unknown to his innie, runs into the room unexpectedly. When Dylan next awakens, he is at work distraught about having a kid he’ll potentially never meet, leading him to tell his co-workers about the overtime contingency.

The plan to briefly escape their innie lives is set into motion after Mark’s outie receives the former head of security's key card from an ex-Lumon employee, Reghabi. The former company scientist had attempted to help Mark’s beloved co-worker Petey reverse the process of severance — called reintegration — and encourages Mark’s outie to bring the card to work so his innie can use it.

When Dylan earns a waffle party for being the refiner of the quarter, he gets to stay after work and sneaks out to the security room using the key card to employ the overtime contingency, awakening Mark, Helly and Irving as their innies on the outside world.

Where did the budding relationship between Mark and Helly leave off?

Despite Mark and Helly’s first interaction resulting in her hitting him with a stapler, the two eventually develop a budding romance. While Mark is Helly’s boss and has to keep her from trying to escape at first, she begins to appreciate that he genuinely tries to help her enjoy work.

Helly’s anger at being forced to stay at work helps radicalize Mark and makes him realize not all is as it seems at Lumon. The two go on a walk to discover more about the company and consequently begin to develop chemistry.

Before the four co-workers execute their escape plan, Mark and Helly realize that they may never be their innies at work again so she runs out of the elevator to kiss him. However, soon after their first kiss, Mark’s innie learns that Lumon’s floor wellness counselor, Ms. Casey, is actually his outie’s allegedly dead wife, Gemma.

“For me, a through line in this series has always been about Mark trying to grieve his wife. But then, we find out that his wife is alive,” Stiller told Vanity Fair in 2024. “At the same time, I think we’ve sort of developed a relationship with Innie Mark and Helly on the inside that feels like it’s going somewhere. So there’s a natural tension that’s growing there between Outie Mark’s interests and Innie Mark’s interests."

What questions did Severance season 1 leave unanswered?

After Severance's cliffhanger season 1 finale, fans had a lot of questions. When Mark awoke in his sister’s home, he was speaking with Cobel, his menacing boss, who poses as his seemingly unassuming neighbor, Mrs. Selvig, on the outside.

Once she realizes Mark’s innie has taken over, she drives to try and stop Helly’s innie from speaking at the pro-severance gala. Season 2’s trailer reveals that Cobel has been fired, but is still involved in the story as Mark’s outie learns the truth about her dual identity.

Helly is horrified when she awakens at the pro-severance gala to learn she is not only an Eagan but is about to become the face of severance. At the end of season 1, after Helly speaks out about the prison that is the procedure, it is unclear what consequences she will face.

Around the same time as Helly's rousing speech, Irving is knocking on Burt’s door. Before he can answer though, the innies and outies are swapped back. Season 2 may show the interaction of the two seeming strangers who shared a romance on the inside.

Perhaps the biggest question from Severance season 1 is why Ms. Casey/Gemma is alive at Lumon but presumed dead in the outer world. One possible clue is that when Ms. Casey is fired, Milchick says she will be sent back to the testing floor, indicating that she could have been kept at Lumon all along.

Mark’s sister Devon also meets a woman at a birthing retreat, who later has no recollection of meeting her when they encounter each other at a park. Devon researches her and finds out her husband is a pro-severance senator, indicating that the procedure may extend beyond the workplace more than anyone knows.

Read the original article on People