The ‘Severance’ Premiere Was Jam-Packed With Juicy Secrets and Reveals

(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)

Severance shares more with Selling Sunset than meets the eye.

No, Helly R. (Britt Lower) hasn’t started wearing designer sky-high heels and micro mini-skirts to the office. Instead, it’s the Netflix reality show’s fondness for referring to co-workers as a family that conjures this comparison. Despite having a literal defined boundary between personal and professional lives, Severance takes this work-family bond to the extreme.

Considering the Apple TV+ psychological thriller has been off the air for nearly three years, it is easy to feel as disorientated as Mark Scout (Adam Scott) when the Lumon elevator doors open at the start of the premiere. There is nothing quite like the glare of fluorescent overhead lighting, dazzling white walls, and Theodore Shapiro’s jazz-infused score to throw you straight back into the show’s Lumon Industries setting.

A quick refresher to help after the prolonged break between seasons: Mark and his team of coworkers volunteered for a procedure that separates their work selves (innie) from their out-of-office (outie) lives. Working from home or checking emails on vacation is not part of their employment demands. They remain the same person physically, but neither half has conscious memories of what the other experiences. The outie version of a person can date or have a family, but the innie only knows its relationships with the people at the office. If an outie stops going to work, the innie essentially ceases to exist.

At one point in the Season 2 opener, Mark’s innie acknowledges the blurred lines: “We’re the same-ish person. So, it’s mushy.” Scott shifts his tone, posture, and expressions for each half of Mark, so they sometimes feel like two separate people. At the very least, they have dual personalities.

Mark doesn’t take it lightly when he finds three new people sitting at the desks belonging to Irving B. (John Turturro), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), and Helly. After breaking the rules by interacting with the outside world in the Season 1 finale, Mark remains in his rebellious era; shedding his innie’s affable nature immediately cranks up the conflict.

Even though the unsevered Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) tells Mark it has been five months since the innies interacted with the outside world for the first time, to Mark, it was yesterday. Innie Mark discovered that Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), the Wellness Director for the severed floor, is his outie’s supposedly deceased wife, Gemma. If that marital bombshell wasn’t already enough to cause Mark’s innie to spiral, his return to work without his colleagues elevates his internal discontent.

Because the premiere focuses solely on the severed floor, we have no idea if Milchick is bending the truth about this length of time since their rebellion or if Helly, Irving, and Dylan have refused to return to Lumon. We are as in the dark as Mark, increasing suspicion toward the newly promoted Milchick. The fired Ms. Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) is cast as the rotten apple infecting the whole severed floor, and the new deputy manager, Miss Huang (Sarah Bock)—an actual child—is an intriguing choice. “Because of when I was born,” is Miss Huang’s matter-of-fact response when she is asked why she is a child. Unlike everyone else, Miss Huang quickly establishes boundaries, telling Mark she is not his friend but his superior.

There is nothing overtly wrong with replacement refiners Mark W. (Bob Balaban), Gwendolyn Y (Alia Shawkat), and the unnamed Italian (Stefano Carannante). Still, every meaningful connection in Mark’s life has disappeared. He responds by conjuring Helly’s anarchic spirit from Season 1. Mark is adamant that Lumon can’t just make his friends disappear. Rather than face punishment for sabotage, Mark is rewarded when his old team returns the next day. Even he seems surprised by this.

Before the group can adequately fill each other in, Milchick requests their presence in the breakroom to watch a new welcome video capturing their heroics in claymation—it immediately conjures this Scott-featuring Parks & Rec meme. “Lumon is Listening” is a creative rundown of Lumon lore and the “Macrodat Uprising,” showing an abbreviated version of events from the finale—Sarah Sherman voices the water tower, and that sure does sound like Keanu Reeves narrating the rest of the video. They are portrayed as heroes while also fueling the gossip fire. “What the s---?” Dylan says in response to Helly and Mark’s kiss depicted in clay. Milchick gives the foursome until the end of the day to decide if they want to continue to work at Lumon.

While the video emphasizes that someone is listening, Milchick reveals that the severed floor is free of cameras and microphones. Like Dylan, I am incredibly suspicious of this pledge, and the team takes zero chances, choosing to share their outside adventure via whispers. Mark details his discovery that Ms. Casey is his outie’s wife. Helly learned that she is Helena Eagan, daughter of Lumon Industries CEO Jame Eagan, but she keeps this nepo baby status secret.

“It’s not our world up there,” Irving observes before exiting the break room without spilling his experience. When Dylan goes after him, Irv reveals that he saw workplace romance, Bert (Christopher Walken) and his husband looking happy—Bert was retired from his Lumon job, and Irving remains heartbroken.

Perhaps the greatest argument for the MDR team as a family isn’t the burgeoning romance between Helly and Mark but Dylan and Irv’s antagonists-to-friends journey. Dylan’s DGAF attitude about Mark ending the lives of the replacement innies (“I’m sure they deserved it,” he tells Mark) contrasts Dylan begging Irv to stick it out. “Just f---ing try,” Dylan pleads. Technically, Irving is not dying, but if he never returns to work, then his innie is effectively dead.

Turturro and Cherry’s performances pull us into the emotional stakes. Irv wants the pain that he no longer gets to see Bert to be gone. “If he’s gone and I’m gone, then somehow, we’ll be together,” Irv reasons. Dylan has an ace to play, saying he will be “sad and less productive” without Irving around. Work is the glue that binds them, so using it as a motivator has the desired effect as Irv decides to stick around.

Meanwhile, Helly and Mark discuss Ms. Casey, Mark’s outie’s wife, getting into the knotty definition of identity for a severed person. Is this Helly’s attraction to Mark doing the talking or a deeper response to learning that her outie is a Lumon legacy?

Given the work-family setup, it is particularly insidious that Milchick lures Dylan into his circle of trust by telling him his outie’s wife is Gretchen and offering him the chance to meet her in the planned “Outie Family Visitation Suite.” All Dylan has to do is not tell his co-workers.

The greatest threat to the MDR team is the growing list of secrets. First, Helly’s direct blood ties to the Lumon power structure, and Dylan’s perk goes way beyond his previous waffle party incentive. It turns out this is a family business, after all.