WARNING: Major spoilers ahead from Severance season 2 episode 1.
Welcome back to Lumon Industries! It's even weirder than it was last time, if you can believe it.
Just under three years have passed since we last checked in with our favorite severed team, but Severance season 2 brings them all back as if no time had gone by at all. The premiere episode dives right back into the thick of things, and the viewers have a chance to acclimate all over again to this weird world along with Mark.
In the season 1 finale, the innies were awoken as their outies, allowing them to learn all kinds of shocking details from beyond the walls of Lumon. After the overtime contingency plan, the Macrodat Uprising has lifted Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving to fame on the outside, but when they return to Lumon, the rules have mysteriously changed.
Severance season 2 will continue to connect the dots and fill in the blanks, but it's off to a rousing start. The followup season feels invigorated with a new sense of purpose, not unlike the brilliance of The Good Place after it's own bomb-drop season 1 ending. The best show on TV is back, and it proves why it's the most inventive and consistently unexpected storytelling on air right now.
Let's dive into the season 2 premiere recap. Here's your last spoiler warning!
Mark returns to Lumon with a new team
When Mark exits the elevator at Lumon, he races the bright white hallways until he ends up at the wellness center. It's gone, and a blurry figure behind him in the distance looks on. Mark's obviously out of sorts, and that feeling continues when he enters the MDR office and finds three new employees at the desk cluster. Milchick, the new manager, arrives with a bundle of blue balloons.
Five months have supposedly passed since the overtime contingency, but Mark doesn't seem to feel the passage of five months. There's also a new supervisor, a child named Ms. Huang, another startling change for Mark. Milchick shows Mark a redacted newspaper of his team's fame, claims Cobel was let go because of her "erotic fixation" on him, and reveals his team declined to return.
It makes sense that Mark's outie would demand to return to Lumon, especially after learning that Gemma could be alive as Ms. Casey and knowing his innie has the same information. As for the others, Mark wants to hear the refusals directly from Helly, Dylan, and Irving. He goes so far as to attempt to frame his new team member Mark W. with a written note in his pocket. It backfires.
His status as department chief transfers to Mark W., but when he diverts their attention to the kitchen, Mark runs out of the office and to Milchick's office where he plugs in the speaker to communicate with the board. He begs for his old team to be given a chance to return. He's led onto an elevator and to an empty floor, where one by one his friends arrive.
Milchick introduces the severance reforms
There's a painting's on the wall where the MDR arrive, and it's title is "Kier Pardons His Betrayers," an oddly specific description of what could be happening here. When Dylan, Helly, and Irving get off the elevator, their innies pick up where they left off right after their outies were awoken. Before they can make heads or tails of what's going on, they're summoned to the break room.
Milchick shows them an unsettling video starring the four of them in claymation explaining the reforms that have taken place at Lumon for the severed. The video shows everything leading up to the Macrodat Uprising, including Mark and Helly's kiss, and how the company has "listened" to their discontent. Honestly, none of them are moved. Just weirded out big time.
Milchick gives them a choice of whether they stay and work, but it's hard to believe the veneer of kindness he's putting on. Is he really different than Cobel, or is he just better at masking the sinister undertones? He leaves the four alone in the break room to talk it over, announcing that there are no recording devices, but they still whisper their experiences on the outside.
Helly doesn't reveal the truth about her outie
Mark drops everything he learned: Cobel, Ricken being his brother-in-law, the Gemma/Ms. Casey revelations. Irving expresses his heartbreak over Burt. But when asked what she saw, Helly lies and says she saw a boring apartment and talked to a "night gardnerer." It's suspicious at best, but for some reason, she finds it necessary to hold back her outie being Helena Eagan.
Maybe she's saving that bomb for later, but it's suspect that she wouldn't tell the truth just as everyone else had. Still, she seems to have some hard feelings against the outies and vows to Mark to help him find Ms Casey. Meanwhile, Irving threatens to leave Lumon, but before he does, he tells Dylan about his outie's paintings of the dark hallway with the elevator with the downward arrow.
Before he knows if Irving really leaves, Milchick calls Dylan to his office. He gives Dylan the surprise of his wife's name (Gretchen) and the secret development of the outie family visitation suite that only he can use. There have to be strings attached, but it's an intriguing incentive. Dylan returns to the office to find Mark, Helly, and Irving. They all get back to work with grins on their faces.
Dylan swipes the creepy wooden bust statue off of his desk as the team settles into a new sense of normalcy in a stranger new era of Lumon. They have a new mission to work toward together and refining their data is just one step. After refining his first set of data, Mark's computer shows his status as 68% complete, but the screen cuts to a different computer with a bunch of other numbers and Ms. Casey's (or Gemma's?) face. What in the world is going on here?
New episodes of Severance season 2 are released Fridays on Apple TV+.