Severance

The 'Severance' season finale provided a whole lot of answers in a heart-pounding tightrope walk of an episode — read our recap.

She stops Helly just as she’s about to go on stage and threatens to make her work friends suffer if she speaks ill of the company, but Helly is undeterred. They’ll all be Kier’s children.” When she’s called to give her speech, Helly recites the Lumon apology pledge in the bathroom mirror: “All I can be is sorry. “Why he put me in there.” She explains that his wife died in a car accident: “He hoped you’d be spared from the pain.” Cobel finally gets through to Milchick, telling him that the overtime switch has been flipped. Helly escapes to the bathroom to process all of this, where she’s interrupted by her father, who just hates “what that ‘Innie’ tried to do to you.” She has a big speech to give, and he recalls how, as a kid, she thought everyone should get a severance chip, and now they will, “because of you. As Helly makes her way through the party, we see it’s an exhibit dedicated to her life at Lumon: “Helly: A Severed Story.” There’s video of “Helena” talking about growing up as an Eagan and reciting the Nine Core Principles before bed every night. I think it brings us together.” Mark, meanwhile, gushes to a confused Ricken about how much his book changed his life and fends off a concerned Cobel… but when he leaves her, he says, “Thanks, Ms. Cobel,” which sets off alarm bells in her head.

But like anyone who loved the end of 'Lost' season one, Scott knows the power of delayed gratification.

“The discipline it took them to wait until that moment to get that camera to go down that hole and looking up at the actors…it was incredible,” Scott says. “And just how I think I leapt up from the couch and just screamed, ‘No!’” And Irving, having embarked on the year‘s best workplace romance with Burt (Christopher Walken) before Burt is forced to retire, finds Burt out in the real world for the first time—seemingly happy at home with his husband.

Following the first season finale of the Apple TV+ series Severance, “The We We Are,” a look back at all the clues the show has given us about Lumon ...

Maybe the second season of Severance is about the person sent there next in order to help Kier come back. (I am very aware that my “Adam is Javi” theory from Yellowjackets did not pan out!) Maybe I’m taking a leap forward in interpreting lines like Mark’s “We’re people, not parts of people” and Helena’s “I don’t think severance divides us. - The little 2-D animated version of Kier Eagan says “I love you” to the person who successfully sorted all their quarterly MDR data, and that’s what the cult is looking for, right? … In this theory, the larvae eventually eats and replaces you.” So sort of like the horror movies The Brood and Possession, in which host/original bodies are replaced by duplicates? That transference of consciousness and the manipulation of people’s bodies is what I think Lumon has been working on this whole time with the severance procedure, with the end goal of bringing Kier Eagan back to life. “The We We Are” ends on a cliffhanger for the MDR team once Milchick breaks through the door and tackles Dylan, ending the Innies’ rule-breaking excursion.

Anthony Flagg reviews the first season of Severance now streaming on Apple TV. Severance was directed by Ben Stiller and stars Adam Scott.

In the last 20 or so minutes of the season one finale “The We We Are” I should have worn my Apple Watch to see the leaps my heart rate was making as the final moment intensifies and cuts to black. His alcoholism more than once drove people away from him and it was interesting to see this depicted quite accurately throughout the season (one example is Mark eating minimal food to drink more instead). Even when in his “innie” mode, others notice things such as the smell he sweats off to help underscore the severity of his drinking. As the work and the season progress, the uncoverings of Lumon are horrifying – aversion therapy that hammers away at their apologies until they actually “mean it” as Milchick urges them on for the 1,287th time. So back to Data Refiners. In the MDR (Macro data refinement) wing, the team gathers clusters of numbers on a screen and categorizes them into certain digital buckets based on their interpretation and emotional connection to what they are seeing on the screen. Currently in the spotlight for his portrayal of Carmine Falcone in The Batman is John Turturro as Irving, the longest-tenured “innie” as they refer to themselves, the 8-hour split that works within the walls. The show discussions on the subreddit have been incredible and as of this writing, Variety has confirmed that it will be renewed for a second season.

"Severance" creator and stars on the finale's very big Eagan twist and where the show will go for Mark, Helly and Lumon gang in Season 2.

And when he arrives at that party, he is finally ready to move on from severance and from Lumon and also ready to move on from Gemma and heal a bit. Stiller: There is this growing connection between Mark and Helly happening during the season, and then on the outside, Mark is trying to get over his wife’s death — and then we’re going to find out that his wife is still alive. But it is a disconcerting sort of start to that journey. But I should actually get promoted.” So I think part of that is also trying to get back in their good graces and make them understand, I’m not just a crazy person over here, I’m right. And that’s where it comes in with the hallway paintings and his trove of Lumon files that he seems to have collected. So I think she is angry and petulant and wants to punish them and is hurt and all of these things. That’s the big question, what is special about Mark? And is it actually that there’s something special about him or is it more about Gemma, and he was sort of pulled in? It’s that idea that it’s happening over the course of an hour or so. And the first thing he sees when he comes to in the outside world is Cobel. But she looks different and he can’t quite put his finger on it and doesn’t really have time to. Tramell Tillman: Listen, these are high stakes, OK? He is willing to bet the house for this. Innie Mark has pieced together that Gemma is actually Miss Casey and is still alive, but he knows she has been fired from Lumon and sent down to wherever that elevator takes her. There’s a question of sort of who was targeted first: Was Mark targeted because of his relationship to Gemma, or was it the other way around?

Season 1 of the Apple TV+ series 'Severance' ends with a daring finale cliffhanger that turns the show entirely on its head.

And what of Irving, who used his short window in the outside world to seek out his lost love Burt (Christopher Walken)? Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) has promised that the innies will be punished for their defiance, but their fates now lie in the hands of their counterparts, who are essentially a new set of characters. Will Mark seek out Regabhi (Karen Aldridge) and attempt to reintegrate his two personalities to aid the search for Gemma? Will the series continue to follow Helena in the outside world, giving the audience a firsthand view of the Lumon machine? He appears to be a true believer who aims to ensure that every person on Earth becomes one of “Kier’s children.” Supposing that everyone becomes severed, the Eegans would have the means to indoctrinate all of humanity into their flock, to the extent that future generations might not even need to be severed at all. Helly finds herself in a position to share the terrible truth with a crowd of powerful people and land a blow to the institution of severance; she just needs to hope that she’s able to take the stage before time runs out and her evil counterpart retakes control of their body. That is, until the revelation of the “Off-Time Contingency,” a secret mechanism that can awaken a worker’s “innie” even when their body is outside the office. She awakens at an event in her honor, where Helena is expected to extol the virtues of severance to an audience of lawmakers and business interests.