(Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” season 2Section 3, “Who is alive?” Read our previous section reviews here.)
After two weeks spent exclusively on the inside and then the outside of Lumon HQSection 3 returns to ”Departure weight“S” Traditional Half-Innie, Half-Outie narrative model-and it is still the strangest episode of the season. One reason why so many curiosity can appear in a single hour is because each of our series regular guests is sent out on their own. So let’s take a look at each special plotline, one by one, start with the somewhat atypical and run through the disturbing bizarre.
Harmony’s Disharmony
It’s a little moment, but I love Brash Sonic -Symetry in Ending Section 2 with harmony (Patricia Arquette) screaming suddenly and female horns on the ground (Adam Scott), and then start section 3 with a passing truck suddenly wake up MS Cobel with its own blaring beep. It seems when harmony unpacked her house and drove in a huff, she had nowhere to go. And now that she has rejected Helena Eagans (Britt Lower) suspected invitation to sit with the Lumon board – I would not have come in that car either – I must imagine that her alternative for a quiet night’s sleep is even more limited. Where should she go? What will do She does? And who has more power: MS Cobel or Lumon?
Irving’s export hall
Irving’s visit with Felicia (Claudia Robinson) is about as heart -warming as it becomes in the cold halls in Lumon. Greeted with a hug when he arrives at Burt’s old stomping basics, optics and design, to release a missing person flying, Irving (John Turturro) gives in to remind of his lost love long enough. He and Felicia change stories, and Irving soon shows her her notebook, which is rich with tender sketches of their shared friend.
But when Felicia turns a few pages too far, she sees Burt’s other drawings-creations of his outdoor pitch paintings, which Felicia immediately identifies as the Export Hall. Her serious tone and implicit warning is enough for Irving to know that he is on the right track. He has to find that hall, whether Dylan (Zach Cherry) will help him or not.
Dylan’s disappointment
Oh, Dylan. Lumon really brought you to heel Quick, be bud? The brave rebel that stopped underground under the macro uprising and sacrificed its own glimpse of the outside world to help others now seems to be intended to protect themselves.
As promised in section 1, Dylan is rewarded for his “good behavior and production” with a visit to the Family Visiting Site, where he Outie’s wife, Gretchen (Merritt Wever !!) is waiting for him. Their “18-minute visitor event” does not live exactly up to Dylan’s fantasies if his other life-he finds out that Hans Outie is “kind of a fuck-up” that has trouble keeping down a job-but seeing pictures of their children and meeting his wife in the meat is enough to make him promise to continue the good work. “I’ll be good,” he says the Gretchen. “I will make you all proud.” (To hear “I love you”, even as a reflexive goodbye from a virtual stranger, probably felt pretty good too.)
For starters, I had my suspicions about the Gretchen. Is she really Dylan’s wife? Does she tell the truth about her life on the outside? Can you truly believe in someone who would pose for all these sears family photos? It seems at least at the moment. After her visit we get to see the Gretchen at home with Dylan’s Outie, and the scene around her reflects what she told Dylan’s Innie. His outie lounger on the couch and read a newspaper in the dark, while a child sits far too close TV And the other two entertaining each other. When the Gretchen asks if he remembered to bake the cookies, we know the answer before confirms it. Dylans Outie just doesn’t seem so committed. When she goes out for the night shift (her uniform indicates that she is a security guard) he finally asks how her “thing” went to Lumon today. “It was good,” she says. “Strange good, but good.”
That comment also calls true, although it is bad for both Dylanes. Hans Outie seems suspicious, and Hans Innie seems happy. Will more “visiting events” get further obedience in the latter? Could it cause marriage problems for the former? Color me careful, but fascinated.
Okay let’s talk about the goats
Since their emergence in season 1, the goats have served as a symbolic shortcut for all related to the show’s mysterious (And important) mythology. Is the goats used for experiments? For cloning? For religious purposes? Are the goats even real? Some fans see them as a literal symbol – of everything from the gods in ancient Greece to the devil – but obsession over Understand the goats Living (and dying?) Somewhere under Lumon HQ has far surpassed its actual ScreenTime in the series.
So I was a little worried when Mark announced that he would find “The Goat Man” at the beginning of section 3, and that view only grew when Lorne (Gwendoline Christie) appeared as the leader of the mammal’s careful department, along with the page a flock freaky Shepherds (one of them wears a dead black mountain goat as a headgear). We really need get into this? Do we have top behind the curtain to find a slope on the size of a football pitch under office lights? Don’t like our own imagination enough to sound this seemingly insignificant Mystery be?
Yes, the mammals raised the strange factor of the section, but I would argue that very little else happened by some meaning. Plot obsessives will undoubtedly notice that small progress was made in the search for Gemma/MS. Casey (Duchen Lachman). The Getherder knows her and worked with her, but all they could tell Mark and Helly was that they assumed she “retired” the same as everyone else. Meanwhile, the vibes were not … good. The costumes, language and atmosphere were good, but it felt more like the authors stretched to live up to hype, instead of performing an imaginative vision that is worth “departure”, the series that gave us waffle parties and Keanu Reeves as a talking building .
I expect that the goats will somehow somehow, on the events ahead, so here hope it will be more rewarding in the future to reflect on this visit. But still strange. (“See? Pouchless!”)
Mark’s desperate action
As if Mark’s Outie can feel the white wall that Hans Innie continues to encounter, Marks Outie is his urgent this week. During most of the section, he follows some random internet advice that asks him to burn a picture in his retina that Hans Innie can then read when he opens his eyes on the elevator. It won’t work. It takes too long for Mark to come from his car (the last place he can take up his chosen message) to the elevator, and although he could do so, there is no plan for Hans Innie to get a message back to him.
Fortunately (or, if you are pessimistic about her scientific method, very, very unhappy), Asal Rawbi (Karen Aldridge) shows up to offer a “better” solution. She wants to reintegrate land – to combine Hans Innie and Outie herself, so that Mark can remember everything inside and outside the office. Sounds good, right? Well, I’m sure it did for Petey (Yul Vazquez) too, right up to he died. Inghabi may have been the researcher who installed Mark’s Severrance Chip (which would indicate that she should know better than most people can safely get it back), but she is also 0-1 when it comes to reinterpretation a cut-off worker. Petey dead looms over ground and throws a large enough shadow to make him abandon the idea completely during season 1.
But that was before he knew about Gemma. As soon as the GoBabi “confirms” she saw Gemma alive on the cut floor, Mark’s reluctance disappears. He is ready for the procedure, and he wasting no time letting her go up in the brain. When section 3 ends, he begins to see flashes of his Innie’s life at Lumon. But he also experiences shaking in his hands and recalls questions in the present. Could the Government really reverse a procedure that is generally considered irreversible? Or does she only use land to promote her own agenda against Lumon, in the hope of the best without risking anything herself?
Seth’s line in the sand
Beyond Mark’s rapid embrace of the basement brain surgery, in addition to the goats, is the strangest part of section 3 when Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) is “talented” a set of paintings where Kier Eagan has been “reintroduced” to “help” Seth sees himself in Lumon’s founder. How exactly would a company created and drive by white managers think to make their lonely black boss feel more at home? Well, by converting Kier as a black man, of course.
My colleague, Proma Khosla, talked to Tillman and creator Dan Erickson about the stage, and you really Read the whole piece. “” Even in his leadership role, he would always wonder in the back of his head: “Well, what do these people actually want from me, and do they have my best interest in mind?”, Said Erickson. “What are the strange challenges he would specifically have to face, as opposed to someone else working in the same position?”
Being confronted with such a lively depiction of how his higher-ups think of him-without doubt, their first and dominant perspective that he is no more than the skin’s deep-scramble Mr. Milchick. I would argue that it also rattles Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander), who presents him with the paintings on behalf of the Board and later confirms that she received the same gift. In her portrait, was Kier also a black man? A black woman? A white woman? Was Natalie reduced to her external performances just like Seth? Her fading smile, when she tells Milchick that the board has left the conversation, tells me she was, and it worried her in a similar way (although she will not admit it orally).
So despite Mr. Milchick’s unclear loyalty, it comes as no surprise (but great importance) when he boxes the board’s “gifts” and puts them in storage. The question is now: Did he enough him enough to help the MDR team save Gemma? Or can he bury his feelings in the same way he has covered so many strange lumon secrets?
Rating: B+
“Severance” Season 2 releases new episodes Friday on Apple TV+.
