After a three-year interval that felt twice that size, Severance has lastly returned. Final Friday noticed the season premiere arrive, and it proved an appropriately trippy and darkly humorous return (on high of that includes a welcome uncredited cameo from Keanu Reeves). Whereas it principally functioned as an prolonged reintroduction after years away, it additionally promised plenty of tantalizing mysteries that we’re eagerly awaiting to see the place they lead.
If the excitement from critics is any indication, we’re in for an thrilling experience this 12 months. The forged and crew are promising to shed extra gentle on the sequence’ greatest mysteries and thus reveal extra of their bigger imaginative and prescient for the story. Whether or not that includes explaining Dr. Casey’s previous as outie Mark’s spouse or just unveiling Lumon’s final endgame from their workers’ labor stays to be seen. However we’re hoping that Severance’s sophomore outing solutions considered one of our greatest questions of all: the place does the skin world really happen, and is it even in the true world?
The Exterior World in ‘Severance’ Feels Off
Revisiting the primary season, it’s clear that one thing about Severance’s world outdoors the Lumon places of work feels basically off. To start with, Mark’s neighborhood, specifically, feels barren and devoid of individuals; it appears too excellent to be a coincidence that Concord Cobel/Mrs. Selvig simply occurs to be his next-door neighbor. Within the first season finale, when Helly spoke at an organization presentation (from which the Season 2 premiere delivers a stunning growth), there appeared to be shockingly few individuals in attendance.
That is all earlier than we get into the minor particulars of the world, like the truth that the roads are often empty, or how the one vehicles we see are pushed by the primary characters, or the way it’s nearly all the time snowing. After all, the small inhabitants of the skin world might be a coincidence, as the majority of the primary season was shot within the aftermath of the COVID pandemic when social distancing and quarantining had been nonetheless mandated.
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However Severance nonetheless offers its world loads extra quirks that show a lot tougher to disregard. Minor Season 1 participant Dr. Reghabi, the previous Lumon surgeon who helped Petey reintegrate into society, was additionally the one who put in Mark’s severance chip. It’s clear that she is aware of loads about his backstory that’s but to be revealed, and her debut on the present when she saved Mark from the pinnacle of safety hinted that she may return down the street.
Most bizarrely of all is the truth that the city that the “outie” characters reside in is called Kier, after Lumon’s founder, Kier Eagan. Each in and out of doors Lumon, Eagan’s followers worship his life teachings with an nearly cult-like devotion, to the purpose the place temples of worship exist in his honor. Lumon even secretly hosts a note-for-note duplicate of his home contained in the Perpetuity Wing. Contemplating how a lot the present has constructed up his significance, it’s laborious to not think about the character or his legacy enjoying an enormous half going ahead, regardless that Eagan is alleged to have died years earlier than.
Is the Exterior World in ‘Severance’ One other Jail?
It’s been a preferred idea amongst Severance followers that Eagan is definitely nonetheless alive, even when the specifics as to how are a degree of rivalry. And if he’s certainly nonetheless within the image and, by extension, the mastermind behind the work performed at Lumon, who’s to say his management solely extends to his firm, contemplating the near-religious following he appears to have? Doesn’t it appear seemingly that he’d additionally see match to carry energy over the skin world?
To start with, the truth that the city is called straight after him is a crimson flag, as is the truth that the city’s inhabitants is near-barren. Moreover, it’s clear that Kier as a metropolis will get most, if not all, of its revenue from the work performed at Lumon, and each restaurant we’ve seen is called after a distinct member of his household. Mark and the opposite outies stay in Lumon-subsidized housing in a neighborhood that visually parallels the uniform and conformist look of the places of work inside the corporate.
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Additionally, if we take a look at the science-fiction style conventions that Severance runs on, a typical thread is the idea of a simulated actuality. The Matrix, arguably the quintessential work of cyberpunk movie, equally focused the numbing psychological impact of company tradition, because the characters realized the world round them was designed particularly as a method of management. Contemplating the shared thematic territory that Severance explores, is it actually that a lot of a stretch to imagine the skin world is simply as a lot a simulation because the places of work of Lumon?
‘Severance’ Season 2 Guarantees to Peel Again the Curtain
After all, that is all nonetheless hypothesis. However now that Severance is lastly again, there’s an opportunity it may not be for for much longer, particularly because the inventive workforce has brazenly acknowledged that we’ll begin getting solutions this 12 months. We are able to’t wait to see how deep the rabbit gap goes. Severance Season 2 is streaming on Apple TV+, with new episodes each Friday.