Apple TV+ Review: ‘Severance’ Season 2 is Perfectly Calibrated to Captivate and Agonize Audiences

It’s hard to top a truly incredible cliffhanger. Severance is in so many ways a unique specimen, the rare instance of a show that, in its first season, got even better with each successive episode. Nearly three years off the air and so much anticipating building could give way to an unsatisfying return, or, worse yet, a desire to satiate audiences too swiftly and deliver on all the expectations. Instead, season two does what season one did best, which is to bide its time and very slowly unravel an exceptionally compelling and mesmerizing nightmarish tale.

To enter into this show even with full knowledge of what’s transpired is already confusing enough, so it’s reasonable to assume this show will gain no new viewers beginning just with the season two premiere. What audiences – and the characters on screen – know remains spotty, but the formidable season one finale left plenty of questions on the table that season two opts in some cases to answer directly and in others to let lead to new mysteries and confounding situations. The brief glimpses of their “outie” lives have left the severed employees of Lumon deeply unsettled, and it’s not clear just what their impacts have been because this show remains so deliberately limited in scope to ensure a claustrophobic and isolating perspective of the world.

What remains gripping about every moment of this show is the way in which its characters are distinctly unreadable. Those like Milchick (Tramell Tillman) and Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who remain their same selves at all times, do malicious things and deceive those in their orbit, yet they also seem to care about those same people. As they search for elusive answers, Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro) all exhibit subtle displays of defiance and perseverance as they play the parts that their outies have ordained for them, and the fact that they can’t possibly know what their lives are really like never ceases to be absolutely fascinating and confounding. Tillman, Lower, and Cherry most definitely deserve to join their Emmy-nominated costars Arquette, Scott, and Turturro come next awards season.

This is a bright vision of a dystopia that doesn’t look nearly as grim or apocalyptic as science fiction stories have taught people to expect, and its retrofuturistic elements contain to give it an added degree of personality. This series is unapologetically bizarre, and that only continues as new departments are unveiled and other oddities come into focus. The degree of specificity to which so much of this show’s universe has been constructed stands in starkly effective contrast to the bareness of the walls that trap its characters on an episodic basis. That’s what makes this show truly unlike any other: you never know what door is going to open and who’s going to be standing in front of it, and putting all the pieces together is an arduous task that even the most astute viewer couldn’t possibly be expected to do.

The temptation to grow a cast and enhance what has already been done in a show’s successful first season is always strong, and this show has managed to add just the right sprinklings of enticement without overdoing it. Talent including Bob Balaban, Alia Shawkat, Gwendoline Christie, and Merritt Wever appear in small but memorable roles that aren’t meant to replace any of the show’s core cast but instead to add their signature touch to this show’s existing eccentricity. While a trailer for season two teases an all-new team for Mark at Lumon, this show’s elevator-door structure ensures that there isn’t any one single reality that will remain forever dominant, opening many different possibilities for where the truly could truly lie.

It’s possible that some audiences may grow impatient with this show’s deliberately withholding nature, yet they’ve probably already written it off after season one. The ability to leave questions unanswered for multiple episodes and drop bombshells that won’t be addressed with any urgency is an asset to a show that is well-versed in expert storytelling. This show’s creativity knows no bounds, and it’s the ultimate series that shouldn’t be binged. There’s too much to process when the credits roll at the end of each installment, and so much lurking beneath the surface about what it means to be severed that, upon greater contemplation, is sincerely terrifying. There’s no other show out there like Severance, and existing fans and newcomers alike are in for something truly special with season two, and hopefully much more to come beyond that.

Season Rating: 9/10

Awards Buzz: Season one picked up fourteen Emmy nominations and two below-the-line wins, and season two is sure to fare even better, potentially inviting more members of the ensemble in with nominations and potentially even winning the top prize.