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WARNING: This review contains light spoilers for Severance Season 1.

I’ll admit, I was a bit late to the Severance train, only getting around to watching the show’s first season at the end of last year. However, once I did start watching, I was hooked. Season 2’s impending arrival was a massive mark on my calendar. Suffice to say, Severance Season 2 lives up to the hype. Through wonderful performances, a fantastically written narrative, and some truly imaginative creative direction, Severance proves itself to be one of the best things on TV right now.

Storyline Evaluation and Critique Experience

Season 2 begins right where the last season left off. Following the Overtime Contingency, where the innies schemed to awaken themselves in the outside world, we return to the severed floor at Lumon, where some dynamics have changed. This season, each episode feels distinct from each other, with some doing deep dives on specific characters or spending the entire runtime on either the innie or outie casts. These structures allow the show to take bold new directions with the story, with every episode feeling like an important piece of a greater whole.

Severance Season 2 also does well on handling the series’ mysteries. Many questions are answered throughout the course of the season, yet none of the answers feel unfitting. Better yet, there are still some questions left unanswered, and many parts of the show remain the best kind of unpredictable. While an elaborate mystery is unfolding, the thematic core of the show stays intact, perhaps to the dismay of those making outlandish theories. The answers being revealed always actually make sense when it comes to the show’s overarching narrative and themes regarding corporate greed and the essence of humanity, which feels refreshing after many other made-for-streaming shows seem to want to have nothing more than the biggest shocker these days.

Some highlights are Episode 4, which centers around an “outdoor retreat” for the Macrodata Refinement team; Episode 7, which centers around a character’s tragic backstory; and the absolutely electric season finale. Overall, while the variety of episodes may seem jarring at first, each chapter brings something to the table to weave a spectacular narrative.

Zach Cherry, Adam Scott, Britt Lower, and John Turturro in a still from Severance Season 2 provided by Apple

Character Quality Assessment Occurrence

One of Severance’s strongest aspects is its compelling cast of characters, and the versatility of their respective actors. Many of these actors, specifically the main four members of the macrodata refinement team, must play two characters: their at-work innies who have no knowledge of the outside world, and their outside-dwelling outies who have no knowledge of their work responsibilities. Mark (Adam Scott) presents a fascinating dichotomy between an innie with an almost childlike outlook and an outie engulfed by grief and alcohol. Britt Lower’s Helly is another fascinating character, being the good-spirited and upstanding Helly R. on the severed floor, but taking the role of the conniving corporate Helena Egan on the outside. Zach Cherry’s Dylan has a satisfying side plot in a similar vein, with his innie having all the traits his dead-ender outie lacks. I love the way this show uses these characters to display the people’s best traits, as well as the brightness of innocence.

These characters are not the only powerful performances, though. One stand out is Dichen Lachman as Gemma Scout, Mark’s assumed dead wife, who we learn quite a lot about this season. While she hasn’t had the most screen time in the previous season, I felt an immediate connection to her character this season and am looking forward to what will hopefully be an even bigger role in the next season. Additionally, I would be foolish not to mention this show’s greatest supporting actor: Tramell Tillman as the enigmatic Mr. Milchick. Tillman’s performance is spectacular, portraying this stone-cold exterior with complex inner-workings. Seriously, just give him the Emmy.

Meanwhile, some characters feel a little bit more absent this season. Irving (John Turturro) and Burt (Christopher Walken) felt like a major plotline last season, but are relegated to a B plot this time, lacking the meaningful answers many other characters got to have this time around. Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) was also absent for a decent portion of this season, leaving a lack of her strange uncomfortable demeanor that made many of her scenes in the first season so interesting.

PROVIDED_APPLE_SEVERANCE_BYTE_04082025_01 — Tramell Tillman as Mr. Milchick in a still from Severance Season 2 provided by Apple.

Audiovisual Analysis Review Portion

One of the core pillars of Severance is its stellar aesthetics, and Season 2 continues this fact. The world brought to life here by Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller is cold, haunting, and bizarre, but also just so darn interesting. The endless white hallways of Lumon’s severed floor are a perfect mix of dramatically real and eerily inhuman to get just the right tone out of the location, and the show’s cinematographer Jessica Lee Gangé, who also gets her directorial debut in Episode 7, does wonders working with different camera and lighting techniques to get a uniquely cinematic experience with this show. In her aforementioned directorial debut, Gangé uses a switch to film camera to create a warmer, brighter mood that clashes spectacularly with the show’s status quo, leading to one of the most memorable and emotionally poignant episodes of television I’ve seen in a while.

Severance and its style is also held up by its fantastic score, composed by Theodore Shapiro. By now, the show’s off-kilter opening theme is near synonymous with the show’s tone, the chilling piano and strings elevating the isolation and apathy of Lumon. This aural aesthetic resonates throughout the entire show’s score, bringing life to every scene that employs it. Severance also makes fantastic use of licensed music, as well. While I won’t spoil any needle drops, I will say that the songs chosen for the show feel entirely appropriate and never too out of place.

Performance Report

Severance Season 2 is spectacular. A masterfully written story where the mystery is just as important as the central themes kept me invested for the entire ten-episode run. Compelling characters and performances elevated the series’ sense of humanity, and the show’s unique art style makes it an audiovisual best-in-class. Watch it at your earliest convenience.