The best thing about Severance has always been that it refuses to dumb down. Streamers, in bids for the biggest possible global audience, too often cater to the lowest common denominator. But Apple’s mega-budget, high-concept psychological thriller, about – I think – the threat of Big Tech, the deconstruction of the self, the might of organised religion, corporate indoctrination and workplace exploitation – has managed to become one of the most exciting mysteries on television without anybody really knowing what the mystery is.
Its strident ambition, its mind-boggling twists, its dark atmosphere of sinister dread, are all so rich it doesn’t matter that its audience don’t understand what’s happening. Richest of all are its characters, the team of Macro Data Refiners who have undergone a controversial surgical procedure separating their consciousness into a bifurcated “innie” (a self inside work) and “outie” (a self outside it): Mark S (Adam Scott), Helly R (Britt Lower), Dylan G (Zach Cherry) and Irving B (John Turturro).
Severance forces us to accept our ignorance and draws momentum from our speculation as much as its own unpredictable plot. It drives me crazy. It has me up all night on Reddit reading fan theories and texting my friends things like, “Really good analysis here from Aragorns_Broken_Toe”.
What is Lumon Industries – and what does it do? Who is good, who is bad, who is dead, and what is Macro Data Refinement? What is “Cold Harbor”? Why is there a child working on the severed floor? What’s with the egg buffets and watermelon busts? What do the goats mean? Why does this, one of the most powerful companies in the world that is ostensibly experimenting on its staff for reasons still unknown, not have the capability to install functioning CCTV? Guesswork and anticipation of every fresh new horror are part of Severance’s participatory pleasure.
John Turturro as Irving (Photo: Apple TV+)The second series, though, revelled a little too much in its own hype and in our obsessive detective work and did not deliver enough of what makes Severance special – especially for the dystopia and sci-fi averse like me. It ripped us away from the familiar corporate tedium and tore the innies from each other -# focusing instead on the outies, and how they grapple with the mounting distrust in Lumon.
Mark’s attempt to “reintegrate” his brain, and his plan to save his not-dead wife Gemma, held captive at Lumon; the terrifying, calculating power of the “real” Helena, heir to the Lumon empire Dylan’s jealousy of his more successful innie; Irv’s quest to make a Lumon romance work on the outside. Our glimpses of each became fleeting, their interactions with each other sparse and uneasy.
The series was beset by slow storytelling, symbols and clues that took too long to add up to anything illuminating, and standalone episodes devoted to long-winded backstory for supporting characters like Ms Cobel (Patricia Arquette) and Gemma Scout (Dichen Lachman). They all built a vital bigger picture of what is happening at Lumon – but they also built a sense that we were being strung along. It has prioritised the grand, existential freakiness of Lumon and its intentions over the characters we came to adore and the emotions we related to. It has reminded us that big ideas and high stakes only mean something if the story is rooted in humanity.
Patricia Arquette is fantastic as Ms Cobel – but two backstory episodes in a row asked too much of the viewer (Photo: Apple TV+)Severance is never definitive on whether “innies” and “outies” are the halves of the same person, two entirely separate, legitimate ones, or if the “innies” are people at all. To us, though, it is always obvious that these “innies” and their connections to each other are what give their strange, powerless lives purpose. They showed us that emotional and entertaining day-to-day interactions are what give all of our lives meaning, especially when the job you do – for severed workers, described as “mysterious and important” and which seems to mainly involve dragging “scary” numbers into folders – seems futile.
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Mark S, Helly R, Dylan G and Irving B had no knowledge of the outside world or their outside identities, but they forged new ones because of each other. They laughed, they fought, they fell in love. We cared about Lumon because we cared about their fate. The closer they grew, the more they mobilised to overthrow Lumon. For the viewer, whether or not they succeed has always been less important than how their relationships would survive.
Yesterday’s finale was stunning – at last bringing Mark, Helly and Dylan back together under those blinding strip lights in those pristine white hallways, and reminded us that Severance, at its best, is a workplace drama about a group of friends and their fight to feel legitimate and free.
But after weeks of plodding instead of plot it felt like a relief, rather than a well-earned payoff. In challenging us so boldly week after week, Severance has always trusted its audience. For its audience, though, it’s becoming harder to trust Severance.
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