Severance is gearing up for its long-awaited return at the beginning of 2025 after concluding its Season 1 run in April 2022. With almost three years between seasons, it’s understandable that viewers may need a bit of a refresher about what happened in the final moments of Season 1’s last episode.
As fans will recall, Severance follows a group of workers at a company that goes by the name of Lumon where they’ve agreed to undergo a procedure that “severs” their work persona from their personal lives, forming “outie” and “innie” personalities. When severed employees enter the Lumon building (and take the elevator to the proper floor), their innies are activated, essentially eliminating their outie memories until they exit the building.
In the finale, the Macrodata Refinement team at Lumon, made up of Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irv (John Turturro), came up with a plan to free their innies out into the real world via an overtime contingency. Dylan infiltrated the system inside Lumon and managed to turn off a setting in severed employees, allowing innie Mark, Helly, and Irv to wake up in the real world.
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When the innies woke up, Mark found himself at a party hosted by his outie’s sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and brother-in-law, who happens to be an author innies have come to revere at Lumon. Plus, Mark encountered his boss, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who outie Mark knows as his neighbor Mrs. Selvig.
Ultimately, Mark accidentally called Harmony by her last name, tipping her off to the reality of the situation, and she fled to try and warn Lumon. Meanwhile, Mark discovered that Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) is actually outie Mark’s “dead” wife Gemma after seeing a wedding photo of them in Devon’s house. But before he was able to announce this more clearly, the overtime contingency was deactivated, only allowing for Mark to yell, “She’s alive,” at the party, before the episode cut off.
Meanwhile, innie Irv awakened in his outie’s home, which has various paintings of a dark and ominous hallway that resembles a space one might find in Lumon’s labyrinth of a building. Without much explanation for this, Irv set out to find Burt (Christopher Walken), a colleague who was forced to retire as they grew romantically close at Lumon. But when Irv approached Burt’s door, he noticed that he has a significant other and hesitated, deciding to turn back before his innie was deactivated.
Finally, the biggest jaw-dropping moment of Season 1’s finale had to be the reveal that Helly’s outie was actually Helena Eagen, the daughter of Lumon’s CEO. Awakening mid-speech at a soiree for the company, innie Helly realized where she was and began to convey the horrors that innies face while working for the company.
When the metaphorical plug was pulled, Helly’s innie control was taken away, leaving viewers to wonder what her words will do to Lumon and its future. And while Helly’s public display was a clear act of innie defiance, Dylan’s efforts to keep the overtime contingency active certainly got him into trouble with the terrifying Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman).
What will happen when Severance returns? Stay tuned and let us know what you hope to see when the series returns.
Severance, Season 2 Premiere, Friday, January 17, 2025, Apple TV+