Probably the best thing streaming on Apple TV+, Severance hit us with a stellar, mind-blowing first season before pissing off for two full years. How extremely frustrating! Almost as frustrating as being trapped inside a job you hate by your own damn self!
Luckily, this exercise in delayed gratification is about to pay off. Season two of Severance arrives in New Zealand on Apple TV+ on January 17, meaning we’re not terribly far away from resolving last season’s gasp of a cliffhanger.
Severance: Season 2
In case you foolishly missed the opening instalment, here’s the setup (season one spoilers to follow). At the sterile, surreal offices of Lumon Industries, worker drones “benefit from” medically separating their work selves (“innies”) and their real selves (“outies”), allowed to truly clock off once work is done, with no memory of the day’s mysterious events. This has obvious benefits for our protagonist Mark (Adam Scott), a chipper cubicle mate within the office walls and a depressed widower at home—the severance process allowing him to waste most of the day in a basically unconscious state.
But for others, like new hire Helly (Britt Lower), the dissociative drudgery of life at Lumon became too much to handle. Without their outie’s permission to escape, our heroes (including Zach Cherry and a heartbreaking John Turturro) ended season one with a daring escape attempt, uncovering layer upon layer of conspiracy at the company all along. Patricia Arquette’s chilly boss lady Harmony added to the stakes, as did a surprising romance between Turturro and Christopher bloody Walken, playing the head of the mysterious Optics division.
So why’d we have to wait to get more of this goodness? There was that whole strike situation, to be fair, halting production in 2023. But we’ve also heard juicy rumours of bitter conflict between showrunners Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman, hilariously suggesting that the show’s depiction of a toxic work environment might’ve extended behind the scenes. Ben Stiller really proved himself as the director helming six of the first season’s 10 episodes, and he’ll return to direct the same amount this season.
We can’t wait to see where Mark and the gang wind up in season two—presumably back in the exact same cubicle doldrums, mostly—but they’ll also be joined by a ritzy new batch of performers. Gwendoline Christie, Bob Balaban, Merritt Wever, and Alia Shawkat are among the big names signed up for season two. We’ve been ready to punch our time cards since forever; can we get a trailer now, Apple?
