If you’ve seen the show, you know I mean that title quite literally. One question I asked myself watching the second season of “Severance” was, “What’s with all the goats?”
For those that don’t know, the Apple TV+ series “Severance” just finished airing its second season. The show follows Mark, played by Adam Scott, after he undergoes the procedure known as Severance, where your brain is severed so that your work and home memories are totally separate. When Mark is at work, he doesn’t remember his home life, and when Mark is outside, he doesn’t remember his workplace. Mark works at Lumon, which is a company that does… something. We’re not sure, yet. The first season is one of the greatest seasons of television in my opinion, so I definitely had high expectations when watching season two.
This review will contain some spoilers, so if you haven’t watched “Severance,” do yourself a favor and devote 20 hours of your life to this wonderful series and then come back and read this.
Season two picks up right where season one left off, with Mark realizing that his wife is alive and has been kidnapped by Lumon, setting Mark on a season-long journey to get her back. Mark’s coworkers, Helly, Dylan and Irving are also on their own journeys this season. Helly’s work self (aka her “innie”) realizes that her outie is Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon’s CEO. Dylan, overconfident and brazen in work, realizes that his outie is quite depressed and in a deteriorating marriage, while Irving tries to reunite with his lover from Lumon, Burt. Mr. Milchick is now the manager of the severed floor with a new assistant, Miss Huang, a child attending a Lumon fellowship program. Ms. Cobel, fired from Lumon, is bent on getting her revenge. Also, Innie Mark and Helly are in love, I guess.
With all of these lingering plotlines from season one, season two does a reasonably good job at tying them up while raising new questions. Like, “What’s with all the goats?” I’m seriously wondering what the goats are doing at Lumon.
Some of my favorite parts of season two are when we get to explore the world outside of Lumon. In episode four, “Woe’s Hollow,” the team goes on an “ORTBO” or “Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence.” The entire episode takes place in a forest as the innies attend a Lumon-sponsored camping retreat. This episode was great because it broke away from the series norm and gave us a different setting and new dynamics. The climax of this episode also left me on the edge of my seat, with Irving discovering that Helly has secretly been her outie since the start of the season and Irv getting fired because of his discovery.
This momentum didn’t carry through every episode, though. Episode eight, “Sweet Vitriol,” is a Ms. Cobel-centric episode that gave us necessary information but took away from the overall pacing of the season.
The ending, however, was amazing. With Mark’s outie figuring out how to get his wife out of Lumon, and Helly and Dylan raising a revolt against Mr. Milchick, the finale was exciting from start to finish. The final hallway scene, with Innie Mark deciding to ditch Outie Mark’s wife and stay with Helly, left me frustrated, satisfied and emotional all at once. While I wanted Innie Mark to help his outie, I totally understand why he didn’t. For all Innie Mark knew, he would effectively die if he chose to step outside the Lumon doors. It’s the type of ending that leaves any viewer hungry for a third season, even if it takes us another three years to get it.
There’s so much to unpack about the second season of “Severance,” questions that I can’t possibly answer in one article. Where is Irving? What is going to happen with the revolt against Milchick? Will Outie Mark reunite with his wife?
And what’s with all the goats?
