‘Severance’ Review: Episode 2 Coughs Up a Ghost — Spoilers

[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” Season 2 Episode 2, “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig.” Read our Episode 1 review here.]

Mr. Milchick really stepped in it this time. In the wake of The Macrodat Uprising, the severed floor’s newly appointed manager (played by Tramell Tillman) may have cleared every sizable hurdle the Lumon higher-ups set for him — retaining Mark S. (Adam Scott), firing the rest of Macrodata Refinement team, replacing them in a mere 48 hours, firing the replacements (Mark W. is going to sue!), and rehiring the original team — but in Episode 2, “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig,” he has to throw out bigger bait than a pineapple basket to get the desired results. And he doesn’t even understand what kind of bait he’s offering.

Near the end of the episode, when Mr. Milchick visits Mark at home in the hopes of convincing him to keep working at Lumon, the company delegate is armed with offers. He tosses out a 20 percent raise before Mark can even answer whether he’s happy with his current salary. He throws in “regular wellness checks” from “independent organizations” to make sure the Innies are well taken care of. And then he pulls out the big guns: Gemma. Recalling Mark’s initial job interview, Mr. Milchick reminds him how he felt back then. “You said since she died, every day feels like a year. That you felt like you were choking on her ghost. Do you still feel that way, Mr. Scout?”

Again, Mark doesn’t respond before Mr. Milchick presses forward, telling Mark that his Innie is “happy” and “funny” and, most notably, that he’s “found love.” “Love?” Mark says, finally responding. “With who?” Now it’s Mr. Milchick’s turn not to answer, choosing instead to wrap up his sales pitch and leave Mark to make the decision we already know he’s made. He will return to Lumon. He will rejoin the severed floor. But he’s not coming back so “the solace” his Innie has found will “make its way up” to Mark’s Outie. He’s coming back for to find Gemma. And Mr. Milchick’s little speech was the final nudge he needed to believe he might actually find her again.

Episode 2 covers a lot of ground in its tight 47-minute runtime, but its main episodic arc connects two key moments: The first is the same one we’ve been talking about for the past three years: when Mark’s Innie bursts out of his sister’s back room, clutching a photo of Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and shouting, “She’s alive!” The second is, appropriately, split between two moments: when Mark chooses to go back to Lumon and when he confronts Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette). In between, Mark’s Outie is shown being dismissive and disconnected. He’s all too eager to accept the explanation that his Innie was shouting about his missing niece, not Gemma. (“Guys, obviously I was referencing the baby.”) He drags his feet over whether or not he should go back to work after the “overtime contingency” incident, and his initial decision is to quit. It’s only when Devon (Jen Tullock) pushes him on the possibility that Mark’s Innie was screaming about Gemma that Mark’s Outie shows signs of life.

“Honestly, if Ricken died and his body was burned, I would be sad for you but I wouldn’t be affected,” Mark says, spitting his sister’s word back at her. “This is obscene.” “I just want to be sure,” Devon says. “I am sure!” Mark shouts, before walking out of the diner. But that certainty, driven by common sense, time, and emotional self-preservation, has been shaken by the faint glimmer of hope from his Innie’s desperate cries. Mark, for as long as we’ve known him, is a desperate man. His grief has driven him to desperate, destructive decisions before, like the severance procedure itself, and now it’s pushing him toward hope. If there’s any chance he could reunite with his wife, even when it seems utterly impossible, he’s going to cling to it. He has to, whether he wants to or not.

Adam Scott in ‘Severance’Courtesy of Jon Pack / Apple TV+

Later that night, the fight with his sister still fresh in his mind, Mark hears Mr. Milchick bring up Gemma, seemingly out of the blue. Then he hears Mr. Milchick say that Mark’s Innie has found love. “Love?” Mark says. “With who?” The answer he wants is also the one he knows he won’t get — not if Gemma is still alive. But could she be? Could his wife be down there, with him? Could she be the one Mark’s Innie fell in love with? Did they find each other, and some nascent but fundamental part of them both remembered what they once had? Is the life he lost actually, somehow, still waiting for him somewhere in the depths of Lumon HQ?

Maybe. Although we know the “love” Mr. Milchick refers to is with Helly (Britt Lower), we also know Gemma is working at Lumon under the name Ms. Casey. Mark’s decision to return may not be driven by the right reasoning (and, woof, will it hurt whenever he realizes his Innie is in love with someone other than his wife), but he’s trying to put together the same puzzle we are, dear readers. And that’s why the end of Episode 2 is so important. When Mark sees Ms. Cobel packing up her weird little white car, preparing to leave town for destinations unknown, it makes sense that he would be angry. She lied to him, she tricked him, and she invaded his personal life in a way that’s just plain creepy. “Why did you do this?” Mark shouts. “What the fuck is this all about?”

But then that burgeoning little flame of hope bursts out. He can’t stop himself. She’s leaving, and he has to ask before she’s gone, even if it doesn’t make any sense. “Do you know something about Gemma?” Mark says. Ms. Cobel lets out a shaking breath. She looks down. And that’s enough. By the time she gathers herself and drives off in a noisy huff, Mark has seen what he needs to see. She didn’t laugh at his question. She didn’t get cute or condescending. She looked… guilty.

That makes three Lumon employees with suspicious Gemma-related behavior: Ms. Cobel with her sheepish look, Mr. Milchick with his not-so-random question, and Mark’s Innie, holding her picture and screaming for help. Over the course of Episode 2, he’s gone from a vehement non-believer to a curious convert. Does Mark’s Outie really think he’ll find his wife once he goes back to work? Maybe not, but he’s not going to keep sitting at home, choking on her ghost. He, like us, is owed a proper explanation.

Go get one, Scout. Go get her.

Grade: A-

“Severance” releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.

Britt Lower in ‘Severance’Courtesy of Jon Pack / Apple TV+

Further Refinement:

• “OK,” I can hear some of you saying, “but what about Cobel?! Where’s she going? What happened to her? Is she the new head of the Severance Advisory Council or what?” I can’t answer that, sadly, given the enigmatic nature of Ms. Cobel’s scenes this week, but a few things are clear:

1. She’s not going back to her old job. Not only did Mr. Milchick make it clear to Mark that “she will never descend to that floor again,” but Cobel was nowhere to be found in last week’s premiere.

2. She’s none too eager to accept a “promotion.” In her sit-down with Helena Eagan (Britt Lower), Ms. Cobel said she wanted to run the severed floor. She was told, politely but firmly, no, that’s Mr. Milchick’s job now, and was instead offered a “promotion” to the “Severance Advisory Council.” Rather than excitement or satisfaction, Ms. Cobel regards the offer with suspicion. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she says, and when Helena explains it’s a “brand new initiative,” Ms. Cobel decides she’s being lied to. “You don’t value me,” she says. “You fear me.” “We fear no one,” Helena replies, but Ms. Cobel isn’t buying it. She says she’ll think about it, but she’s given no further reason to do so. She’s made her assessment.

3. Someone is lying about Ms. Cobel. After all, in the aforementioned meeting, she’s told Lumon “values” her and her “loyalty.” But when Mr. Milchick meets with the Outies, he says Ms. Cobel is “severely unwell” and blames her for all of the “distress” felt by Mark’s Innie. Clearly, Lumon is prioritizing Mark over Ms. Cobel, but in what way remains unclear. Perhaps her “promotion” is real, and she’ll be given more authority. Perhaps it’s more of a hollow buy-out, and Lumon is trying to stash her somewhere safe until they feel comfortable getting rid of her. Either way, she’s a pivotal character, whether she’s a friend — or a nemesis.

• Do you recognize Mr. Drummond, the new character giving orders to Helena Eagan? You should, so long as you saw the best TV show of 2024. Mr. Drummond is played by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who recently starred in “Somebody Somewhere” as Bridget Everett’s tenant turned love interest, Iceland (aka Viglundur). Safe to say his character in “Severance” won’t be quite as nice as he was in “Somebody Somewhere,” but Ólafsson has also popped up in the Netflix comedies “Eurovision” and “Murder Mystery,” voiced a character in “Hilda,” and co-starred in Maria Bamford’s acclaimed sitcom, “Lady Dynamite.” Perhaps most importantly, though, Ólafsson has a history with “Severance” director and executive producer Ben Stiller, appearing in “Zoolander 2” and “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”

• “Fetid moppet.” That’s what Lumon CEO Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry) calls his daughter, Helena, immediately after his Innie exposed the issues plaguing the company’s severed floor. Those are pretty solid vocabulary terms for an insult that boils down to calling your daughter a “stinky kid,” but go off, I guess, you old weirdo.

• Leave it to Ricken to hone in on the key takeaway from meeting Mark’s Innie: “He was inspired by my book. He found great meaning in it — profundity.”

• For the record, I think Dylan’s “door prize” joke was solid. Was it worth losing the job over? No, but I wouldn’t want to work at Great Doors with a humorless boss like that anyway.

Code Detectors:

• Perhaps the biggest revelation of Episode 2 (at least when it comes to theories) is the motivation for keeping Mark at Lumon: They need him to complete Cold Harbor.

What’s Cold Harbor? No idea, but when Mr. Milchick explains his plan to restaff MDR with people who “hopefully have good chemistry” with Mark S., Helena replies, “We don’t need chemistry. We need Mark S. back to work long enough to complete Cold Harbor.” Later, after Mark’s minor mutiny, Mr. Drummond tells Mr. Milchick they’re going to give Mark what he wants (aka, his original team back) because “he won’t finish without them.”

Clearly, they need Mark. Clearly, they’ll do just about anything to ensure he’ll finish his project. What’s unclear is what that project is (just… refining numbers?), how the other team members’ similar work factors in (Mr. Milchick didn’t hesitate to fire them after the Uprising), and what happens when he/they complete Cold Harbor. Stay tuned.

• I loved the detail in Helena’s apology video where she blamed her “joke” and her “lie” on a combination of alcohol and a “non-Lumon” medication for an arm rash. Is it a convincing story to make up for her embarrassing confession? Not really, but paired with her other containment efforts, it should do the trick — without even blaming a Lumon-made drug in the process.

• Helena’s scenes in this episode are pretty intriguing overall. Sure, she does everything one would expect to help cover up the Macrodat Uprising, but in smaller, more private moments, she seems… shaken. She’s watching tapes of her Innie, Helly, kissing Mark. She looks doubtful, or at least worried, after taping her apology video. Later, she’s staring… plaintively, perhaps, out the window. It seems her Innie’s temporary escape has affected her Outie — we just don’t know how.

• Who is Irving calling from that phone booth? And why is Burt watching him? Just smooch already! You love each other!