Severance Season 2 Episode 1 recap: Mark returns to Lumon with a twist

Viva la Innie revolution… or so it seems in Severance Season 2 Episode 1, with Mark returning to a reformed Lumon – and (at first) his friends are nowhere to be seen.

Cast your mind back to the end of Severance Season 1: Dylan activated the Overtime Contingency (OTC), allowing Irving, Helly, and Mark’s Innies to see the outside world.

They all had different, traumatic experiences: Irving found Burt’s home, but he was with another man; Helly discovered she was Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon’s CEO; and Mark found out that Ms Casey was his Outie’s wife, who’s supposed to be dead.

Severance Season 2’s long-awaited opener focuses entirely on the Innies – so, it only makes sense that it appears to pick up almost immediately after the first season’s finale.

Welcome back Mark

As Mark’s Innie shouts out, “She’s alive,” he wakes up in his usual spot: the Lumon elevator, with its doors opening to the severed floor. He runs out in a panic, determined to find his MDR colleagues after the OTC ordeal. He sprints from corridor to corridor, a neverending labyrinth of liminal spaces (much like the terrifying urban legend Severance is based on).

He eventually finds the Wellness Center, but it’s completely different; the wood paneling is gone, and the room is empty and painted in the same shade of white as everywhere else. As he stands alone, we see a mysterious figure looking at him in the background.

He makes his way to his MDR desk, but Helly, Irving, and Dylan aren’t there: instead, he meets Mark W, Gwendolyn Y, and Dario R. Mr Milchick makes an appearance, welcoming Mark back the office. “Been a minute,” he says.

“What you all did five months ago was one of the most painful moments in the history of this company. I, too, was wounded by it. But we must be cut to heal, mustn’t we?” he explains as they walk to the management office together.

Mark also meets Miss Huang… the severed floor’s new deputy manager, who also happens to be a child.

Mark, Helly, Irving & Dylan are “famous”

Apple TV+

It’s revealed that Ms Cobel no longer works for Lumon and Milchick is now in charge of the floor. He tells Mark that his old colleagues weren’t fired. “Helly R and Irving B both successfully made contact with persons on the outside, just as you did. Dylan G’s Outie learned what happened after the fact,” he explains.

“The four of you have achieved international fame,” Milchick adds, handing Mark a heavily redacted copy of The Kier Gazette (your eyebrow should be raised) with a photo of them all on a parade. “As a group, you’ve become known as the face of severance reform.”

So, what happened to Harmony Cobel? Milchick brands her a sadist who attempted to engage Mark’s Innie and Outie in “some sort of throuple” (this cannot be true, and you should expect to see Cobel again in the coming episodes).

Mark demands to know where his team is. According to Milchick, despite the reforms, everyone refused to come back – apart from Mark, whose Outie “begged” Lumon to let him return. “Well, I’d like to hear it from them,” Mark says, but Milchick says that’s not possible.

The Ball Game

Apple TV+

Mark returns to his desk (he even leaves his balloons behind) and listens to Mark W natter on about the differences between this office and his old place. Gwendolyn asks him about the outside world; she’s baffled when he says he was too distracted by his brother-in-law to look at the sky.

“Could you tell what state you were in, because three of us put Wyoming on our input survey,” she asks (curiously, Severance has remained suspiciously coy about exactly where it takes place), as well as, “How’s wind, is it just like getting breathed on kinda?”

Miss Huang walks in with a red ball to play the Ball Game (a simple ice-breaker). Mark W asks her why she’s a child. “Because of when I was born,” she answers, before rolling the ball to him.

Mark W explains that he came from MDR department of 5X with Gwendolyn and that he thought he was permanently retired after his branch shut down. He rolls the ball to Mark, and as the photo of his Outie and Gemma flickers in his head, he soldiers through a smile and says, “I’m lucky enough to have made four new friends today.”

“I have to remind you that I’m a supervisor, not a friend,” Miss Huang says, and Mark obliges by correcting himself.

Mark tries to sabotage his new MDR team

Apple TV+

The next day, as his fellow refiners compare their perpetuity wings, Mark pens a sneaky note and slips it into Mark W’s pocket (in a brief, sweet moment, Mark W says he’s sorry that Mark lost his friends).

When Mark returns to the office, Milchick confronts him with the note. “Dear Outie, I don’t know if this will reach you, but I’m writing to alert you of the heinous conditions in the severed office to which you have transferred me,” it reads.

“The branch is run by a shambolic rube who goes by Milkshake, a man whose stupidity is rivaled only by that of the nine core principles. If you must continue to send me here, please consider strapping a bomb to me so that I may explode Milkshake and the very spirit of Kier Eagan. Wrathfully, your Innie, Mark W.”

Milchick asks if it’s “earnest… do you really think I’m a shambolic rube?”

Mark tells Milchick he doesn’t have anything against his new team – but he wants his old team back. For his insolence, Milchick revokes his status as department chief.

After tricking them into thinking he messed with the kitchenette, Mark makes a run for it. He makes it to the management office and finds the speaker for the Board. “I know you want to do the right thing for severed people, which is why I need to see my team again,” he pleads.

“If we truly are the face of severance reform as you say, then they deserve a chance. Please, they’re my friends, you can’t just make them disappear!”

However, Milchick doesn’t punish Mark as you’d expect. “It is clear your Outie’s fame has gone to your Innie’s head,” he says, before sending Mark back to the surface.

Helly, Irving & Dylan return to MDR

Apple TV+

As Mark steps back out of the elevator, the floor looks a bit different. For starters, there’s an O&D painting on the wall with a not-so-cryptic message, “Kier pardons his betrayers.”

Soon, everyone arrives: Dylan, Irving (who seems particularly troubled after his experience on the outside), and Helly. Mark tells them that they’re all famous and how he sabotaged the new people.

Dylan wants to know what happened to everyone, but Mark rightly points out that they could be listening right now.

Moments later, the rest of the team meets Miss Huang, who takes them all to the new Break Room. It’s no longer a torturous place, but a room for the refiners to relax.

Lumon is Listening!

Milchick welcomes them all back. “I guess the Board reconsidered my terms,” Mark says, and Milchick (with a hint of contempt) replies, “Guess so.”

They’re all shown a new company video, titled, ‘Lumon is Listening!’ It shows the Lumon administrative building (who sounds a lot like Keanu Reeves), who talks about its evolution and the company’s workers (we also find out that Lumon operates in 206 countries).

It then explains the “Macrodat Uprising… under my literal nose unfolded a human drama of danger and intrigue. Righteous anger, inspiration, and love. The Macrodat Uprising yielded bounteous reforms. These include tasty new snacks, like fruit leather, cut beans, Christmas mints, and salsa.”

“Not sold yet? The incentives were also reformed, and now range from hall passes to pineapple bobbing to our brand-new playful mirror room.”

Milchick insists he doesn’t want to be their “jailer… by end of day each of you will choose whether you want to remain here, not your Outies, but you.”

He also explains that the Break Room has no cameras or microphone – it is a place for total privacy and comfort. “I truly hope you will choose to stay and enjoy what you’ve helped build,” he adds.

Helly lies about her Outie

After Milchick and Miss Huang leave, Mark tells them about what happened on the outside – and how his Outie is married to Ms Casey, who seemingly died. However, Helly doesn’t tell the truth: she says she saw “the inside of a really f**king boring apartment” and a night gardener, who said he’d get help from the cops, but nothing came of it.

Irving struggles to reveal what happened. “It’s not our world up there. That’s what I saw,” he says before walking out. Dylan chases after him, and Helly asks if Mark and Ms Casey looked happy in their wedding photo (Mark also insists he didn’t have any feelings for Ms Casey).

Mark wants to get Ms Casey out. “Strictly speaking, she’s not your wife, pretty sure your Outie bought the ring,” Helly says, but Mark says it’s “mushy.” Helly laughs before arguing that they don’t owe their Outies anything. “But Ms Casey is one of us, so if you want to help your Outie and find out what happened to her, I’ll help,” she pledges.

Irving wants “the pain to stop”

Apple TV+

Dylan catches up to Irving, who reveals that Burt’s Outie appears to be married to someone else. “The last time I was happy was when all I knew was MDR, when I was good at my job and not trying to be happy,” he says.

Dylan refuses to let him leave, and Irving quietly tells him about his Outie’s paintings of dark hallways with an elevator and a downward arrow (where we last saw Ms Casey).

“I’m sorry that Outie Burt has a hot husband or whatever, but he is not the point. Innie Burt is the guy you fell for and I know because I encouraged the courtship,” Dylan says. “I want it to be over, I want the pain to be over… if he’s gone and I’m gone, then somehow we’ll be together,” Irving tells him.

As Dylan begs him to stay and “figure out what the f**k this is,” Miss Huang interrupts and asks him to come see Milchick.

Dylan gets a new perk… and we see Cold Harbor

As Milchick obsesses over his computer’s welcome screen (it still says Ms Cobel on it), Dylan storms in. Milchick isn’t mad – in fact, he’s quite the opposite. “Your wife’s name is Gretchen,” he says, before taking him to a secret room to show him a confidential plan for an Outie Family Visitation suite.

“Are you saying I could see my family here?” Dylan asks. “If you take the name of the room at face value, I’d say yes,” Milchick replies.

There’s just one slight catch: Milchick doesn’t want to tell the rest of the MDR team about it, because they’re all single and he doesn’t want them to be resentful of Dylan.

Dylan, Irving, Helly, and Mark return to their desk and start refining. As Mark selects some numbers, we get a glimpse of another screen with Ms Casey, aka Gemma – and it has a mysterious title: Cold Harbor.

It’s incredibly brief, but it appears to confirm one theory: at the bottom, we can see letters that represent the four tempers (WO for Woe, DR for Dread, FC for Frolic, and MA for Malice), heavily suggesting that MDR is configuring Gemma’s chip in some way.

Make sure you read our Severance Season 2 review, keep our Season 2 release schedule bookmarked, and check out the biggest TV shows coming out in 2025.