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Last week’s Severance season 2 premiere focused entirely on the fallout from season 1 as it impacted the sterile severed floor of Lumon Industries. Episode 2 flips that vantage point, depicting the reactions (and machinations) of those outside its hallowed halls. The exception to this rule is Milchick, the only character currently credentialed to slip between the worlds like a rat between prison bars.
The choice to split up season 2’s first episodes in this manner is a clever one. It forces us, as viewers, into the perspective of Innies versus Outies; we can only experience each storyline separately from the other (though, as with facts, we try to enjoy them both equally). But unlike Innies and Outies, we’re able to stitch together the complete picture over time, and episode 2, “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig,” goes a long way toward answering some of our burning questions.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig” begins with Outie Mark “waking up” in his sister’s home, slowly realizing that his Innie temporarily hijacked his body. (Mark’s sister, Devon, is only certain she’s talking to Outie Mark when she asks him to state her name, and he replies, straight-faced, “Persephone.” Writer Mohamad El Masri nails their brother-sister sense of humor here.) Mark then looks down at his hand and realizes—without comprehending—that he’s holding his wedding photo.
Devon, bless her, puts the pieces together. Moments before Outie Mark returned to his body, his Innie shouted, “She’s aliiiiiive!” Devon suspects Innie Mark was referring to Gemma, Mark’s wife, who supposedly died in a car accident shortly before Mark started working at Lumon. But Outie Mark is outright furious at this suggestion. He saw Gemma’s body. She’s dead. He doesn’t dare hope.
Inside Lumon—though away from the severed floor itself—Outie Helly is in the midst of some serious damage control. After her Innie disrupted a Lumon gala to protest severed employees being “tortured” inside the facility, Outie Helly has to first face the wrath of her father, Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry). “Fetid moppet!” he calls her, which, in my estimation, is way worse than the average disciplinary platitude. “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,” this is not.
Outie Helly pays for her Innie’s sins, first, through a meeting with Ms. Cobel. Cobel was the one to sniff out the Innies’ scheming last season, and so Helly extends her an apology and an offer: Not only will Cobel get her job at Lumon back, but she’ll get a promotion. She’ll lead the brand-new “Severance Advisory Council,” an initiative of which Cobel is immediately suspicious. She wants to be overseeing the severed floor itself, not stuck in some honorary position meant to keep her content and quiet. But Helly insists Milchick is in charge on the severed floor now and will remain in his new role. Lumon isn’t afraid of Cobel; in fact, the company “fear[s] no one.”
Helly then films a classic apology video for Lumon to disseminate. She claims she was drunk at the gala, the alcohol in her system intensified by the “non-Lumon” medication she’d taken for a supposed arm rash. She didn’t know what she was saying! Severed employees are not “tortured”! That was “a joke and a lie”! After she finishes recording, Helly watches back footage of her Innie and Mark’s Innie flirting—and, eventually, kissing—shortly before they launched the OTC last season. This, we can assume, is information she’ll figure out how to manipulate.
Meanwhile, she deploys Milchick to track down the other severed employees’ Outies and deal with them accordingly. Milchick fires Dylan and Irving’s Outies, much to their confusion and dismay, but opts to retain Outie Mark, instead offering Mark a portrait of the night’s events: Innie Mark took over his body through the “overtime contingency,” and Ms. Cobel—a.k.a. Mrs. Selvig—is “severely unwell” and will not “bedevil you out here any further.” Mark and Devon remain unconvinced.
Milchick attempts to smooth their feathers by showing up at Outie Mark’s house the next evening with a pineapple-topped Lumon gift basket. He promises Mark a 20-percent raise, regular wellness checks, and a “full investigation into your Innie’s claims,” should Mark promise to return to work. (As in last week’s episode, this is the Lumon equivalent of, “We’re listening and learning. Oh, and we’d like to buy your silence, please.”) Milchick then appeals to Outie Mark’s emotions, reminding Mark of his own relentless grief and informing him that his Innie is “happy.” “He knows nothing of the pain I see in you right now,” Milchick says, which viewers will recognize as a lie. Innie Mark might not have experienced Outie Mark’s loss, but he carries the weight of it with him, even if he can’t identify its source. Someone ought to give Milchick and Co. a copy of The Body Keeps the Score.
Still, when Milchick mentions that Innie Mark has “found love” and that “the solace you have given him down there will make its way to you,” Outie Mark is finally convinced. He’ll stay at Lumon. If he can’t have peace, maybe his Innie can.
Outie Helly and her Lumon cohort are satisfied with this outcome. Whatever brings Mark back to work, “long enough to complete Cold Harbor,” they’ll do—including reinstate the jobs of his recently fired teammates. What Cold Harbor actually is, we don’t yet know. As the unofficial Lumon slogan goes, “The work is mysterious and important.”
For a brief period, that’s work Outie Dylan and Outie Irving aren’t permitted to do. As Outie Dylan tries and fails to secure a new job (thanks, cultural discrimination against severed employees!), Outie Irving struts to a phone booth and calls someone whose identity we aren’t yet permitted to know. All we can hear is Irving tell this someone, “I want you to know my Innie got the message,” as a car snoops on him from a few yards away. The person in that car? Outie Burt!!! What’s that old sweetheart up to? And is he such a sweetheart away from the severed floor?
We can expect to see the Dylan, Irving, and Helly we know so well back at Lumon in next week’s episode. For now, we’re left with the image of Outie Mark outside Ms. Cobel’s apartment, where he stops her as she’s preparing to drive away. “Do you know something about Gemma?” he demands to know. Her response—a long, shaky silence—convinces him she does. But before he can get the answers he needs, she shrieks, honks her horn, and burns rubber off into the distance. The only thing of which Outie Mark can be certain? He’s got to be ready for work tomorrow.