Severance season 2 episode 2 recap: out and about

Severance season 2 episode 1 saw the MDR innies committing to coming back to work. While that was supposedly “five months” after the events of the season 1 finale, Severance season 2 episode 2 picks up seconds after the finale ended, but centering on what happened with the outies.

It’s a good change of pace for a show that’s set 90% of the time in a cold corporate floor of white sterile hallways.

The aftermath of the Microdata Uprising

In the aftermath of the finale, Helly’s (Britt Lower) outie wakes up back at the Severance gala she was attending. Her father, CEO Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry), confronts her for her innie’s attempted speech against the Severance program. Helly’s outie, who is much more ruthless and twisted than her innie, demands that Milchick (Tramell Tillman) find out every single person the innies met with and every single word they said to them while they took over. She then goes to confront Cobel (Patricia Arquette) for everything that happened that evening.

In typical corporate fashion, Helly sits Cobel down and tells her she owes her a debt of gratitude for acting quickly against the Microdata Uprising, and asks her to come back to Lumon with an apology. Helly offers her a bogus promotion for an initiative called the Severance Advisory Council. Essentially she just wants her off the severed floor. Cobel insists on continuing to run the severed floor, which Helly rejects, like a boss. So Cobel states she’ll put thought into the promotion and leaves, defeated.

To dispel the panic caused by her innie’s speech during the finale, Helly’s outie makes a stilted filmed apology. She states that what she said at the gala was an incident involving her being inebriated, as well as a joke and a lie. Obviously it wasn’t a very funny joke.

Lumon goes door to door

Like a demented corporate Avon lady, Milchick goes on a mission to visit the outies of the MDR team, door to door. He starts at Irv’s (John Turturro) house to interrogate him, then fire him. He then goes to Dylan's (Zach Cherry) to fire him as well.

Mark’s (Adam Scott) outie, however, wakes up back at Devon’s (Jen Tullock) party. He and his sister argue about the meaning of him yelling “She’s alive.” He convinces himself he was talking about Devon’s baby, but right on cue, Milchick shows up. He tells Mark his innie commandeered his body for 39 minutes. Devon instantly takes a disliking to Milchick (who could blame her), confronting him about what Lumon does to innies. Milchick blames it on Cobel, saying she’s unwell, creepy, inappropriate and is the source of Mark’s innie’s distress at work.

Helly’s outie reviews security footage of her innie and Mark’s kiss from the first season (purely for research purposes). As she’s doing this, Mark goes to Cobel’s home for answers, but she doesn’t answer the door. Meanwhile, Dylan goes off to a job interview at a door company, where he gets rejected because he was a severed individual at Lumon.

Mark decides to quit Lumon. He and Devon discuss the impact of his wife’s death on him, since she suspects something weird given the “she’s alive” outburst at the party. However, the next day, Milchick visits Mark’s home to discuss his decision to quit, because Lumon, like Ted Lasso, doesn’t believe in quitting. So in addition to bribing him with a 20% pay increase and an investigation to what Mark’s innie did, Milchick psychologically manipulates him into staying, using his wife Gemma as a motivator, as well as his innie’s relationship with Helly. Things are starting to get severely personal, but it’s enough for Mark to decide to return to work.

Milchick and Helly discuss with their board how they need Mark back at work. That resulted in the hiring of Gwendolyn (Alia Shawkat), Mark W. (Bob Balaban) and Dario (Stefano Carannate) to work on MDR, hirings the board was not happy with after Mark didn’t want to work with them. According to Milchick, the process to hire them and put together the new team took 48 hours.

Days feeling like months

This absolutely confirms that Milchick telling Mark that “five months” had passed in the first episode was a lie. In reality, only three days had passed since the events of the finale, which is really unsettling. The timeline catches up to the events in the season premiere, and Mark’s request to get his old team back. Milcheck goes door to door again to rehire Dylan and Irv. C’mon Lumon, make up your mind!

The evening after Mark and his team are reunited, his outie comes home and sees Cobel leaving. He confronts her about how he trusted her but she lied to him the entire time. She chides him over being so easy to convince to return to work for Lumon (she’s not wrong). He asks what all of this is about and if it’s connected to Gemma? After a moment of guilt, Cobel blasts her horn at Mark, and guns it past him in her car. Say what you will, but Harmony Cobel knows how to make an exit.

New episodes of Severance air every Friday on Apple TV Plus.