TVTVThree years is a long time. Here’s a refresher on the ins and outs of Lumon Industries.
Apple TV+/Ringer illustration
By Miles SurreyJan. 15, 1:21 pm UTC • 11 min
The good news: Severance, one of the best series from Apple TV+’s impressive science-fiction catalog, returns for its second season on Friday. The bad news: It’s been nearly three years (!) since Severance debuted, and for a show filled with shocking twists and alluring mysteries, such a lengthy hiatus can make it challenging for viewers to jump back in. Hell, I recall loving everything about Severance in 2022, but my experience of watching the series has become so faint that I feel like my memories of it were, in fact, severed. (What I would give to sever my brain from having to remember Deadpool & Wolverine.)
Don’t worry if you also fall into the “What the hell happened on Severance?” camp—we’re here to help. To kick off 2025, I’ve revisited Severance’s first season—still slaps, by the way—for a much-needed refresher on the ins and outs of Lumon Industries, its severed workforce, and baby goats. I still don’t have any credible theories on what’s going on with the baby goats, but here’s what you need to remember about everything else before Season 2 premieres. (Spoilers abound for Severance’s first season, obviously.)
The procedure known as severance, which utilizes Lumon’s proprietary technology, splits someone’s consciousness between an “innie” (who they are at work) and an “outie” (who they are outside it). In other words, an outie can clock into work in the morning and essentially reawaken at the end of their shift with no memory of what happened in between. It’s a controversial scientific breakthrough, but one that certainly appeals to our protagonist Mark (Adam Scott). A former history professor, Mark lost his wife in a car accident. To help manage the grief, he joined Lumon so that he could undergo the severance procedure and spend less time thinking about what he’s lost. (Mark’s outie is extremely despondent and drinks a lot, so severance hasn’t exactly been … therapeutic for him.) By the end of the series premiere, Mark has been promoted to head of macrodata refinement—MDR for short—after his manager and best friend, Petey (Yul Vazquez), mysteriously leaves the company.
Because of MDR’s sudden vacancy, Severance’s premiere also introduces us to Helly (Britt Lower), Lumon’s latest severed employee, who reacts to her new reality with a mix of horror and rage. Throughout the first half of the season, Helly goes about finding ways to escape Lumon, first by submitting a resignation request to her outie. When it’s clear her outie has no sympathy for what she’s going through and will keep her there against her will, Helly hangs herself in the company elevator, nearly dying. Helly’s rebellious streak inspires the other MDR workers to seek answers and freedom—especially Mark, who develops romantic feelings for her. As for what Helly’s life is like on the outside, well, more on that later.
The other MDR employees are Dylan (Zach Cherry), a sardonic busybee who’s proud of all the company perks he’s earned, and Irving (John Turturro), the veteran of the department who’s a stickler for the rules and who starts out with a cultlike devotion to Lumon. We also meet Lumon’s head of optics and design, Burt (Christopher Walken), who is drawn to Irving before retiring at the end of the first season—effectively leading to the “death” of his innie. Then there’s the non-severed management: Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), the head of Lumon’s severed division who also happens to be Mark’s next-door neighbor, and Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman), a supervisor whose cheery facade slips away whenever he has to keep the workers in line.
More on ‘Severance’
More on ‘Severance’
Even though they’ve consented to having their consciousness split in two by the company, Mark and the other severed employees—both innies and outies, for the most part—don’t exactly know what Lumon … does. (There is clearly a lot of sensitive information that Lumon employees aren’t privy to. As Mark says: “The work is mysterious and important.”) It’s the world’s leading biotechnology company, but it’s unclear what kinds of products Lumon produces. What we do know is that Lumon is powerful and exerts a lot of influence—one could say it’s Apple-esque—and that the company has received support from a state senator to legalize the severance procedure. We briefly meet the aforementioned senator and his wife, who, it’s implied, underwent severance to avoid the pain of childbirth, and you can see how this technology might be appealing outside the traditional office setting. (Imagine if soldiers were severed before going on tours and didn’t return home with PTSD.)
Since its inception, Lumon has been run by the Eagan family, and the company culture centers on the cultlike philosophy of its founder, Kier Eagan. That includes nine so-called Core Principles—Vision, Verve, Wit, Cheer, Humility, Benevolence, Nimbleness, Probity, and Wiles—and an employee handbook that looks thicker than the Bible. The Lumon board, meanwhile, remains unseen, delivering cryptic messages through intermediaries during meetings. The vibes are super unsettling, and one of the biggest unanswered questions of the series is what Lumon and the Eagan family stand to gain from creating the severance procedure in the first place. Your guess is as good as mine, but some viewers have theorized (rather convincingly!) that severance could be a way for the Eagans to achieve immortality by transferring their consciousnesses between bodies. (That does seem like something 1 percenters would obsess over.)
As for the day-to-day work undertaken by MDR, well, even that’s shrouded in mystery. The workers filter through a bunch of numbers, some of which elicit an emotional response like fear. They then sort the numbers into different folders—completing a file by the end of the quarter can earn them company perks such as a waffle party. What is a waffle party, exactly? Oh, you know, just one of those casual workplace celebrations where you eat a plate of waffles, put on a Kier Eagan mask, and watch as four half-naked people in masks go full Eyes Wide Shut.
I haven’t even addressed the moment when Mark and Helly stumble on a room filled with baby goats, or why optics and design is producing ideographic cards that seem to depict what I can describe only as “yoga poses with a threatening aura.” All of which to say: There’s a lot of weird shit going on at Lumon, and Severance’s first season left us with far more questions than answers. Fingers crossed we’re treated to another waffle party in Season 2.
We’re told that severance is an irreversible procedure and that a person would never be able to access the memories of their innie, and vice versa. But then there’s Petey, Mark’s former bestie at MDR. Petey tracks Mark down outside the office and reveals that he’s undergone reintegration, which is exactly what it sounds like: a way for innies and outies to become one again. Before reintegration, Petey was also trying to figure out what Lumon was up to, sketching out an intriguing map of the severance floor:
Apple TV+
Unfortunately, reintegration has some serious drawbacks. Petey suffers from severe hallucinations—imagining himself back at work, or in two places at once—and he dies at a local gas station with blood spewing out of his nose. Petey also leaves behind a burner phone that constantly buzzes before Mark finally answers the call. On the other line is Reghabi (Karen Aldridge), a former Lumon surgeon who helped sever the workers in the first place.
When Mark meets up with Reghabi, she explains that Petey died because he didn’t follow all of her post-op instructions and ran away at the first sign of “sickness.” However, their conversation is interrupted by Lumon’s head of security, Doug Graner (Michael Cumpsty), who is killed by Reghabi after she bashes his head in with a baseball bat. Incredibly, that’s the last we see of Reghabi, but she clearly has an important role to play going forward—not just for the answers she can provide, but for the potential to restore the memories of severed workers. My two cents: The reintegration mortality rate is a little concerning.
Across Severance’s first season, Helly’s real identity remained a mystery. Of course, the fact that her outie was so unsympathetic to Helly’s plight didn’t paint her in a flattering light, but I can’t imagine many folks expected her to be an Eagan. Yes, in the season finale, it’s revealed that Helly is Helena Eagan, who underwent severance to give Lumon some good PR before the procedure’s legalization was set to be voted on in Congress. Helena had planned to give a speech at a Lumon gala about her innie’s experience—glossing over the torment that Helly went through, including her attempt to die by suicide. (Milchick was snapping photos of the MDR crew throughout the season, which were then used for Helena’s presentation.)
Suffice to say, Helena is bad news, which feels very on-brand for Eagan progeny. In the finale we also briefly meet her father, current Lumon CEO Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry), who says some really cryptic shit to Helena. “Your grandfather would cherish what you’ve done,” Jame tells her. “One day you will sit with me at my revolving.” What is a revolving, you ask? I haven’t got a clue, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it were related to the severance procedure and whatever it is that MDR and the other severed departments are working on.
When a severed worker is going through a rough patch, they’re sent for a “wellness session” with Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman). A therapist of sorts, Ms. Casey essentially performs ASMR, gently telling a severed worker supposed facts about their outie to lift their spirits. “Your outie attends many dances,” Ms. Casey tells Irving in a voice as smooth as warm butter, “and is popular among the other attendees.” The whole experience is soothing yet unsettling, and the true purpose of the wellness sessions remains unclear. (My theory: They’re a subtle way to check whether an outie retains any innie memories; in Irving’s session, Ms. Casey mentions that his outie “likes the sound of radar,” the name of Irving’s dog.)
Initially, one might assume that Ms. Casey is like Cobel and Milchick: a non-severed cog in the Lumon machine. But by the end of the season, Severance throws out a curveball: Ms. Casey is apparently Mark’s wife, who’s been presumed dead for years. Ms. Casey’s real identity invites plenty of questions. Why can’t she remember who Mark is? Did she elect to have the severance procedure? Is this really the same woman who was married to Mark?
Whatever’s going on with Ms. Casey, it’s not good. She reveals to Mark that her severed life exists only within the wellness sessions—she’s like a newborn, with just 107 hours of memories—after which she’s sent back to the “testing floor.” The testing floor could refer to a department that Petey described to Mark, a place where “you don’t get to leave” and some folks supposedly live entirely underground. Perhaps Lumon is able to fake people’s deaths and force them into indentured servitude; perhaps they take people who’ve recently died and Frankenstein their corpse with someone else’s consciousness. Thinking about this stuff is freaking me out; if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna step out for a wellness session.
Severance’s three-year hiatus was so excruciating for one particular reason: That finale was a banger. Earlier in the season, Dylan is briefly woken up at home by Milchick, who asks him where he hid one of the optics and design cards in the office. As Milchick explains, there’s an overtime contingency that can be activated, allowing severed workers to be reawakened outside regular work hours. (In the process, innie Dylan also learns that he has a son, a shocking discovery for someone who’s technically never existed outside Lumon HQ.) By the finale, innie Mark gets his hands on Graner’s security card, giving the MDR team access to a control room where they can activate the overtime contingency, among other functions. (Additional features that can be used on severed workers include “clean slate,” “freeze-frame,” and “beehive.” Does Severance take place in the Beekeeper Cinematic Universe?)
Dylan agrees to stay behind and activate the overtime contingency while the rest of the MDR team awakens in the real world. Mark finds himself at a party hosted by his sister, Devon (Jen Tullock), where her husband, Ricken (Michael Chernus), is doing a reading of his self-help book; Helly is at the Lumon gala ahead of Helena’s presentation; and Irving wakes up at home with his very good dog, Radar. Each innie makes a startling discovery: Helly, as previously explained, is an Eagan; Mark finds out that Cobel is involved in his personal life; and Irving learns that his outie has been investigating Lumon in his spare time and obsessively paints sinister images of what appears to be Lumon’s testing floor. (If nobody leaves the testing floor, as Petey theorized, why does Irving have subconscious memories of it?)
Unsure of how long Dylan can keep them awake, each character has to figure out the best way to use their time. In addition to looking into Lumon, outie Irving has put together plenty of research into other severed employees—Burt included. Having formed a romantic attachment with innie Burt, Irving drives over to his place. As for Mark, he confides to Devon that he’s his innie self and that his neighbor, who’s also been hired as a part-time nanny for Devon’s newborn, happens to be his boss. Mark later sees a photo of his dead wife, who went by Gemma, and realizes that she’s actually Ms. Casey. Helly, meanwhile, uses Helena’s planned speech to blow the lid off the horrors of severance and how the workers really feel about being trapped in an unending cycle of servitude. “We’re not happy, we’re miserable!” Helly tells the gala’s stunned attendees. “They torture us down there!”
Unfortunately, just as the three are in the midst of these pivotal moments—Irving knocking on Burt’s door, Mark alerting Devon that Gemma is still alive, and Helly continuing her anti-severance diatribe—Milchick intervenes, shutting off the overtime contingency by tackling Dylan. And so we’ve had to sit on that tantalizing cliff-hanger since 2022. Where will things head in Season 2? Thankfully, the trailer has given us some ideas.
Interestingly, it appears that Helly’s speech has made the MDR quartet the face of “severance reform,” putting the Lumon higher-ups in a bind. There may be greater public scrutiny for severance, and punishing the workers for standing up for themselves would be a terrible look. Then again, any positive changes Lumon offers its employees should be taken with a grain of salt, especially if they still don’t have regular contact with the outside world. In any case, Lumon is likely planning to subjugate its rebellious workforce behind closed doors: The trailer shows Mark alongside new MDR coworkers, as well as Milchick saying he’s “tightening the leash” on his subordinates. Oh yeah, and the goats are back, all grown up:
Apple TV+
I still have so many questions. For now, the only thing I can be certain of is that Severance’s second season is shaping up to be a wild ride. See you at the office.
Miles writes about television, film, and whatever your dad is interested in. He is based in Brooklyn.
