‘Severance’ season 2 is the only good reason to return to the office

As someone who watches television for a living, I approached Resignation season 2 with low expectations. What were the odds that such an inventive puzzle box in a series could keep all its (odd) balls in the air? But praise Kier! After a nearly three-year wait, our existential office drones have returned to Lumon Industries—and to AppleTV+ starting this Friday—with a new sense of purpose and all the show’s weirdness and serendipity intact.

“Welcome back Mark S, it’s been a while,” Lumon’s Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) regards Mark S (Adam Scott) in Resignation season 2 premiere, and present him with a bouquet of balloons embossed with Mark’s face. As a dismissed employee, “Innie” Mark has not experienced the passage of time at all – his consciousness only awakens when the office elevator doors open on his work floor. But for viewers, it can feel like a lifetime since last season’s cliffhanger, when Mark and his fellow “innies” sneaked into their “Outies” world and made some unpleasant discoveries. Don’t feel bad if you can’t remember all the plot nuances; I highly recommend watching the last few episodes of Season 1 to get you Lumon ready.

After the rebellion of Mark and his fellow Macrodata Refinement officemates Helly (British Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irv (John Turturro), the four have become “the face of severance reform” in the outside world, according to Milchick. “I locked you in a room like an animal,” he says, performing a pantomime of corporate remorse. In this new era, he promises them perks like better vending machines and halpas so they can roam more freely. Freedom is of course a relative term for Macrodata Four; their entire world is confined within the fluorescent blasted office walls. But somehow they’ve managed to create relationships that continue to unfold in complicated ways this season.

How could they not be complicated? When the four Innies briefly transported into their Outies world, Mark discovered that Lumon’s “wellness advisor” Miss Casey (Dichen Lachman) is actually his Outie’s (allegedly dead) wife, Gemma; and Helly realized that in the Outie world she is Helena Eagan, daughter of Lumon’s CEO. All of this is bound to mess with their heads as they each have to decide how much of this new information they want to share with their fellow Innies. They are also forced to consider how much they are defined by their alter ego’s choices and whether they bear any responsibility for them. “Speaking for myself, I don’t think we owe them shit,” Helly declares at one point. She deeply resents her Outie, who she believes treats her like a slave or a toy. “She controls me and all of us and this company – it’s disgusting.”

These are the kinds of threads there Resignation keeps dragging the entire season like you can be a good person on one side of the looking glass and a crappy person on the other — and how the two versions of each person have become so different. “It’s not our world up there. That’s what I saw,” says Irv, full of grief after seeing his Innie-loved Burt (Christopher Walken) in his Outie house with another man. Then there is the question of what would happen to the Innie Rebels if they truly uncovered and revealed the Company’s misdeeds, since their consciousnesses only exist inside Lumon. Still, it’s Mark’s search for his wife that drives most of the season and provides a sort of backbone from which all the other mysteries radiate.

Very few series operate on so many levels. Resignation fuses existential thriller, dystopian science fiction, corporate critique, romantic drama, buddy comedy and visual poem with dollops of body horror thrown in for good measure. I have rewatched the original Twin Peaks beside Resignationand although the creative team of Dan Eriksen and Ben Stiller play in a completely different aesthetic sandbox than David Lynchthey also babble some of the same psychological dilemmas and share a penchant for injecting the moody and bizarre into everyday life. (Think goats instead of owls.) The list of plot details reviewers have been forbidden to divulge is almost as long as the teachings of Lumon’s founders, but I can tell you the show is diving down disorienting rabbit holes this season. There’s a trip to the world’s creepiest corporate retreat and a host of new characters, including wonderful ones played by Merritt Weaver and Gwendolyn Christie.

These are the four cores that get under our skin. Each becomes more defined over the course of the season, with the narrative alternating between their Innie and Outie lives. Lower’s performance is especially nuanced as the two Hellys, and Cherry is a joy to watch as Dylan. Once mostly a font of smartass commentary, Dylan is now caught between his two worlds, and he increasingly brings a poignant sweetness to his dilemma. Another standout this season is Tillman as the cheery emerald middle manager Milchick. He seems aware that he may have to trample out his own humanity in order to carry out his superiors’ orders – whatever that may be.

Not all plot paths work, and it feels like every time a mystery is solved (or solved-ish), the writers drop another one instead. But that one Resignation team is back to work with a riveting, thought-provoking season about exploitative billionaires, corporate shenanigans and the desire to escape the misery of the real world. I can’t think of a more fitting way to start 2025.