[Warning: The below and video above contain MAJOR spoilers for Severance Season 2 Episode 2, “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig.”]
Severance‘s second season continues and with it the unraveling mystery of what happened outside of Lumon’s doors after innies from MDR were released into the real world.
Filling in the gaps left behind after the premiere, this latest installment, “Goodbye Mrs. Selvig,” revealed that following innie Mark’s (Adam Scott) experience in the real world, it was mere days before he was back at Lumon on the severed floor, rather than the five months Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) led him to believe.
Before Mark had returned to the office, his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) was rather suspicious of the events that had unfolded when innie Mark woke up in her home. She pressed Mark to seek answers after his remark about how “she’s alive.” While she suspected it had to do with Gemma (Dichen Lachman), Mark was resistant to such a notion and found himself back at Lumon.
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Similarly, it was revealed that Mr. Milchick had gone to the doors of Dylan (Zach Cherry) and Irving (John Turturro) to reveal they’d been terminated from their positions. Ultimately, Dylan’s job search was dismal as we got a peek into his personal life. When innie Mark requested that his original colleagues be reinstated, both Dylan and Irving were rehired, which differed from the story Milchick had told Mark upon his return, claiming the outie versions of Dylan and Irving had refused to return.
And that’s not all. Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) made her onscreen return, as Lumon attempted to promote her position, refusing her return to the severed floor, and placing her elsewhere. Ultimately, she was seen packing up to leave her home, and that was when outie Mark took a moment to confront her. Deflective and cryptic with her wording, Cobel departed with plenty of intrigue as Mark was left standing in the street following her drive off into the unknown.
But it was Irving’s trip to the phone booth that is sure to fascinate fans, because who could he possibly be talking to and why was his innie’s Lumon love, Burt (Christopher Walken), spying on him from a distant car? As viewers saw in the Season 2 premiere, innie Irving was distraught over learning outie Burt was seemingly in a relationship. But would he feel that way now knowing Burt’s outie was observing him from afar?
“One thing that we wanted to play with — we knew that people were so invested in the love story between Irving and Burt and had such a warm association with them down there. And… the question with all emotions and especially with love on this show is always, ‘What transcends the barrier?’ And so, we thought that there’s going to be something there… if the two of them were to meet… I think that there would be a spark of something, even if they don’t fully understand it,” series creator Dan Erickson shares with TV Insider for our iLUMONations: A Severance Aftershow.
This spying though, Erickson points out, adds “an element of danger or an element of mystery where you’re not [sure] because everyone truly is a different person on either side… What if we don’t know if we can trust Burt? And as an audience… we’re simultaneously rooting for them to rediscover that spark, but also care about Irving and we don’t want him to get hurt. And we don’t know this version of Burt.”
In other words, expect the mystery to continue unfolding as we wait for further development on the Burt and Irving storyline. See what else Erickson has to share, along with Tillman and Arquette, who weigh in on new addition Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock) in the full aftershow video, above. And stay tuned as we continue to cover Season 2 of Severance each week.
Severance, Season 2, New Episodes, Fridays, Apple TV+