Much of Severance season one took place inside the Lumon Industries building, specifically the underground “severed” floor where the main characters work. It’s a stark, oddly empty space where the departments are kept separate, to the extent that the office culture encourages them to fear each other. But perhaps just as off-putting is Severance‘s outside world, which promises to get more exploration in the show’s second season.
You’d think the audience would instantly relate more to that outside world. The Lumon that we see is populated mostly by people who’ve chosen to undergo a procedure that creates a completely separate identity for them—one that never leaves the office. It also contains peculiar old technology used to complete “mysterious and important” number-crunching tasks that nobody can actually explain; a room populated by baby goats for unknown reasons; strange rituals designed to lift morale in what’s otherwise an absolutely soul-sucking place; and outright idol worship of Lumon’s founder, Kier Eagan, and his descendants.
However, there’s not much comfort to be found once the “innies” transform into their “outties” and head home at the end of the day. In addition to having to face up to whatever unpleasantness made them think undergoing severance was a solid career move—for Adam Scott’s Mark, it’s a mental vacation from remembering his wife died in a car accident a few years prior—they live in Kier, a community as depressing as it is dystopian. And cold, though we haven’t spent enough time there to know if it has any other seasons than icy, slushy, dreary winter.
Even if there are balmy summer months in Kier, that wouldn’t thaw the sterile feeling that permeates the town, nor would it cushion the mystery of Kier not really seeming to be… anywhere. In season one, we were told that Kier and the nearby town of Ganz—home to Ganz University, where Mark used to teach history pre-Lumon—are located in the state of “PE,” which is obviously not a real place. The vehicle license plates read “Remedium Hominibus,” which translated (“A cure, for mankind”) certainly seems to be a reference to Kier Eagan’s pharmaceutical dynasty.
But Severance does have a toehold in our world, as the mention of certain geographical locations (Alexa, who dates Mark briefly, is from Montana) and cultural elements (Petey and his daughter jam to Metallica; Irving’s outtie paints his same dark image with Motorhead blasting) suggest. And despite the in-office vintage tech, which goes well in hand with Lumon’s love of carefully crafted artificial environments, the outties are obviously in the 21st century: they have cell phones and use the internet.
Still, though, there’s a sense of Kier being a place that’s, well, severed from what we might find familiar. It’s overtly a company town. The restaurants are named after Eagan family members (“Pip’s Diner,” presumably named for the former Lumon CEO), and Mark’s existential dread unfolds during nights spent in his Lumon-subsidized housing—a generic townhome on a street full of identical generic townhomes, with as many vacant dwellings as Lumon has vacant offices.
Later in season one, we see Mark’s co-worker Irving has a similar apartment set-up, albeit in a different neighborhood (at least he has a dog; Mark only has a pair of sad goldfish). We also learn in season one that Mark’s neighbor (Patricia Arquette) is actually his boss at Lumon, which of course his outtie is completely unaware of; she’s not severed, but she takes on a different identity to better spy on his activities. Mark may not be aware of that fact until the end of season one, but it adds a sinister layer to what’s already a lonely, joyless existence.
Not everyone living in Kier works at Lumon. In season one we meet Mark’s sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and her husband Ricken (Michael Chernus), who are about to become first-time parents, and whose social life revolves mostly around Ricken (a self-help author) and his pretentious friends. Through these characters, and later as we follow outtie Mark’s confused efforts to learn more about Lumon’s inner workings, we learn there’s actually a resistance movement against severance. We also bear witness to the fact that non-Lumon employees have conflicted points of view about severance—just the sort of conversation to make an awkward dinner party even more awkward.
To counter that, we also learn that Lumon has powerful allies in the government, including a state senator whose glamorous wife undergoes the procedure so she can give birth and not remember it, leading to a couple of strange encounters with Devon both inside and outside the facility where they both have their babies.
How Severance‘s geographic world might expand in season two is yet to be seen—glimpses of what’s to come suggest we’ll be spending more time in outtie-land, and we’re also coming off that season one finale, in which the innies of Mark and his co-workers Irving and Helly R. briefly became immersed in their outtie lives. The season two premiere, which takes place entirely inside Lumon with innie Mark, reminds us of how huge a moment that was—not just because of the realizations they all came to about their other selves, but because innies aren’t ever exposed to the outside world otherwise.
As season two begins, one of Mark’s new co-workers excitedly asks him “How’s the sky?”; she also asks which state they’re in and what wind feels like. His lack of answers or even enthusiasm about having seen what’s essentially a total fantasyland is a letdown. But maybe if she saw Kier for herself, she’d understand.
New episodes of Severance arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.
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