Severance
What It's About
Severance is an American science fiction psychological thriller television series created by Dan Erickson, and executive produced and primarily directed by Ben Stiller. It stars Adam Scott, Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, Tramell Tillman, Jen Tullock, Dichen Lachman, Michael Chernus, John Turturro, Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette, and Sarah Bock.
The series follows employees at Lumon Industries, a biotechnology corporation, that have undergone "severance",a procedure that splits a person's memories between work and their personal life. This creates two separate identities for employees: the "innie", who has no knowledge of the outside world, and the "outie", who lives their life outside without any knowledge of their job.
My Review
Welcome back to my short reviews. Today, I'm diving into what I believe is the greatest Apple TV show out there, Severance. There are plenty of great shows on Apple TV, but Severance stands above the rest for me. It's easily in my top five favorite shows overall. That list includes Law & Order: Organized Crime, Law & Order: SVU (I haven't seen the original), 9-1-1, Abbott Elementary, and of course, Severance. I love each of them in different ways, but Severance is something special.
This show tackles real-world issues through a dystopian lens. It doesn't just explore workplace culture; it reflects on race, identity, and how both of those things can be affected by work environments like Severance's. The show also dives into geopolitical themes, how society reacts to a system like the Severance procedure. Some characters see it as a prison. Others view it as an escape. And that's what makes it so powerful. It isn't black and white. It forces you to ask: "What if this was real?"
But at its core, Severance is about something deeper, hope. That's the central theme across both seasons. Season 1 ends on a note of hope: the characters slowly begin to understand the system, explore beyond their workspace, and, crucially, discover the "overtime contingency." When Dylan finds out about it and shares it with the others, it sparks something. There's now hope that they might escape, or at least see the outside world. That hope fuels them. And that's such a real concept, people push through the worst situations because of the hope that something better might come.
Season 2 builds even more on this. Especially in the final episode, hope shows up in different forms. There's the hope that Gemma is still alive, that maybe she can be saved. There's the hope that Mark and his innie can work together to change things. The idea that Mark's innie even has hope at all is huge, it means he's not just surviving, but dreaming of freedom. And finally, there's the hope of the unknown. That something else exists beyond the control of Lumon. That the world outside could be different, better.
Severance doesn't just tell a story, it reflects our world in a distorted mirror. And in that reflection, we see what we've lost… and what we still might be able to reclaim.
