Just recently, during a conversation with a coworker, I mentioned a character in consistency I have between my work self and my personal self. In my personal life, as a true Virgo, I am quick to turn down help. Accepting help is akin to admitting you can’t do something, it’s admitting to weakness, it’s admitting that you aren’t perfect. Accepting help makes others look down on you and think less of you. Now, I know that all this is not true, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel true in the moment. I would rather put something off than to accept help from others to avoid the scary reality that any of those aforementioned statements are true. At work though, I learned quickly that in order to be successful, you have to ask for help. Asking for help is a necessary way to enure a lack of mistakes due to gaps in knowledge or simple error. Asking for help saves time and promotes a trusting, healthy relationship with coworkers. At work, I made a habit of always asking for help.

It’s appropriate that this conversation occurred the week prior to Severance returning. The concept of this show that swept pop culture off it’s feet during the first season on Apple TV+, is that you have the option to sever yourself between work and personal life. A simple brain procedure – if you would ever call anything related to the brain “simply” – can provide you with the ability to not take your personal life to work with you or bring work home with you. Your inside self and outside self don’t know each other. One might ask for help willingly, promoting efficiency in the workplace, the other might shun away assistance and live quietly on their own. But the story we see is much more nuanced and dramatic and, frankly, high stakes than my minor differences.

In season two, we are welcomed back to the shock of the white walls and repetitive hallways of Lumen’s severed floor. The face we see is familiar as well, Mark S. – played spectacularly by Adam Scott – comes off the elevator and back onto our screens. Action picks up immediately following the shocking events of the season 1 finale. And I do literally mean action, because what we get to open the season is a mesmerizing and awe-inducing sequence where Mark runs through the banal, endless hallways of the severed floor. The camera follows him from every angle as he races around looking for something. It’s an immediate reminder of what made season one so good: it’s exciting, while also being creepy and mysterious. Before too long we see that he was looking for the wellness room and for his outie’s wife, Ms. Casey.

But the wellness room is no more and this is not the only change make to Mark’s life at work in response to his innie’s escape last season.

When Mark returns to his office space – the area where the microdata refinement team sits – he is met by three faces. The faces of two men and one woman, but not the two men and one woman that he and the audience were expecting to see. Instead of Helly, we are met with the familiar face of Alia Shawkat, best known for her role in Arrested Development. Instead of Irving and Dylan, we have Dario and Mark W. – the latter played by the delightful Bob. Balaban. Mark, like us, is confused by who these people are and where he old team is. Thankfully there is one familiar face to welcome us to this new season: Mr. Milchick. Upon his return to the screen, he explains to Mark that it has been five months since the overtime contingency outbreak and Mark is the only member of the team whose outie wanted to return to work. The rest of his team, it seems, refused to return. Milchick has also taken over the duties of Ms. Harmony Cobel as the manager of the severed floor. As he moved up, there is a new deputy manager as well, Ms. Huang, who is…a teenager??? In the midst of the hyper speed the episode was moving at up to this point, Ms. Huang’s introduction hit me like a brick wall. Though I already had a number of questions floating around in my mind, the number one question on my list was now “why is there a child working at Lumen and is she Mark’s child?!” We love a good theory!

Though Mark and the audience feel no more clear about these strange new circumstances, things don’t last much longer in this state. After attempting to send a message to the outside world via Mark W. and creating a diversion – “you haven’t seen what I did to the kitchenette” – Mark runs off to Milchick’s office and pleas to the board to let his old team return.

In this case, it seems going above Milchick’s head worked in Mark’s favor. The next day we are finally reunited with the original MDR team. First Dylan, than Irving, and finally Helly emerge from the elevator and come together as a united team. It’s these four who are escorted to the revamped break room to view a promotional video that will be shown to outies going forward. This cartoon video details the events of what happened during the overtime contingency at the end of last season and explain that this revolt has resulted in meaningful change at Lumen – a sentiment I will need to see in order to believe. Once the awkward and hilariously cheesy video ends, Milchick informs the team that they have until the end of the day to decide whether they want to leave their jobs at Lumon or stay severed. This time their decision will not be contingent on their outie agreeing with them. I guess this is a form of meaningful change, but it will only last until the end of the day, so how meaningful is it exactly?

Once they are informed of this opportunity, Milchick leaves to allow them time to discuss. Immediately upon unsupervised time though, Dylan wants the tea and finally gets the chance to ask his teammates what happened when they woke up on the outside. One by one the three escapees get the chance to fill each other in on what happened. However, it’s a bit like the goldilocks and the three bears situation if you ask me:

• With Helly, we get too much. By “too much” I do mean complete bullshit. What Helly spews out to the team is a fabrication very much different to what we saw unfold last season. She was not in a “save the gorillas” graphic tee, but in a gown ready to speak about her experience as an innie. Her innie isn’t living alone in a crappy apartment, she is the daughter of the CEO of Lumen who underwent the severance procedure to help drive away any controversy. But she doesn’t divulge an inch of this truth, leaving me with many, many questions.
• With Irving, we get too little. For Irving, the discovery that outie Burt is with someone else is so emotionally distressing that he cannot bear to share the heartbreak with his teammates.
• With Mark though, we get just enough. Mark shares the whole truth with his team. Everything from Ms. Cobel posing as his neighbor to Ricken being his brother-in-law to Ms. Casey being his outies supposedly dead wife. Shout out to Mark for actually being helpful, this is why he makes the big bucks.

Unsurprisingly, the only MDR team member who is seriously considering leaving is Irving. It’s heartbreaking to see him struggle with the knowledge of Burt’s happiness with someone else. Heartbreaking that he wants to leave because the weight of knowing this is bearing down on him too heavily. Heartbreaking to watch, but beautiful in it’s nuances – John Turturro continues to impress me with his sensitive portrayal. As he marches toward the nearest exist, Dylan stops him and begs him not to go. It’s a touching moment between them that leads to a hug. But since this is Severance, the hug isn’t just a tender moment. This hug is a chance for Irving to reveal to Dylan what he saw on the outside, namely the paintings his outie made of a long hallway with a door at the end of it pointing down. This causes Dylan to be even more adament that he stay and figure this out, but in the midst of this moment Ms. Huang appears to take Dylan to see Mr. Milchick.

Before the episode comes to a close, we get to see one more plot line seed planted. Milchick shares with Dylan and Dylan alone, that there will be a family visitation suite made where loved ones can come visit their innie. Dylan, after all, has a wife and child on the outside. However, Milchick also warns Dylan not to tell anyone else about this because the rest of his team are single. I have no idea where this will go, but consider me sat and intrigued.

To end off episode one, we see all four team members come back to the MDR and get back to their work of sorting numbers by feeling.

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As I expected after the first season of this show, I am left with more questions than answers following episode one. But I am more excited than before to see where things go.

Here are a few of my big questions that I hope to find answers to as the season unfolds:

• Why is the young Ms. Huang on the severed floor? She is Ms. Casey and Mark’s daughter, right?!
• How long ago did Mark’s wife die?
• What is Ms. Cobel up to now?
• Why is Helly lying?
• Will we see the new MDR team again soon?
• What significance does this “family visitation suite” have? There has to be an underlying meaning to this, right? They could bring any random people in there and convince Dylan that they are his family.
• What is the testing floor where they sent Ms. Casey in season one?
• What are those goats from season one up to?