Summary
Severance Season 2 overcorrects in Episode 9 by spreading itself too thin, delivering a smattering of half-stories to set up a blockbuster finale.
For the first time in Season 2, Severance delivered what many would consider to be a bad episode. Episode 9, “The After Hours”, was a chance to rectify that to some extent, to return the focus back to the main cast after an isolated bottle episode – which followed, to some degree, another isolated bottle episode. And it definitely does that. But it does a little too much of it.
Relax. I’m not saying this was a bad outing or anything; it was just that there was a bit too much going on, so much so that it felt like a bunch of teases for a bumper finale. And that’s okay in the context of the entire season, but people don’t generally consume appointment TV like this all at once. In terms of how individually satisfying “The After Hours” is on its own terms, well… I’m not so sure.
Just think how much is gone over here. We get an entire arc for Dylan’s outie and innie, a really rushed string of scenes between Irving and Burt, tons of stuff going on inside Lumon, and Mark teaming up with Cobel outside Lumon. Severance is generally pretty good at delivering snappy episodes that come in comfortably under an hour but still feel rich with information. This is one of the first ones that felt like it wasn’t anywhere near long enough to accommodate everything properly.
A consequence of this is that small moments get lost in the jumble. Helena, for instance, doesn’t get much to do in Severance Season 2, Episode 9, but I think a throwaway like Jame watching her eat a dry boiled egg constitutes something like a hero origin story. She can’t be that far removed from Helly, can she? If anything, her innie represents what she might be like freed from the demented cult-like influence of her family, and there are only so many overcooked boiled eggs one can take without starting to feel like the grass might be greener elsewhere.
In a roundabout way, the distinction between Helly and Helena brings us to Gretchen, because her kissing Dylan’s innie creates an interesting scenario where she has used her husband’s body to essentially cheat on him. This is how Dylan’s outie takes it when she suddenly confesses, anyway, but despite the fact he’s consistently depicted as an unreasonable manchild, he has a point. Gretchen doesn’t make it any better by justifying kissing Dylan’s innie by claiming he reminded her of how his outie used to be. Dylan’s outie feels violated, the same way that Helly felt when she found out that Helena posed as her to sleep with Mark.
But it’s innie Dylan who ends up becoming a sort of avatar for the heartbreak of this subplot. Feeling guilty, Gretchen has to essentially break up with him, and innie Dylan does not take it well. In fact, he falls to his knees in desperation, proffering a homemade ring as a grand romantic gesture that is ultimately ignored. It’s a very painful reminder that the point of the severance procedure is ostensibly to cut people off from the mundanity of their work lives, but the reality is that it creates a version of a person who is cut off from all the joys of life itself; no relationships, no downtime, no love.
Having had himself opened up – even temporarily – to this reality is a fate worse than death for innie Dylan, and he chooses to resign, following Irving’s footsteps. What will the consequences of that be? Will he go through with it all the way? We’ll have to wait and see, but I don’t see a particularly happy romantic future for him either way.
Dylan’s exit isn’t the only one in this episode – Miss Huang also departs. I’d be lying if I said she didn’t become suddenly less interesting when it was revealed in the previous episode that she was a product of the Wintertide Fellowship instead of something much more mysterious, but I felt kind of sorry for her in Severance Season 2, Episode 9. Like Dylan, she’s exposed very suddenly to the idea that Lumon isn’t all they’re cracked up to be, and her unceremonious dismissal by Milchick causes her to apologize to Dylan – the first moment of genuine human compassion from her that we’ve seen if I’m correct – for not “facilitating” his meetings with Gretchen better. Remember, those meetings were only intended to stop Dylan from asking questions about where Irving went. The potential consequences for him and Gretchen were never considered.
John Turturro and Christopher Walken in Severance Season 2 | Image via Apple TV+
On the subject of Milchick, I have no real idea where we’re supposed to stand on him at this point. Stuff like this is classic company stooge, but then there’s a fist-pump moment when he stands up to Mr. Drummond that makes him feel much more on-side with the refiners. Between him, Cobel, and Helena, it feels like there’s a brewing anti-Lumon sentiment that may see its formerly faithful proponents turn against it. We can hope, anyway.
While we’re confused about Milchick we might as well be a little confused about Irving and Burt. But the basic feeling I got from the pair of them is this: As was implied during that very awkward dinner in Episode 5, Burt had done some things in the past that would have denied him entry to eternal paradise, so elected for Severance so that his innie could be judged more fairly. The implication here is that those unsavory things in his past were done at the behest of Lumon and that Mr. Drummond, after finding Irving’s investigation notes in Episode 6, wants him to do some of those things to Irving.
Burt’s counter to this is that he only ever drove people places and was ignorant of what happened to them once they got there, but the implication is that nothing good happened, so he’s complicit either way. Burt does indeed drive Irving somewhere… but it’s to a train station, where he gives him a one-way ticket to somewhere neither he nor anyone in the Eagen family can know about. Lumon will target Burt for this, but he’s resigned to that. His innie fell in love with Irving, and his way of proving that is saving him from whatever fate Lumon had in store for him, regardless of the potential consequences.
Maybe he’ll be judged accordingly after all.
As for the Mark and Cobel stuff in Severance Season 2, Episode 9, it’s arguably even more inscrutable. Reluctantly, his outie, Devon, and Cobel head out to the Damona Birthing Retreat and infiltrate the place by claiming that Devon is “one of Jame’s”, implying she’s pregnant with his baby. Yuck.
It works, but I’m still not entirely sure what the endgame is here. The episode ends with innie Mark being woken up by his sister in one of the plush cabins and being taken to Cobel, so it’s obvious that the two of them want him for something. I think that “something” is stopping him from completing Cold Harbor, which he’s right on the cusp of doing. But it’s hard to be sure.
Either way, the Season 2 finale should be pretty jam-packed with reveals. Based on recent happenings, though, there’s an increasingly slim chance that’ll satisfy everyone completely.
