The Severance season two finale is of a quality rarely seen on TV

Burned by the backlash to Lost, Damon Lindelof went in a new direction for his following show, The Leftovers. It also had a mystery at its center: why did a rapture happen where 2 percent of the world’s population instantly vanished on a random Friday? But whereas Lost set up an expectation of answers, only to disappoint, The Leftovers made it clear that there were no answers to this mystery. Over its unfortunately abrupt three seasons, neither the viewers nor the characters would ever find out why this event happened or what it meant; why some people were taken and why others were left behind. It wasn’t a puzzle to solve but a situation to cope with and live through. It’s the greatest TV show you haven’t seen.

I’ve long wondered whether Apple TV+’s Severance would be more Lost or Leftovers. Fans fill the internet with speculative explanations, but when Mark checks into work and moves odd numbers around on Lumon’s strange retro computers, it never seemed that connected to the broader story that showrunner Ben Stiller was telling. He could provide answers; but Stiller has always seemed far more interested in the emotional, psychological and philosophical consequences of his central concept, “severance,” than writing lore. For the unfamiliar, employees of a mysterious company, Lumon, can get a surgically implanted chip that prevents any work memories from leaving the office and any personal ones from entering: the ultimate work-life separation.

It sounds like a simple Black Mirror episode concept – a fun idea to spend 30 minutes on. But, through his two seasons, Stiller has analyzed all its implications.

Are their “innie” work personalities just smaller parts of the whole person, or are they unique, individual identities? And if it’s the latter, what moral status do they have? If you were to choose never to come back to the Severed floor, then the innie would never exist again; so did you basically kill a person? Or is more like erasing a memory? And if you were to physically kill an “outie,” did you kill one person or two? If your innie kisses your wife, did she cheat on you? If your innie and outie love different people, are the feelings of one more real than the other?

There’s also the problem of power dynamics, as the outies have so much more control – including Mark’s attempt to “reintegrate” himself (undo severance), which will presumably destroy most of who his innie was. The innies can only wield power over their outies by refusing to leave the office, by harming themselves or by committing suicide. The show hasn’t explored those yet, really, but it’s just a matter of time.

This sounds more like a philosophy student’s university paper than an entertaining TV show, but it never feels like that when you’re watching it. Severance has some of the best writing on TV, knowing how to play with its premise in all the ways possible, going in surprising, thought-provoking directions, but not spending much time explaining it. Exposition is kept to an absolute minimum, and the first nine episodes of this season are focused on building out the drama, provoking these questions and making you feel even more unsettled. The best horror movies don’t explain their monsters, and none of these ideas and drama require an answer to what Lumon is doing. It could just be The Leftovers.

But then the finale arrives, and Stiller starts providing answers for what the hell is going on at Lumon; and episodes that seemed slow and pondering turned out to have real narrative purpose. Without spoiling too much, the episode is split into two halves; and, even at an 85-minute run-time, I was leaning forward, in rapt concentration, for the entire thing.

The first half is a camcorder conversation between Mark’s innie and outie, trying to work on a plan to save Mark’s wife, Gemma (and flexing Ben Stiller’s directing skills); and the second half shows them putting that plan into action. It was always obvious that the season would once again end on a cliffhanger, but this is more interesting than frustrating, serving as a good setup for a third season. This finale also has nice visual call-backs to the season’s first episode, with Mark once again running through corridors to music, but now without any polish and coordination.

It’s a fantastic finale; but it doesn’t change that much of this second season has been lethargically paced. There’s a narrative reason for this – the important events are all caused by Lumon, who neither the innies, outies or audience have any understanding of – but it does mean that, until the season finale, a lot of this has felt like wheel-spinning.

Going outside the office was a helpful change of setting but didn’t actually do much narratively; and Cobel is a big part of the final episodes, but was largely absent until then, except for the dull, slow episode eight, which could have been handled with a flashback montage. Irving’s storyline was also weak and overdrawn this season, and it feels like it originally was meant to tie into the bigger story, only for elements of it to be changed or pushed to a third season. It’s also frustrating to be ten hours into Mark trying to “reintegrate,” only for that still not to be done yet. And Helena’s meeting with Mark should have had some further consequence this season.

Due to the strikes and various creative redirections, this season took more time and money to make than intended, and the pacing feels like a consequence of that. Or Stiller knows that he’s always going to have another season or three to do, so he feels less discipline to get the story moving.

Saying that, though, the writing is still fantastic, the cinematography is often gorgeous, and episode seven, “Chikhai Bardo,” is one of the best hours of television I’ve seen in years. It’s a flashback episode solely focused on Gemma, and tells the story of her and Mark’s relationship, what happened with them before her faux-death and what her life has been like trapped at Lumon. It’s unsettling, poignant, utterly gripping. Funnily enough, it reminds me of episode eight from season two of The Leftovers – one of those rare episodes of TV that exceeds what should be possible on television and deserves to be watched on its own.

Severance’s second season was more ambitious and explored its concept and drama far more deeply than the first, but it was also far messier, and the slow episodes dragged a lot. But the most important thing is that we now know what kind of show this is; Stiller is going to try and explain this world. That could ultimately end up being the wrong decision. Every new weird thing feels like Stiller came up with it on the fly, and when audiences expect explanations, they get annoyed if the answers are bad, lazy or withheld. But it’s also true that Severance is of an ambition and quality rarely seen elsewhere on TV, so it’s hard to be too critical. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait another three years for the next season.