Severance Season 2: A Deep Dive into the Dystopian World of Lumon
Apple TV+ is releasing the second season of the sci-fi dystopia "Severance," created by screenwriter Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller. The story follows employees of the Lumon Corporation who live literally double lives: at home they are one person, at work - completely different. In the second season, the four main characters continue to fight for their rights and investigate the company's secrets. In this article, we will talk about how the series is connected with the novels of Franz Kafka, why the creators quote modernist architecture, and why the project was appreciated by Marxist researchers.
Who are innies and outies
Few people know what Lumon Industries does specifically. In any case, neither the viewers of the series "Severance," nor the main characters working for Lumon, know this. The only product of this company, about which at least something is clear, is a chip that causes dissociative identity disorder in the patient. It is used to divide a person in time: the main subpersonality enjoys life - and the artificial one takes on various unpleasant duties. For example, childbirth. Or monotonous work in the office.
Lumon practices the latter on its own employees. Their work subpersonalities - in the terminology of the series, innies, or "intras" - know nothing about life outside the underground office. The worst thing is that technically everything is voluntary - as in real capitalism: the chip is implanted only in those people who have agreed to the separation procedure. But the innies, of course, do not remember how and why they gave this consent. They are born on the first working day and die on the last, never finding out what they have been working on all this time. An attempt to escape or sabotage the work is followed by punishment. The external subpersonality is not aware of anything like this and every day faithfully delivers its own body to the Lumon office.
The first season ended with a rebellion. The four main characters from the macrodata department - Mark, Helly, Dylan and Irving (played by Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry and John Turturro) - rebel against the company and find a way to see the outside world, "turning on" outside the office. Helly discovers that she is actually Helena Egan, the daughter of the Lumon CEO, who agreed to the procedure to advertise it. Mark is also shocked by his discovery: it turns out that the Lumon staff psychotherapist, Miss Casey (Dichen Lachman), is his wife Gemma, whom Mark's external hypostasis considers dead.
In the second season, the corporation is in no hurry to dismiss the rebellious employees: they are needed by the authorities for some reason. The reunited heroes set off along the endless office corridors in search of Miss Casey, who disappeared towards the end of the last season. Meanwhile, their outies, or "extras" - as the external subpersonalities are called in the series - are going through their own quests. Helena eliminates the consequences of the riot, in which she herself took part. And Mark finds out that his innie learned a certain secret when, during the raid, he examined the house of his sister Devon (Jen Tullock). Just before the shutdown, he managed to shout "She's alive!": viewers remember that this is about Gemma - but Mark and Devon are only tormented by guesses.
Gradually, in small portions, the authors reveal new details about the universe of the series. For example, we learn that it is very difficult for a person with a "separating" chip to change jobs - and not because external subpersonalities have already forgotten how to work. It's just that those around them are afraid and despise them. And also - that the planet has experienced some political cataclysms: Lumon proudly talks about branches in 206 countries - in the real world there are a maximum of 202 of them, if we consider unrecognized and partially recognized ones. It seems that not only people, but also some states have been subjected to division in this setting.
Why is "Severance" more relevant today than three years ago
The series started in 2022, received excellent reviews (the rating of the first season on the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator is 97%), and then, teasing viewers with a cliffhanger, took a three-year break. The long break is explained not only by the Hollywood strikes of 2023, but also by a conflict in the team: the author of the idea, screenwriter Dan Erickson, quarreled with producer Mark Friedman, even when they were working on the first season. While working on the sequel, Friedman almost left the project, but the co-producer and main director of the series, Ben Stiller - known mainly as a successful comedy actor - persuaded him to stay.
The second season was among the most anticipated series of 2025. Critics who managed to watch it before Apple TV viewers sometimes wrote that it was better than the first. The inventive promotional campaign also teased the public. For example, on the eve of the premiere, a transparent pavilion with an office setting was built at New York's Grand Central Terminal. The stars of the series portrayed their characters, busy at work and not noticing the crowd around.
Today, three episodes out of the planned ten have been released, and it is difficult to say whether the creators managed to repeat the success of the first season. But the very concept of "Severance" in 2025 has become even more relevant than in 2022, and to understand this, you do not need to watch the series - it is enough to read the news. Right now, the focus is on tech corporations like Lumon and tech magnates similar to its owners, the Egans, with their peculiar ideas about the world, man, and labor ethics in particular. Apparently, this is one of the reasons why the continuation of the project is causing such interest.
How the series is similar to the novels of Franz Kafka - and how it differs from them
Not every film adaptation and not every theatrical production of Franz Kafka so accurately embodies the writer's gloomy worlds as the series "Severance," which is formally unrelated to Kafka. Lumon is a convincing modern analogue of the mysterious and powerful organizations from his novels "The Trial" and "The Castle." The corporation has the same vague goals, its leaders also avoid meetings with subordinates, and the rules and traditions resemble a religious cult. Lumon keeps court artists on staff, writing, for example, portraits of managers in the image of the late founder of the firm, Kier Egan: the same painter served the judicial system in "The Trial."
It's even a pity that over time we will certainly find out what the Egan family is striving for, what mysterious numbers the employees of the macrodata department are sorting, and how Gemma, aka Miss Casey, survived. After all, as soon as this happens, Lumon from an incomprehensible Kafkaesque castle will turn into an ordinary evil corporation, which we have seen more than once in movies and series. But, working in the field of popular culture, the authors of "Severance" are forced to comply with its rules - in particular, to give answers to the most important riddles. The writer was not bound by such obligations.
There is another noticeable difference. If Kafka's organizations are governed by strict discipline, and bosses humiliate subordinates openly, then in "Severance" the corporation pretends to be democratic and caring. Employees are encouraged with souvenirs, entertained with dance parties, and their manager, Mr. Milchik (Tramell Tillman), is smiling and friendly.
However, as the characters themselves note, the company deliberately infantilizes the "separated" employees. Their very common name innie - literally "insider" - sounds childish, not to mention the sugary-cheerful design of training videos and corporate gifts (Mark, for example, is presented with blue balls with his portraits in the second season). In essence, the bosses impose a parent-child hierarchy on their subordinates. It is no coincidence that the company's culture pays so much attention to Kier Egan, its legendary founder: workers who do not remember their real parents should see in him the figure of a demanding but loving father. A God-father, if you will.
Religious analogies are generally important for "Severance." For example, in one of the new episodes, the heroes find in the depths of Lumon a room with a green lawn where shepherds graze goats. And although showrunner Dan Erickson promises to reveal its literal purpose over time, at the symbolic level everything is already clear: a herd led by a shepherd is a self-portrait of a corporation that sees itself in the image of the biblical Good Shepherd.
An outstanding example of Lumon's signature paternalism can be seen in the first episode of the second season: this is an agitational puppet cartoon, where the events already known to viewers - the riot and escape of four employees - are described from the company's point of view.
The narrator—literally an office building with a funny face—verbally sympathizes with the rebels. But the cartoon depicts them as comical little men who are angry about who knows what. "Lumon hears you!" the office assures, promising the rioters various benefits—from new snacks and entertainment to dates with "external" families. In the third episode, one of the characters perceptively notes: the slogan from the video also has another, threatening meaning—they are being watched.
How the unique visual language of "Severance" is arranged
In addition to social acuteness and an intriguing setting, the series has another noticeable plus—the visual side (the production of the second season cost 20 million per episode—this is comparable to the costs of "House of the Dragon"). This is a rare streaming show where the work of the operators—primarily Jessica Lee Gagnier, who shot most of the episodes—is noticeable even to a non-specialist. Here, for example, is how the transition from one subpersonality to another is shown in "Severance": the camera physically moves away from the actor and simultaneously zooms in on him (this is the so-called dolly zoom, or vertigo effect—a technique discovered by Alfred Hitchcock in "Vertigo," and then successfully used by Steven Spielberg in "Jaws").
Another striking camera solution in the series is the top-down shots in the minimalist interiors of Lumon. On the one hand, they emphasize the total control of the god-like bosses over their subordinates, on the other—they turn a person into one of the elements of the ornament, the same as the neatly arranged office furniture.
The interiors (and exteriors) deserve a separate story. The main artist of the series, Jeremy Hindle, was inspired by the architecture and design of the second half of the 20th century, primarily by the projects of the American modernist architect Eero Saarinen. The creator of the iconic "Tulip" chair and the "Gateway Arch" monument in St. Louis, Saarinen insisted that the main thing in the architect's profession is an understanding of human psychology.
For example, the Bell Labs research center in Holmdel, New Jersey, was deliberately designed so that scientists from different departments could accidentally intersect: wide corridors, rest rooms, balconies with stunning views—all this was supposed to contribute to the exchange of ideas. True, the idea failed: employees got to their workplace in the shortest way and did not feel connected with colleagues from other departments—on the contrary, they complained about isolation.
It is this impressive building, built in 1962 and became home to scientific discoveries—"the industrial Versailles," as it is called by architectural historians—that depicts the exterior and spacious hall of Lumon in "Severance." The interiors were filmed in pavilions; Hindle also spied the ceiling in one of Saarinen's projects, the General Motors technical center, and the monochrome green carpet in the headquarters of the French Communist Party by Oscar Niemeyer, another famous modernist.
The impeccable modernist architecture, which, like the top-down shots, can be associated with control and cause anxiety in the viewer, is one of the many motifs that bring "Severance" closer to another distinctly left-wing streaming hit, "Squid Game." The stairs along which the players are escorted to the slaughterhouse refer to the Spanish residential complex La Muralla Roja, built in 1973 according to the project of Ricardo Bofill. True, they are painted in acidic "children's" colors (Bofill worked with color much more subtly)—because the organizers of the games, like Lumon, impose a childish position on the people dependent on them.
In essence, in both series, architecture embodies the power of one group over another—after all, when a modernist architect programs the daily life of people, in a sense he acts as an authoritarian parent.
Why "Severance" is the main Marxist series of our time
Dan Erickson came up with "Severance" based on personal experience. The future showrunner worked in the production of doors and so hated his job that he once thought: it would be nice, coming home, not to remember anything about these eight hours.
Erickson encountered a problem that Karl Marx called the alienation of labor. In the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844," Marx explained this concept as follows: "Labor is something external to the worker, not belonging to his essence; [...] in his work he does not affirm himself, but denies himself, feels not happy, but unhappy." Actually, the separation procedure, which Lumon practices, is nothing more than a visual metaphor for such alienation. It is not surprising that the series is regularly written about from a Marxist point of view. For example, the left-wing researcher Matthew Flisfeeder, who analyzes pop culture and social networks, dedicated an article to it, "Severance, Alienation and Permanent Reintegration," where he connects the plot with the theories of Marx and Freud.
One cannot but mention the contradiction inherent in "Severance"—dialectical, as the Marxists would say: a project that harshly criticizes corporations is released on Apple TV—a service owned by Apple. At times, Lumon looks like a satire not even on big business as such, but specifically on Apple. For example, in the second season, the macrodata department gets a new manager—a teenage girl, Miss Juan (Sarah Bock), and the heroes immediately begin to suspect that she is being held in the office against her will. In 2011, Apple admitted: child labor is used in Chinese factories where the company's gadgets are produced.
The company, in fact, does not even hide that this is a series partly about itself. On the eve of the premiere of the second season, a promotional video was released with Apple's top manager Tim Cook in the image of a "separated" Lumon employee. Cook puts on a badge, goes down in the elevator to the underground office and "switches." At his workplace, he is greeted by a smiling manager, Mr. Milchik.
This is far from the first time that corporations have made money on films and series exposing corporations. In the 2020s alone, there were at least two more notable examples: Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" film from the toy company Mattel and the sixth season of "Black Mirror" from Netflix (the series featured a parody analogue of their service called Streamberry). Viewers notice the irony. "When corporations criticize themselves, they neutralize any external criticism," writes one Reddit user in a discussion titled "Apple and Lumon are eerily similar."
However, it is not yet known who will be able to benefit more from this strange situation: the companies that have learned to monetize self-criticism, the inventive artists they hire, or the viewers who, with each such project, ask more and more uncomfortable questions.
