‘Severance’ review roundup: Critics say Season 2 was worth the wait
Reviews are finally out for the long-awaited second season of Severance, Apple TV+’s Emmy-winning cult psychological thriller. Critics say it was worth the almost-three-year wait, calling Season 2 thematically deeper, darker, and even weirder. However, some critics find its tendency to overextend itself frustrating.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Angie Han writes that Season 2’s “scattered focus” on more characters inside and outside of Lumon, the sinister tech company at the center of the story, can be “a bit of a drag to sit through,” as there can be long stretches between meaningful developments in the puzzle-box plot, and some of the character dynamics that made Season 1 so enjoyable are less present. But Han enjoys the series overall, writing, “Severance is better than perhaps any other show on television at capturing the indignities of modern work, using sci-fi exaggerations to cast our own dystopian reality into stark relief.”
Rolling Stone’s Alan Sepinwall appreciates the complex sci-fi question that hangs over the show’s primary plot, “innie” Mark (Adam Scott) fighting against Lumon, which in victory would mean he ceases to exist, as his consciousness would be shut off. “The life he has is awful, but it appears to be the only one available to him and the people he cares about,” Sepinwall writes. “It’s a seemingly impossible knot to unravel, and the season generates a lot of satisfying and necessary tension out of it.”
Meanwhile, The Verge’s Andrew Webster appreciates the show’s social commentary. “The new season also pushes even harder on the idea that Lumon-style megacorporations exert an extraordinary amount of control over everyday life, often in ways we don’t see or understand,” he writes. “Even if severed employees don’t exist in real life, disturbing mysteries at tech companies definitely do. It also makes it very clear that you should trust almost none of what they say — particularly if they’re trying to seem like the good guy. (These points make it especially ironic that the series is streaming on a platform run by Apple.)”
IndieWire’s Ben Travers praises the performances of Trammell Tillman as Mr. Milchick, John Turturro as Irving, Christopher Walken as Burt, and especially Adam Scott as Mark. “Scott’s lead turn (even after nominations from the Emmys, SAG, and TCA Awards) remains an under-appreciated juggling act, probably because jugglers can rarely stabilize so many moving pieces with such consummate conviction. The charismatic charge he exudes by flicking on a light behind his eyes is comparable only to the despair he can conjure when his gaze sinks and his pupils go dark. That both can exist in the same character, at the same time, is an integral, irreplaceable asset to ‘Severance’ — and one the show never lets go to waste.”
In one of the show’s few negative-leaning reviews, RogerEbert.com’s Brian Tallerico finds that Severance has too much brain, not enough heart. Season 2 “values big ideas over human emotion,” he writes. “In an era when so much TV is bereft of any thematic ambition, it feels churlish to criticize one for trying to do as much as this season of “Severance” is attempting, but it’s a balance, and the scales are out of whack enough that I too often questioned why I should care – a feeling I never had in season one. It’s also a show that’s a bit too in love with its pregnant pauses, calling awareness to its ‘heavy ideas’ instead of weaving them into the fabric of the show.”
Severance Season 2 premieres Friday, Jan. 17 on Apple TV+.