Just me, or is the second episode of Severance’s second season on AppleTV+ bananas good? We’ve got Vengeful Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette). We’ve got Dylan (Zach Cherry) applying for a job at a door company. (“Semigloss. “That’s Hot.”) We’ve got an outie world vibe that’s giving what I call “1980’s Michigan-core.”
And mostly, it’s simply fun to see this outside world after last week’s claustrophobic puzzle that took place entirely within Lumon’s walls.
Many things are explained here: We learn that Devon interpreted “She’s alive!” the way innie Mark (Adam Scott) intended. We learn why the new coworkers (Bob Balaban, Alia Shawkat and Stefano Carannante) have arrived. We learn what drove the core four to come back to the office.
But many doors (sorry, sorry) are also opened. Why is outie Burt (Christopher Walken) watching outie Irv (John Turturro) in a phone booth? Did innie Helly (Brit Lower) really come back or was it, as many fans including myself have speculated, her outie in disguise? And what the hell is “Cold Harbor,” the project Mark allegedly needs to finish?
The most exciting part just might be the new opening credits, which come a full 12 minutes into the episode, and offer up a slew of Freudian clues about what’s going on. More on those below, but there was one detail that seriously caught my eye: The crashed car in the lake (at around the :45 second mark).
“What’s the big deal?” you may ask. “We all know that Gemma allegedly died in a car crash.” Well, I, for one, was always under the impression that Mark wasn’t there when she died. (He says in this episode that he identified the body, leading me to further believe that.) Does the presence of this car—literally inside his brain in the credits—mean he was actually there, and somehow had the memory removed from his consciousness? Maybe he even crashed the car himself? (Remember his history with drinking, and when he says “I’m sorry,” to Ms. Casey when he passes her in the corridor?)
There’s more here that points to the lake/crash as important. Before Irv goes to the phone booth, we see him walking out of an apartment complex called Leonora Lake. Now, as any good English major (raises hand) will tell you, this is a reference to “Leonore” by Edgar Allen Poe, about a grieving husband who believes he’ll meet his dead wife again in the afterlife. Pair “Leonore” with “lake” and you’ve got a tidy, little subconscious package that can’t be ignored.
One more piece of evidence that I’m not sure even I buy: We see Ms. Cobel/Selvig’s car in the driveway multiple times, and then at the end of the episode when she almost runs Mark over. Am I alone here, or does it look an awful lot like the white car in the lake in the opening credits? Could this be Ms. Cobel trying to tease out Mark’s memory? Does she own Gemma’s post-crash car which she brought back to life (much like Gemma herself)? Or am I grasping at straws, and all cars just look like vintage Renaults in the town of Kier? Only time—and obsessive rewatches—will tell.
More things I noticed, mostly from the opening credits:
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