To the relief of all the people haunted by Severance Season 1’s ending, the series is returning with Season 2 in January 2025. However, Season 1 came out in 2022 and it has been a significant amount of time since then. So, you might need to brush off some dust from your memory of Season 1, but to do so, rewatching the entire season is not conventional. So, we have prepared a Severance Season 1 recap, enlisting 10 things you should know before watching Season 2!
1. Mark Now Knows His Wife Is Alive
In my opinion, one of the biggest revelations in Severance Season 1 was telling us Ms. Casey is none other than Gemma, Mark’s wife who he thinks to be dead. According to Mark and everyone around him, Gemma had died in a car crash but as it turns out, she is alive and works at Lumon as a wellness counselor on the Severed floor. Since Mark’s severed persona does not remember his life on the outside, he has no clue about this.
However, even though this did not stay a secret for a very long time since Dylan initiated the Overtime Contingency Protocol activating Mark and other’s innie persona in the outside world. Mark, at his sister’s house, saw his wedding photo and just before Milchick stopped Dylan, he shouted and let his sister know that her wife is alive.
2. Helly Is the Daughter of Lumon’s CEO
Helly was the replacement for Petey when he “left” Lumon. She was skeptical from the very beginning about the whole Severance thing and wanted to quit since day 1 of her at work. However, she was not allowed to do so. She struggled a lot to quit and even got a message recorded forcefully to her outie but her outie refused to resign. Out of desperation, she even tried to hang herself in the elevator but even after that, her outie did not quit the job.
When Helly was in the outside world after the OCP was activated, she found out why her outie would not quit the job. She found out that she is the daughter of Lumon’s CEO and her joining the company on the Severed floor is a propaganda stunt to show the world that Severance is not as bad as people think it to be.
3. Petey Reintegrated Himself but Died After a While
Among the people working on the severed floor, Petey was the only one whose chip malfunctioned and the memories of his outie and his innie started to merge. Petey out of nowhere went AWOL and Mark, his best friend was told that he left the company. However, in the outside world, Peter approaches Mark and tells him that he has himself reintegrated and wants Mark’s help to bring all of Lumon’s wrongdoings to light.
Mark trusts him about being his friend and takes Petey to his home. However, Petey starts to have reintegration sickness and the memories of both his lives start to merge with such intensity that he starts losing his mind. Eventually, he dies leaving behind a map of the severed floor for Mark.
4. People Outside of Lumon Are Severed Too
One of the scariest revelations made in Severance Season 1 was telling us that the process of Severance is not just limited to employees working at Lumon. While Devon, Mark’s sister was at Damona Birthing Retreat, she met Gabby Arteta, the wife of an influential state senator. After Devon’s child was born, she bumped into Gabby once again but she couldn’t recognize her.
This confirmed that the Senator got his wife severed so that she did not have to go through the pain women go through during childbirth. This raises the question of how many people who are not at Lumon are severed and if it has been done to them with their will or forcefully.
5. Burt Retired by the End of Severance Season 1
Burt, played by Christopher Walken, is the head of Lumon’s Optics and Design Department and probably the only character in Severance so far to have a peaceful end. In Severance Season 1, we see that he is having a retirement party and celebrating his end of service. the reason for his retirement was not made clear but it seems that the growing closeness between Burt and Irving was the reason for him being retired by the company.
In the final episode of Severance Season 1, we see that when Irving’s innie steps into the outside world as a result of the OCP, and finds a map that has Burt’s house marked on it. He goes there and finds that Burt’s outie is already in a romantic relationship with someone else. We see him walk to the door but what happened after it is unknown since Milchik stopped Dylan and we never got to see if Irving was able to contact Burt or not.
6. Dylan Was Captured by Milchick While Using the OCP
In the final episode of Severance Season 1, we see the plan Dylan, Helly, Irving, and Mark make come into action. After Dylan’s innie was activated in the outside world by Milchick and he saw his son, he was eager to know his name but was continuously denied the information.
This pushed Dylan to rebel against Lumon and he stayed back to activate the OCP as others left the office. Dylan was successful in his mission as Mark was able to tell everything to his sister. However, in the process, Dylan was captured by Milchick and what happened to him after that is still unknown.
7. Irving’s Outie Might Have Some Memories of Lumon
When we are introduced to Irving’s outie, we see him paint something. As it turns out, he has made multiple portraits of the elevator that leads to the Severed floor. This is quite unusual since Severed employees are not supposed to have any memories of their work life at all. Other than that, he finds out that Irving’s outie has been actively investigating Lumon and it seems that Lumon has something to do with the death of his Son.
We are also made familiar with why Irving starts seeing black goo out of nowhere and it seems like what he sees is black paint. Irving’s memories may be starting to merge as well just like Petey’s. However, let’s wait and see what the show has in store for us in Severance Season 2.
8. Harmony Was Fired from Lumon
Harmony Cobel was the manager or boss of the Severed floor. However, she had a special interest in Mark because of reasons not revealed to us completely. Maybe it was because she wanted to test how strong is the Severance procedure since she was making Mark and Ms. Casey, his wife work together.
However, she was fired from Lumon when the Board discovered the footage of Helly trying to commit suicide, an incident she did not report back to them. By the end of the series, we see that Cobel figures out that Mark is the innie version of him at his sister’s party and is the reason how Milchick was able to stop Dylan so, we might see her get reinstated to her position.
9. Garner Was Killed by Reghabi
The entire thing that kicked off the rebellion planned by the MDR department came from the death of Garner. Mark and the others were already growing skeptical of Lumon and everything going on there. Mark finds out about Reghabi, the woman who helped Petey remove his chip, and goes to see her.
However, while he is there Garner follows him and before he can do anything, Reghabi kills Garner and gives his keycard to Mark. She asks him to take the card to Lumon and his innie would know what to do. He does precisely that and this leads to the events we see in the Severance Season 1 ending.
10. MDR Department’s Purpose Is Still Unknown
Severance entirely revolves around a team of employees who work in a department called MDR, the Macro Data Refinement department. However, the nature of their work is still unknown. We see that the employees compile a set of numbers that look “scary” to them and have to reach a quarterly quota of refinement.
The purpose of their work and what they are doing is never told to them and this is one of the reasons why their skepticism about their work started seeping in. Not just this, multiple mysteries remain unsolved in the series so let’s wait and see what answers Severance Season 2 brings us and till then, stay tuned with us for further updates!
Ajith Kumar
