The brilliance of Severance

After watching the Emmys this past weekend, I was thrilled to see that Apple TV+’s “Severance” not only received the most nominations of the award ceremony, but also won eight awards that night. I’ve been a fan of the show since its release in 2022, so seeing it getting some deserved love was really exciting. It's truly a well-composed show, and I want to encourage every single person to give it a chance. But what makes it such a brilliant show? 

1. The World Building

I would say what separates “Severance” from other mystery thrillers is the world-building. We first see this with the physical setting of the show. The eerie white hallways leading the severed “innies” around the macrodata refinement department give it an unsettling feeling. The first time I watched the show, this setting really reminded me of “The Backrooms,” with the maze-like, empty, mysterious interior that almost seems to never end the more you walk around it. It really leaves the viewers thinking, “What are they hiding from them?” 

However, the world-building around Lumon is so fascinating. The cultish idolization of Keir Egan gives us the glimpse that Lumon sees him and the Egan family as prophets, religious figures even and that everything that the company does is for the satisfaction of the Egan family. Relating this back to “innies” and “outies” specifically, having a severed chip in the brain gives Lumon full control of what they want and don’t want these characters to know while they are in Lumon. Essentially, they want the characters’ “outies” to believe that their work is their religion, and their religion is their life. Without their work, they have no life to live. 

2. Helly vs. Helena

The character differences between their “innie” and “outie” make these actors stand out, but I specifically think that Britt Lower’s character, Helly, is the most brilliant. In the opening scene of the pilot, we meet Helly, who wakes up with no recollection of who she is, where she is, or what her purpose in life is. Feeling trapped in Lumon, she tries every way she can to escape the severed floor to figure out what her true purpose in her life as an “innie” is. 

On the other hand, we find out at the end of season one that Helly’s “outie,” Helena, is quite the opposite of Helly. Helena is revealed to be a part of the Egan family, saying that she decided to sever herself to promote the product and to prove that it enhances the quality of life. In reality, Helena doesn’t see her “innie” as a real person, which raises more emotional mystery with the “innies” leaving them questioning what is real and what is not. From the way I see it, the dynamic between these two characters and each of them realizing what they truly think of the severance procedure makes it look like a war between power and emotion. 

3. The Depth and Conspiracies

This point relates a lot back to world-building, but the amount of mystery that the show leaves you with gives the viewers a lot of creative freedom to make absolutely brilliant conspiracy theories. I already explained earlier that the physical setting makes it feel like you are walking through an endless maze. That is also exactly how it feels reading about “Severance” online; there are endless conspiracy theories about what the true nature of these characters and Lumon is. 

Rewatching scenes, paying closer attention to lines and re-examining the emotional interpretation of a character really gave me two different outlooks on the show. The first time I watched, my only thoughts were about the active scene taking place, or just the general topic of why the severance procedure exists. The second time watching it, because I already had a deep understanding of the characters and the cultish nature of Lumon, it made me think way deeper than anticipated. How involved is Lumon in these characters’ lives to have so much concise control over their brains? 

Thinking about “Severance,” it raises a lot of questions that most likely won’t get answered by the show itself, but can give the viewers their own personal outlook on how they view this version of life. Can a consciousness created purely by Lumon technology create a real person with raw human emotions? Does that consciousness deserve to have a fulfilling human life for decades at a time? Or does that consciousness act only as internal machinery to get mysterious work for a company that views its work as its own religion? Until season 3, I guess we can only imagine.