As I hinted in a post a few days ago, Apple TV+ just put Severance fans through what arguably was the most bewildering TV episode of the year so far, while at the same time doubling down on everything that makes the dystopian workplace psychological thriller from director Ben Stiller so darn addictive and fun to watch.
So much of consequence unfolded during the wildest hour of the season to date — in which, by the way, a jaw-dropping charade was finally revealed — that I actually had to watch the episode more than once to make sure I spotted it all. Here’s my attempt to recap the most ambitious episode yet this season, and you should obviously be warned: There are spoilers coming.
The head-spinning sequence of events in Episode 4 of Severance‘s second season gave us everything from the MDR team setting out on Lumon’s version of a corporate retreat to meeting creepy, clone-like versions of themselves in the great outdoors; two Refiners shagging in a tent; Irving nearly killing Helly on purpose; and Milchick banishing Irving from the group permanently for the offense of “threatening collegial murder in the pond of Woe’s Hollow.”
We also learned about a new Lumon tool for controlling the innies (the “Glasglow block”), glimpsed the so-called “tallest waterfall on the planet” (lol, classic Milchick) and in typical Severance style we ended the episode with way more questions than answers.
This episode, forebodingly titled Woe’s Hollow, also featured some of the best writing we’ve yet seen from the show, from Irving sneering about how he “wouldn’t trust a word out of that mountebanks’s mouth — not even televisually” to Milchick proudly declaring that he’d brought “copious luxury meats” for the Refiners to enjoy during their outing. What I mean to say is the writing in this show continues to be so unusual and so memorable, driving home that this Apple TV+ standout is unlike anything else that’s streaming at the moment.
Making this episode of Severance a highlight of the season is the fact that it takes place outdoors, to allow Mark, Helly, Iriving, and Dylan to participate in a Lumon-organized Outdoor Retreat Team Building Occurrence (or, ORTBO … which, coincidentally, happens to be an anagram for ROBOT. Make of that what you will).
They’re given the task of locating Kier Eagan’s mysterious fourth appendix inside Scissor’s Cave, and the Refiners locate that cave with help from their mysterious dopplegangers. At one point, Helly and Mark knock boots during the retreat, and they also all sit around a campfire while Milchick reads them a story about the Eagan family in a manner that very much sounds like he’s telling a ghost story to little children. Meanwhile, the crux of the episode deals with Irving’s rising suspicions that Helly isn’t who she claims to be, which builds to a climactic showdown at the end.
Let me stop here for a moment and address a few things.
I’m still going back and forth on whether this episode actually took place in the real world, or whether the whole thing was a simulation of some kind. For example, in the opening moments of the episode when the MDR team members are still trying to figure out where they are, a TV just magically appears on the side of a cliff. There’s obviously no power source, and a video message from Milchick starts playing.
For what it’s worth, the MDR dopplegangers also look extremely low-res. And then there’s the general riskiness involved in this whole situation if it indeed took place in the real world. How, for example, does that conversation with the outies go in order to get their approval? Follow us out here to a creepy forest, and then — click. They wake up as their innies on a frozen lake. Oh, and let’s not forget, Helena’s innie tried to kill herself once. And now look, we’re all standing on the side of a cliff! The Eagans/Lumon really were ok with risking something happening to the future CEO?
Having said all that, in this episode we also finally got an answer to the question of whether that’s Helly or Helena in truly spectacular fashion.
In hindsight, there was really no way the Eagan family was going to let Helena’s innie run amok down there after the events of the Season 1 finale. What’s the first thing she would do when she got off the elevator? She’d blab about being an Eagan, talk about what she saw at the fancy Eagan shindig, the rest of MDR would hate her, and it would cause general havoc and pandemonium. Not an option, especially when the company needs Mark concentrating on Cold Harbor.
Irving, feeling like he has nothing to lose since he’s now lost his love interest, goes for broke and risks termination in order to unmask Helena. He attempts to drown her in an effort to get her to confess, causing Milchick to lift something called the Glasglow block which instantly switches Helena back to her innie — and results in Irving’s immediate and permanent firing. And that leads me, once again, back to my wondering about whether this episode took place in the real world or not. Because what are they going to do — have Irving switch back to his outie, now that his innie has been fired, which means outie Irving wakes up in the middle of the forest having to trudge back to civilization? Maybe, I guess.
To get the answers to these and so many other Severance questions, though, we’ll have to wait another week until we get that glorious notification on our Apple devices once again — the one telling us that a new episode of the show is now available in the Apple TV+ app.
