Our favourite Macrodata Refinement team finds itself in chilly conditions. Here’s our Severance season 2 episode 4 review.
Warning! As always, these reviews are spoiler-free for the week in question but will discuss previous episodes.
Is there a rule that episode four of the second season of an AppleTV+ show has to be the best one yet? Silo’s episode 4 was excellent and now Severance serves us its most ambitious, fascinating episode yet this week too.
The episode begins with a cold open – literally. We open with Irv’s face as he seemingly stands on ice at an unknown, snowy location. He’s alone, but quickly spots Mark on top of a cliff.
If you’re confused, don’t worry; so is the Macrodata Refinement Team. They have no memory of how they’ve ended up in this place or why they’re there. They find an old TV where a video of Mr Milchick tells them they’re on an Outdoor Retreat Team Building Occurrence, or ORTBO. That doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, but that’s the least of our team’s worries right now. They’re to follow the path of Dieter, Kier Eagan’s secret twin, who also once trekked the same landscape. Something tells us it didn’t end too well.
For much of the episode, director Ben Stiller really revels in the surreal, almost horror-like atmosphere. Mark, Helly, Irv and Dylan encounter their creepy twins who point them the way, and there’s a frozen body of a seal in the middle of a forest. There’s also no intro to this week’s episode: the title simply appears with nothing to accompany it, which only adds to the sense of unease.
Irv continues to be suspicious of Helly R, who’s seen conversing with Mark in the forest. We’ve said this before, but it’s becoming increasingly likely that this isn’t actually Helly, but Helena Eagan. Surely Lumon has the tech to send an Outie into the Severed Floor? Who else would come up with a story about her Outie encountering night gardeners in the real world when gardeners notoriously tend to only work during the day?
Bizarrely and slightly frustratingly, Severance episode 4 doesn’t mention the ending of last week’s episode. Mark’s Outie reunited with Asal Reghabi who helped Outie Mark get a Reintegration procedure which would allow Mark to communicate with his severed self. Unfortunately, Reghabi managed to kill someone with it – but not to worry, she’s much better at it now.
I don’t particularly enjoy being frustrated, but there’s something really addictive and quite impressive about how Severance is able to manipulate my feelings each week. Each episode has me glued to the screen, and afterwards my mind is doing overtime coming up with theories about what could be happening and where it all might lead.
The Matrix comparisons are even stronger here, especially after Irv has a strange dream later in the episode. Milchick recounts the story of Kier and Dieter – we’ll let you experience it for yourselves – and it’s hard not to see the similarities between Kier’s desire to be apart from his twin. Is this what inspired him to create the severance procedure?
A special mention should go to John Turturro, who carries this episode. Not that anyone is bad here, but the stage truly belongs to Irv this week. Irv has often been the emotional heart of Severance, but episode 4 really gives him the opportunity to be an active agent in the story. We hope episode 4 isn’t the end of that.
New episodes of Severance premiere every Friday on AppleTV+.
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