Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for the first season of Severance, streaming on Apple TV+.
An overview is available upon request.
Severance returns this Friday on Apple TV+, but it's been nearly three years since the sci-fi workplace thriller's first season ended on a brutal cliffhanger.
So before you head back to the office on January 17, here are a few things from season one you should remember. If you just want to know what the final episode is about, skip to the end.
Severance tells the story of Mark Scott (Adam Scott), who grieves the loss of his wife Gemma outside the office but is blissfully unaware that he has one inside. That's because he worked for the mysterious Lumon Industries and went through an experimental and controversial "severance" process that essentially split himself into two different people: his introvert and his extrovert . When the cut-offs enter Lumeng's office, they have lost memory of their lives outside of work. Likewise, laypeople know they work at Lumon, but they don't remember their 9-to-5, including their coworkers. Outie Mark was depressed and spent most nights alone in the dark. Ini Mark was happy, spending his days "distilling macro data" (beyond sorting numbers into different boxes in a computer program, neither his introvert nor his extrovert had a clue what that meant). At the beginning of the series, Mark is promoted to department head after the sudden departure of his colleague Petey. He works with Helly R. (Britt Lorre), Irving B. (John Turturro) and Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) on Lumon's isolation floor, which is run by Non-quarantine managers Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) and Seth Milchick supervise. (Trammell Tillman). Every once in a while, introverts receive wellness therapy sessions from Ms. Casey (Dichen Rahman), who tells them the truth about extroversion.
One day after get off work, Oti Mark is approached by a strange man named Petey (Yul Vazquez), who claims to have worked closely with him in Lumeng. Petey revealed that he had undergone "reintegration," an untested process designed to reverse severance proceedings, allowing him to merge his personality and extroversion and access his work and personal memories. He told Mark that Lumen was doing something shady and that the severance package wasn't what it seemed. He provided Mark with information he had gathered within Lumon, allowing him to see the company's evil deeds. Petey is worried that he is being watched, so for his introversion, Mark takes Petey to his house to hide. He suffered serious side effects from the reintegration process, including debilitating headaches and hallucinations. He died of illness midway through the season.
Things start to get concerning when Ms. Corbell also spies on Mark outside of work. Although Corbell is not disowned, she leads a double life outside of Lumont, as Mark's neighbor Mrs. Selvig and as doula to Mark's sister Devin (Jane Tullock). After Petey dies, she infiltrates his funeral, secretly cuts open his head and retrieves the separation implant.
The series begins with Helly's first day working at Lumon. Unlike her senior colleagues Mark (who believed her job was meaningful), Owen (a scholar of Lumon rules and history), and Dylan (who was obsessed with reaping company benefits), Haley wanted out. In the first few episodes of the show, she keeps trying to escape the office. She attempts to send messages to her outie by writing on them, but they are intercepted by Lumon. She made a formal request to resign, but her contacts rejected it. She even attempted suicide by hanging herself in an elevator.
In addition to promoting to potential employees that this is a lifestyle choice (turn off your brain for half a day and never work!), Lumon claims that its terminated employees were handling highly confidential information and therefore the severance package was justified . This is a way to ensure that Lumon's secrets are kept within the confines of the office. But severance procedures have other uses, as in the case of Gabby Arteta (Nora Dyer), the wife of a pro-severance senator, who used severance techniques to isolate (and completely forget about) her pregnancy .
Things get tricky in the office when the macrodata refinement department crosses paths with another set of laid-off employees from the optics and design department. There are rules against being friendly with other divisions, which is something Irving would normally be concerned about. But instead, he is fascinated by Bert G. (Christopher Walken), who also admires the paintings hanging in Lumont Hall. The two strike up a strictly forbidden office romance, and suddenly Burt is "permanently retired" (i.e. his underpants are essentially dead). This made Irving aggressive. At the same time, he continued to hallucinate at work and saw a black paint-like liquid dripping from the ceiling.
In episode three, Mark discovers a map of the office drawn by Petey, hidden behind a framed photo. As the briefs' suspicion and curiosity grow, Mark and Haley begin exploring Lumon's long white halls. They find a room filled with baby goats and a man in a lab coat who warns, "They're not ready yet!" Lumon's other known locations include a break room where the introvert would read the apology over and over again as Here are the punishments for misbehavior, which can lead to mental breakdown; the Optical and Design department where Burt works; the administrative offices where Ms. Cobel and Mr. Milchick work; and Ms. Casey's wellness center. There's also the permanent wing, which is a kind of Lumon museum. Separate from the Cutoff Floor is the Test Floor, which means Lumon experimented with Underpants and Tinker with their Cutoff Chips. No characters other than Ms. Casey were seen entering the test tier.
Things take a turn for the worse in episode six, when Dylan's inner tube suddenly wakes up at home, inside his outer tube body. Innie Dylan had lost some kind of information card from the Office of Optics and Design, so Mr. Milchik came to his house after get off work to find out where he had put it. This is possible because overtime contingencies are an emergency process that can wake up introverts to the outside world. Innie Dillon's world is rocked when a small child bursts into the room, hugs him and yells "Daddy!" Now, knowing he has a son at home, Innie Dylan is all he can focus on at work.
Towards the end of the season, Mark is directed to Regabi (Karen Aldridge), a former Lumon scientist who was integral to the creation of Severance Technologies but now leads the underground opposition to the company resistance movement. She was the one who performed Petey's reintegration surgery. In the middle of the night, Mark met Regabi in a dark building and was discovered by Doug Grana (Michael Campsti), the security supervisor on the isolation floor. To Mark's shock, Regabi murders Grana and hands Mark his all-access security card to take into the office. She assured him that his daughter would know how to handle it.
One of the show's most jaw-dropping revelations came at the end of episode seven, where Mark was gluing a photo of his late wife back together that he had previously ripped out. As Oti Mark gazes longingly at a photo of his wife Gemma, we recognize the woman (who is said to have died in a car accident) as Lumont's own Ms. Casey. In the next episode, Ms. Casey informs Ini Mark that she has been fired from her position as Director of Wellness. She was sent to the testing floor.
Armed with Grana's security card, motivation from a self-help book found in the office, and a lot of anger, the introvert devises a plot to activate an overtime contingency plan for himself. Dylan's plan is to stay and infiltrate the security office so he can wake up Mark, Haley, and Owen in the outside world, where they can share the truth about Lumon. Before the big rebellion, Haley and Mark kissed. Ms. Korbel was fired because she could not control her introversion. Dylan also enjoyed the coveted "waffle party" perk, which included a bizarre sex show in a replica of Lumon founder Kier Eagan's house.
When Dylan begins his overtime emergency, the introverts wake up in their extrovert bodies and find themselves in a shocking situation. Mark is attending a party at his sister's house, where Nenie's favorite self-help book is read from, written by her husband, Mark's brother-in-law Rickon (Michael Chenous). He recognized Ms. Corbell at the party (although in this case, she was Mrs. Selvig).
Owen wakes up in his house, surrounded by dozens of black canvases, all depicting the same scene - a hallway he's been painting over and over on the test floor, even though he's never consciously visited it. In his home, he found a dog, military medals and documents containing information about past and present Lumon employees, including Burt's home address.
Helly attended an Eagan family evening and discovered her partner was Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Eagan. As part of a public relations campaign, she agreed to undergo amputating surgery to show that the procedure was both safe and ethical.
Ini Mark reveals his identity to Ms. Corbell by calling her Ms. Corbell instead of Mrs. Selvig. Owen gets in his car and rushes to Burt's house, only to find that he's married to another man. Mark told his sister Devon that he was currently in introvert mode and that something fishy was going on with Lumen. She tells him about Gemma, his late wife who had an affair. Hayley takes the stage in front of the Lumon board of directors and other gala attendees to reveal the truth about her family's company: "We are prisoners!" Mark finds a photo of him and Gemma and recognizes her as Ms. Cathy. He burst into the living room where his sister was partying, screaming, "She's alive!" Immediately afterwards, Mr. Milchik broke into the security office and subdued Dylan, shutting down the overtime contingency plan. Introverts quickly become extroverts. The first season was cut to black.