‘Severance’ Says ‘Welcome Back’ in New Season 2 Footage: Everything We Know

In the words of Severance‘s Seth Milchick, “Welcome back. Been a minute.”

Indeed it has, Mr. Milchick. 

In a new Apple TV+ sneak peek released Monday, Severance fans are getting slightly more of a look at what’s in store come season 2. After more than two years of waiting on new episodes, viewers reunite with Adam Scott‘s Mark Scout as he’s being welcomed back by none other than a balloon-toting Milchick (Tramell Tillman) — a moment that doubles as a welcome back to the audience, too. In a teaser image also released, Mark is shown carrying a bunch of similar blue balloons with his face on some of them.

In another clip from the footage, Mark oscillates between his “innie” and “outie” selves while lying on the conference table where Helly woke up in the first season before running down a hallway. The moment poses the question: Are the “severed” malfunctioning?

In a third clip from Apple TV+’s video, Mark shouts “Wait!” as the elevator doors close. 

The teaser marks the latest update since January, when Scott took to Instagram to share a first glimpse at the highly anticipated upcoming season of the Apple TV+ drama. In the photo, Scott was seen running through the hallways of Lumon Industries. The Parks and Recreation alum, 50, tagged Apple TV and director Ben Stiller in the post and also showed off his set chair, designated with his character’s name. 

“Lovely being back at the office,” Scott captioned the dramatic post. 

By that point, it had been some 15 months since the streaming platform first shared that season 2 was in progress back in October 2022. Around the same time, Scott once again used his social media pages to tease the return to the microdata refinery department. 

That photo showed Scott with his eyes closed, seemingly filming a scene where the change from an “outie” to an “innie” occurs inside the elevator at Lumon, where the show is set. 

“Filming has begun on season 2 of Severance…” the actor wrote in an Oct. 31, 2022 post. Shortly after, Puck News reported that the new season was delayed by script issues and ballooning budgets, among other issues. From there, problems only worsened as the Writers Guild of America went on strike and the 118-day SAG-AFTRA strike quickly followed. 

Severance premiered in February 2022 and quickly took the world by storm, receiving 14 2022 Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, Best Writing for a Drama Series, and a plethora of nominations for the show’s stars including Scott, Patricia Arquette, Christopher Walken and John Turturro. 

The show follows a series of co-workers who spend their days refining numbers in a barren office space at the fictional Lumon Industries. The twist? The workers have been surgically “severed” from their outside lives so that when they clock in, they only are meant to focus on the work. What happens, however, when an “innie” — a term referring to the severed personality who works at the office — decides they want out. That’s where the dramatic (and sometimes nauseating) storyline for the show plays out.

At the end of season 1, viewers saw Mark’s outie — who we learned at the beginning of the season lost his wife in a car accident — learn that his wife, played by Dichen Lachman, is not only alive, but working for Lumon. The discovery is made possible after Dylan (Zach Cherry) sneaks around the building and manages to activate the “overtime contingency” which allows the innies to experience the outside world. 

The show’s other main characters, Helly (Britt Lower) and Irving (John Turturro), also are activated and find themselves in peculiar situations as they see the outside world for the first time. For Helly — who spent the entire first season demanding to get out and even attempting suicide at one point to leave Lumon — viewers discover that she is none other than Helena Egan, the daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Egan. Helly discovers outside that her outie underwent the “severance” procedure as a testament to the safety and effectiveness of the process, which has been a topic of discussion among the friends and family members of the outies all season. 

Irving — whose innie sparked an office romance with Burt (Walken) — finds himself out in the real world painting the same dark and daunting hallway over and over again, however, it’s only after viewers see Lachman’s character, Ms. Casey, reprimanded and sent down the ominous pathway inside the Lumon building that it’s made clear the hallway is not a good sign. 

“That’s a world that we’re just beginning to explore,” series creator Dan Erickson told ET in 2022 of the lives of the outies and the darker side of Lumon. “So, it’s really exciting and humbling that we get to keep doing it for a whole other season.” 

You can watch a trailer for season 1 of Severance in the player below: 

In April, executive producer and returning director spoke out on the delays in a statement to TV Line, saying, “We’re on the same really slow schedule we’ve always been on. Same target air date we’ve always had,” he said, reassuring fans that “we all are just working to make the show as good as possible.”

The next month, Cherry talked with ET about the upcoming season and revealed that while he couldn’t say much about the direction of season 2, he was pleased by the scripts he had received. 

“My reaction was the same as my reaction was to the first script in season 1, which is, ‘This is good!'” the actor, 37, said.

While it’s unclear exactly what direction Severance season 2 is going in, it’s all but certain that the series is going to be bigger by far than its predecessor. In October 2022, Apple TV+ excitedly announced that several heavy-hitters would join the show for the new season, including Game of Thrones alum Gwendoline Christie, Arrested Development‘s Alia Shawkat, and Tiny Beautiful Things‘ Meritt Wever. 

Following the announcement of the cast additions, Scott spoke out and said that they could not be more thrilled to welcome the new players and get season 2 up and running. 

“We have Alia Shawkat and Gwendoline Christie and Bob Balaban and a bunch of great people,” he said, referring to the eight new cast members brought on for season 2. He also added that they’re “just incredible people and playing really interesting roles. And they just bring so much to it, it’s great.” 

Rounding out the new additions are Christopher Guest, Bob Balaban, Beauty and the Beast voice star Robby Benson, Stefano Carannante (Mirabilia), Lord of the Rings actor John Noble and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga). 

Meanwhile, John Turturro confirmed to ET in January that his co-star, Christopher Walken — who plays love interest Burt Goodman — “is still there.”

In February, Arquette — who cryptically teased that fans should be “very scared” of the new episodes — admitted to ET that the show’s creators felt “some pressure going into the second season.” At the time, she said that they “don’t want to let [the fans] down.” 

It’s currently unclear when season 2 will premiere on Apple TV+. 

For more on Severance, check out the links below. 

RELATED CONTENT: