TV

Severance

Apple TV+·2022·Created by Dan Erickson
10 think pieces
The New Yorker
The New Season of “Severance” Is All Work and No Play | The New Yorker

A longtime skeptic of Season 1's slow-burn puzzle-box mechanics, the critic argues that "Severance" mistakes atmospheric dread and allegorical cleverness for genuine depth, finding its anti-capitalist satire thin compared to sharper works like "Sorry to Bother You" or "Corporate." If you're a devoted fan eager to see whether Season 2 delivers on the cliffhanger revelations—Mark's wife alive, Helly unmasked as a Lumon heiress—this review offers a bracingly contrarian take on whether the show can finally justify its

Read at newyorker.com
IndieWire·Ben Travers
'Severance' Season 2 Review: Deeper, Darker, and Worth the Wait

Ben Travers argues that *Severance* Season 2 earns its three-year wait by expanding the show's mythology in ways that are both satisfyingly revealing and deliberately, tantalizingly unresolved — a balance that rewards patient fans without betraying the show's commitment to ambiguity. If you fell hard for the Lumon universe's claustrophobic dread and corporate surrealism, Travers suggests this season pushes deeper into that darkness rather than softening its edges for easy answers.

Read at indiewire.com
Vox·Caitlin PenzeyMoog
Severance review: The Apple TV+ drama about worker organizing stars Adam Scott | Vox

Caitlin PenzeyMoog argues that *Severance*'s surreal premise—workers surgically splitting their work and personal memories—is less a sci-fi conceit than a precise metaphor for real labor exploitation and the conditions that drive worker organizing. The piece traces how the show's severed employees mirror actual workplace dynamics, from manufactured loyalty and psychological control to collective resistance, making it essential viewing for anyone attuned to the politics of labor.

Read at vox.com
Debaser·DannyRoseG
Severance Season 2 Review - Dan Erickson

DannyRoseG delivers a sharp takedown of *Severance*, arguing that its acclaimed first season mistakes minimalist aesthetics and surface-level capitalism critique for genuine depth, while Season 2 actively dismantles its own intriguing premise by abandoning the psychological complexity of the "severed" memory concept in favor of grotesque horror and heavy-handed allegory. If you loved the show, this review will push back hard on exactly what you admired — the cold Lumon aesthetic, the slow-burn mystery, and the social commentary — making it a bracing read for anyone willing to have

Read at en.debaser.it
The New Yorker·Margaret Talbot
“Severance” Is Sci-Fi for the Soul | The New Yorker

Margaret Talbot's deep-dive into "Severance" traces the Apple TV+ show's central conceit—employees surgically split between their work and home selves—back to the universal dread of office life, using Jerry Seinfeld's old bit about desk family photos as an unexpectedly perfect entry point. Talbot gives particular attention to the performances of Adam Scott and a riveting Britt Lower, whose innie's increasingly desperate attempts to quit a job her outie chose for her becomes the show's moral and emotional core.

Read at newyorker.com
The Aggie
Review: ‘Severance’ is an interesting thought experiment from the mind of Dan Erickson | The Aggie

The article cannot be fully retrieved from the provided text, as the actual review content was not included — only the site's navigation and unrelated campus news headlines loaded. Fans of *Severance* seeking a substantive critical take on Dan Erickson's Apple TV+ psychological thriller about work-life separation taken to its surgical extreme will need to visit The Aggie's website directly to access the full piece.

Read at theaggie.org
Administrative Sciences (MDPI)
The TV Series Severance as Speculative Organizational Critique: Control, Consent, and Identity at Work

A peer-reviewed organizational studies article uses *Severance*'s premise of surgical work-life memory splitting as a lens to interrogate real-world corporate mechanisms of control, consent, and identity fragmentation. Readers who found the show's Lumon Industries dystopia uncomfortably plausible will appreciate the academic rigor applied to questions the series raises but leaves unanswered—namely, what workers actually surrender when organizations demand total psychological compartmentalization.

Read at mdpi.com
Made by Humans for Humans (Substack)·James Bareham
'Severance' is the most creative show in the Outie world

Bareham comes to *Severance* late—only finishing Season 1 as Season 2 premieres—and writes with the infectious enthusiasm of a convert, placing it alongside *Mad Men* as one of the best TV series he's ever seen. The piece explores what makes the Apple TV+ show so extraordinary, framed through the lens of a platform dedicated to celebrating distinctly human creativity.

Read at mbh4h.substack.com
Socialist Party·Sam Casey
Review: Severance created by Dan Erickson

Sam Casey reads *Severance* through an explicitly Marxist lens, arguing that the show's surgical split between "innie" and "outie" selves is a visceral metaphor for workplace alienation and the commodification of labour under capitalism. The review also savours the irony that Apple TV — itself a Lumon-scale tech giant — is bankrolling a show that so pointedly skewers corporate power.

Read at socialistparty.ie
The Harvard Crimson·Hugo C. Chiasson
‘Severance’ Season 2 Review: Three Episodes and 300 Questions | Arts | The Harvard Crimson

Hugo Chiasson's 4.5-star review argues that *Severance* Season 2's first three episodes expand the show's eerie Lumon universe in emotionally richer ways, particularly through deeper exploration of the "outie" lives of Irving, Dylan, and Helly beyond the severed floor. Fans of Season 1's claustrophobic workplace dread will find the Overtime Contingency storyline a satisfying and unsettling escalation—though Chiasson warns the season trades some answers for an even denser tangle of new mysteries.

Read at thecrimson.com