How Did Severance Season 1 End? Here’s Everything Your Outie Needs to Remember About Those Shocking Cliffhangers Before Watching Season 2

Warning: Severance pay spoilers for the first season!

Severance payThe first season ended with many unanswered questions.

The critically acclaimed psychological office thriller — created by Ben Stiller and featuring an all-star cast led by Parks and recreation‘ Adam Scott — received 14 Emmy nominations for its first season. The series, which returned for a second season on January 17, is named after the fictional severance process in which Lumon employees are implanted with a chip to separate their work selves from their real selves.

IN Severance payinnies and outies refer to the employee’s on-the-job self and off-the-job self, both of whom know nothing of the other’s lives despite occupying the same body. While many employees get a procedure to forget about their problems outside of work, it turns out that they have no freedom when they work at Lumon and are regularly punished, wondering how they go out, and how miserable they come in.

Scott leads the cast in the role of grieving Mark Scout, who decides to undergo an abortion so that he can forget the pain of losing his wife eight hours a day, five days a week. But by the end of the first season, he and his co-workers realize that the termination process is not easy and that there may be more sinister motives behind Lumon.

So how is it Severance pay the end of the first season? Read on to learn more about the ultimate ending and how it will affect season two.

How is it Severance pay the end of the first season?

Adam Scott as Mark in ‘Severance’.

Atsushi Nishijima/Apple TV+

After Dylan (Zach Cherry) learns that his friend has a child, and Hellyne (Britt Lower) refuses her friend’s frequent attempts to quit, they with Mark and Irving (John Turturro) — their co-workers on cleaning macro data — make a plan to use their outings as their innies.

As they claim the bodies of their loved ones, the Innies plan to let the people know that they are being held hostage in Lumon, that they are often punished, and that they are miserable at work.

When Dylan triggers an unexpected overtime, Irving, Helly and Mark have about an hour to rest in the outside world. Mark wakes up at his sister’s house during her husband Ricken’s book launch. In one of the episode’s biggest twists, he learns that a woman from work named Mrs. Casey is actually his neighbor’s wife Gemma, who he assumes is dead.

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When Helly wakes up, she learns that she is Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Eagan — who is a descendant of founder Kier Eagan — and that she will be giving a farewell speech at the ceremony. The news is even more of a shock because her innie, Helly, has been miserable at work and even tried to quit and die by suicide.

When Irving’s innie wakes up, he learns that he has a past in the US Navy and lives in an apartment with his dog, Radar. He is also surrounded by his own images of Lumon’s hallway on the test floor, hinting that his subconscious still remembers parts of his innie’s life.

As their supervisor Milchick (Tramell Tillman) enters the security room to stop Dylan, Mark’s innie yells “she’s alive”, referring to Gemma, Helena tells the packed room that dismissal is prison, and Irving knocks on his co-worker/lover of the Burts (Christopher Walken) door. Milchick successfully stops Dylan as Mark, Helly, and Irving exit the game again and the season ends in suspense.

Stiller explained Rolling Stone in 2022 why they decided to leave the viewers on the escarpment.

“Originally we were going to go further and answer more questions, but I felt very strongly that there’s something about the mystery of the show that you want to live in. It’s a balance of answering enough questions, but not too many,” he said. “We decided on this because it was, in a way, the most emotionally resonant idea.”

Why did Mark, Irving, Dylan and Helly make a plan to quit their jobs?

Adam Scott as Mark and Britt Lower as Helly in 'Severance'.

Adam Scott as Mark and Britt Lower as Helly in ‘Severance’.

Apple TV+

Mark, Irving, Dylan and Helly planned to explore the outside world as they felt trapped at work sorting numbers all day without having any idea what the data meant.

They were often punished by being sent to the break room, where they had to repeat the same excuse over and over again. Mark is also often bullied by his boss, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), and sent to the break room.

Irving’s innie loves the company, but he too becomes suspicious and wants to carry out his associates’ plan to tell the outside world about Lumon after his lover, Burt, is forced into retirement. Dylan wants to help with the plan after he finds out his girlfriend is having a baby.

For her part, Helly has the most challenges adjusting to the breakup as she tries to quit from the start, and her many, even violent, demands to resign are rebuffed by her successor, Lumon, who tells her she’s not a real person.

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Lower said Vogue 2025 that she thinks her character is “essentially captured by the same company in both circumstances, but in different ways.”

“I started the process of differentiating the two characters with what was the same—which is that both strong wills are parts of this person,” she said. “Both are fiercely loyal. They also share the same body, and that body carries the trauma and joy they both experience inside and out.”

How did the insides get into the bodies of their outsiders?

Adam Scott as Mark in 'Severance'.

Adam Scott as Mark in ‘Severance’. Apple TV+.

Earlier in the season, Milchick awakens Dylan’s innie in the outside world to find out where he hid the Optics and Design ideographic card while he was at work. Milchick explains to Dylan that Lumon can wake an innie employee off duty when needed using a process called “overtime”.

However, Dylan’s child, whose existence was unknown to his innie, unexpectedly runs into the room. When Dylan next wakes up, he’s frantic at work because he has a child he may never meet, prompting him to tell his co-workers about the overtime.

A plan to briefly escape their innie lives is set in motion after Mark’s friend receives the key card of the ex-security chief from Lumon’s ex-employee, Reghabi. A former company scientist tries to help Mark’s beloved co-worker Petey reverse the termination process – called reintegration – and encourages Mark’s friend to bring the card to work so his innie can use it.

When Dylan earns a waffle party for being the refiner of the quarter, he stays after work and sneaks into the security room using a key card to use overtime, waking up Mark, Helly and Irving as their assistants in the outside world. .

Where did the new relationship between Mark and Helly end?

Adam Scott as Mark, Zach Cherry as Dylan, John Turturro as Irving and Britt Lower Helly in 'Severance'.

Adam Scott as Mark, Zach Cherry as Dylan, John Turturro as Irving and Britt Lower Helly in ‘Severance’.

Apple TV+

Despite Mark and Helly’s first interaction resulting in her hitting him with a paper clip, the two eventually develop a budding romance. While Mark is Hellyn’s boss and at first has to stop her from running away, she comes to appreciate that he genuinely tries to help her enjoy her job.

Hellyn’s anger at being forced to stay on the job helps radicalize Mark and makes him realize that not all is as it seems at Lumon. The two go for a walk to find out more about the company and consequently begin to develop chemistry.

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Before the four co-workers execute their escape plan, Mark and Helly realize they may never have an assistant at work again, so she runs out of the elevator to kiss him. However, soon after their first kiss, Mark’s innie learns that Lumon’s flooring consultant, Mrs. Casey, is actually his partner’s supposedly dead wife, Gemma.

“For me, the main line in this series has always been about Mark trying to grieve his wife. But then we found out his wife was alive,” Stiller said Vanity Fair 2024. “At the same time, I think we’ve kind of developed a relationship with Innie Mark and Helly internally that feels like it’s going somewhere. So there’s a natural tension that grows between the interests of Outie Mark and the interests of Innie Mark.”

What did the questions do Severance pay season 1 leave unanswered?

Patricia Arquette as Harmony Cobel in 'Severance'.

Patricia Arquette as Harmony Cobel in ‘Severance’.

Apple TV+

After severance pay’season 1 finale cliffhanger, fans had a lot of questions. When Mark woke up in his sister’s home, he was talking to Cobel, his menacing boss, who was outwardly posing as his seemingly nondescript neighbor, Mrs. Selvig.

After realizing that Mark’s innie has taken over, she drives to try to stop Helly’s innie from speaking at the break-up ceremony. The Season 2 trailer reveals that Cobel has been fired but is still involved in the story as Mark’s friend learns the truth about her dual identity.

Helly is horrified when she wakes up at the breakup gala to find out that not only is Eagan, but she’s about to become the face of the breakup. At the end of the first season, after Helly spoke about the prison being a procedure, it is not clear what consequences she will face.

Around the same time as Helly’s rousing speech, Irving knocks on Burt’s door. Before he can answer, the innies and outies switch. Season 2 could show the interaction of two seemingly strangers who shared a romance on the inside.

Perhaps the biggest question from Severance pay season 1 is why Mrs. Casey/Gemma is alive in Lumon but is considered dead to the outside world. One possible clue is that when Ms. Casey is fired, Milchick says she will be sent back to the test pod, suggesting she may have been kept at Lumon the whole time.

Mark’s sister Devon also meets a woman at the maternity ward, who later has no memory of meeting her when they meet in the park. Devon investigates her and discovers that her husband is a severance senator, indicating that the proceedings may extend beyond the workplace more than anyone knows.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education

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