Christmas came early this year, with Apple TV gifting fans a sneak peak at the first eight minutes of Severance Season 2, set to premiere on the 2025 TV Schedule in January. The entirety of this preview takes place on the severed floor of Lumon, but with noticeable differences. Season 2 hopefully will shed light on the many cliffhangers fans were left with after the Season 1 finale... although this surprise drop seems to be leaving more questions than answers. One key moment in particular keeps nagging my mind and it has to do with Ms. Casey.
Why Does The Wellness Room Look Like That?
The first eight minutes of Season 2 are not lacking in tension. Our first image is of Mark waking up at work on the severed floor. However, his innie wastes no time taking off in search of one thing that becomes clear very quickly.
He’s searching for Ms. Casey, the wellness counselor, who was revealed to be his outie’s wife Gemma towards the end of Season 1. Mark S. is frantically searching for this woman because his innie learns at the end of Season 1 that Gemma died in a car crash… or did she?
When Mark S. reaches the wellness room in this sneak peak, we are hoping to find answers there just as much as he is. Unfortunately, the space has been altered so there is nothing in the waiting room besides the two green couches. All the artwork is missing from the walls, and all other decor is also absent. As for the wellness rooms where Ms. Casey would conduct her sessions... well, they don’t exist anymore. In fact, the space where the doors were has been filled in with drywall.
The rest of the preview comes with plenty more shocking details. First off, Mark’s team has been replaced with three new Macro Data Refiners making their debut. We also find out five months has passed since Mark S., Helly R., Irving B., and Dylan G. flipped the Overtime Protocol switch, allowing their Innies to blow the whistle about the ongoings within Lumon’s severed floor. The result has been what Milchick calls “severance reform.”
But I’m still stuck on the wellness office though. If the rest of Mark S.’s team was replaced, why wasn’t Ms. Casey? If you are going through a process of reform, it really doesn’t make sense to get rid of the one feature that was beneficial to your employees’ mental well-being. It wouldn’t make sense to get rid of that space, much less just empty the room while still leaving it eerily recognizable. It’s almost like they are trying to send a message to Mark.
This leads me to wonder about Ms. Casey’s real role on the severed floor, whether she was aware of it or not. Clearly, she was not just there to serve as a therapist of sorts. Not only that, but what has happened to her the last five months?
What Really Happened to Ms. Casey/Gemma?
Like myself, many other fans have speculated for a while that Lumon is experimenting with Ms. Casey. Some Severance theories even say that Gemma really did die, and Ms. Casey is a clone of Mark’s wife. This theory is rooted in the fact that Ms. Casey never leaves Lumon. Instead of going home after her work, she returns to the ominous “testing floor.”
The mystery surrounding Ms. Casey and Gemma is one we hope is answered in Season 2. There is no doubt in my mind that Mrs. Selvig/Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) is involved. She was the one to send him to Ms. Casey in the first place, always watching carefully via cameras, while also inserting herself into his outtie’s life as his neighbor. I worry for Gemma's fate, though, as the Season 2 trailer features the Boyhood actress' voice saying "Mark, there'll be no honeymoon ending for you."
In the new clip, Milchick chalks up Cobel’s job termination and involvement in Mark’s personal life to an erotic obsession. The new manager also tells Mark that once news broke of the dark events happening to Lumon’s severed workers, the rest of his MDR team refused to return to work, showing Mark S. a newspaper featuring the whistleblower news as evidence. Of course, half the contents of the article are blacked out, meaning one very unsurprising conclusion: Lumon is still lying and hiding things. Shocker!
Needless to say, I don’t believe a word Milchick says in the first eight minutes of the long-awaited new season. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole whistleblower celebration and severance reform is just a ruse, another story to put the severance workers at ease and throw them off pursuing the truth.
If the Season 2 trailer is any indication, it won’t make much of a difference. However, the only way to find out for certain will be to stream the new season January 17th with an Apple TV+ subscription.
