Content warning for animal death
Contains light spoilers for Severance

In December of 2022, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink Corp. became the subject of a federal investigation by the United States Department of Agriculture. This was in response to the company’s alleged violation of animal welfare laws after the alleged deaths of a number of animals on whom their products were being tested. The company faced further scrutiny during the unveiling of their Blindsight device in 2024. The device consists of a microelectrode implanted into the brain, and is intended to function as a visual prosthetic to enable the reversal of various forms of blindness and ocular impairment. But to medical and scientific experts, the safety and efficacy of such technologies—still hitherto in their infancy—is still yet to be fully confirmed.

2022 was, coincidentally, also the year the first season of the science fiction drama show Severance was released on Apple TV+. Created by Dan Erickson, the show follows a team of four employees, all of whom have undergone a similarly invasive brain procedure to “sever” their identities. This process of bifurcation means that their work selves and off-the-clock selves are rendered two entirely separate identities, with no memories or personality traits transferred between them. On the surface, the show serves as both an indictment of technocapitalism, and a satire of office politics and the so-called “work-life balance”. The four main characters, led by Mark S. (Adam Scott) are employees in the “Macrodata Refinement” department of the nebulous Lumon Corporation. The “innies”, as the employees dub themselves, spend the majority of their work hours sorting through a series of numbers on their desktop computers, categorising them according to the feelings they evoke ("My job is to scroll through this spreadsheet and look for numbers that are scary?" one of the characters remarks incredulously); in the meantime, they work towards end-of-quarter “Waffle Parties” and are subject to draconian “wellness sessions” (which many viewers have theorised are less concerned with “wellness” and more with evaluating any lapses in innie/outie demarcation).

It might seem rudimentary to argue that the biotechnological advancement around which the show is based serves as an allegory for the labour and plight of the alienated worker, a Marxist term which refers to workers’ separation from and lack of ownership over the products their labour produces. One only needs to survey the bleak, retro-futuristic minimalism of the office spaces and hallways of the Lumon Corporation building to feel as though the severed workers are no more than lab rats, scurrying up and down their chutes and ladders while being surveyed from on high. The office spaces in Severance are eerily reminiscent of those found in Jacques Tati’s 1967 satirical comedy film Playtime, in which the clumsy Monsieur Hulot (Tati), wanders around a high-tech version of Paris and becomes inadvertently implicated, Forrest Gump-style, in several different environments and events.

But as the narrative unfolds over its two seasons, and the distinction between the characters’ Innie and Outie selves becomes less distinct, the Macrodata Refinement team (which alongside Scott features Britt Lower, John Turturro and Zach Cherry) is galvanised in their rebellion against their Lumon superiors. While fans and critics alike had argued online that the show may have somewhat lost its way over the course of its second season, its finale, released yesterday, was able to tie up many of the season’s loose narrative threads. Even though the show may appear to have strayed away from making a clear allegorical statement about the nature of work-life balance in the age of late capitalism, the character arcs across both seasons of the show indicate that turning away from one’s own grief and suffering—whether by way of a severed identity or otherwise—is a disavowal of our own humanity. And indeed, Dan Erickson attributes the narrative arc of the second season, which was written during the SAG-AFTRA strike, to his own contemplation of workers’ rights and conditions of employment. As Petey, an exiled Macrodata Refinement employee perfectly expresses in season 1, “You carry the hurt with you. You feel it down there too. You just don’t know what it is”.

The show’s third season, which has already been greenlit, will hopefully see the Macrodata Refinement team successfully stand up to the Lumon conglomerate in what promises to be a solid continuation of one of the most compelling, humanistic shows in recent years.

The first two seasons of Severance are now streaming on Apple TV+.