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Severance Talks to Itself
One sublime finale scene cuts through all the season’s noise.
Compared with Severance ’s usual storytelling mode in season two, where any explicit plot point is buried in layers of ambiguity, vagueness, and artful indirection, the conversation between the Marks is immediately, beautifully blunt. It’s a shocking scene, all the more effective and upsetting because of how fuzzily low-rent it feels — Mark’s face is partially cut off on a tiny, high-contrast camcorder screen — compared with Severance ’s typical moody, stark landscapes and queasily clean fluorescent interiors. The showloves to invest buckets of energy into marching bands and ORTBOs, but all of it works best when it’s primarily functioning as the set dressing for this big Socratic argument at the show’s heart, about who exists in the world, who matters, and who is disposable.
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