Severance Season 2: What Really Happened During Mark’s Lost Day?

With its first two episodes, Season 2 of Severance has shattered fans’ expectations by showing how far-reaching Lumon truly is. In the first episode, we follow the Innie version of Mark (Adam Scott) as he wakes up on the severed floor and learns five months have passed since the Macrodata Refinement uprising. Episode 2, however, reveals there has been only a couple of days in the outside world, and Lumon is just doing what it does best and manipulating Innies so they keep working. By overlapping both episodes, we can piece together the Severance timeline and learn when (and why) Outie-Mark decided to return to Lumon. There’s just one tiny issue: Outie-Mark is entirely unaccounted for for 24 hours.

In the first episode of Season 2, we watch as Innie-Mark struggles with the fact that he has been separated from his former colleagues and forced to return to Macrodata Management. On the third day of work, he rebels, racing to Mr. Milchick’s (Tramell Tillman) office and calling the board. Innie-Mark demands his team back, a wish eventually granted due to his importance for Lumon and the “Cold Harbor” file. However, on that third day, Mr. Milchick pushes him into the elevator after his lonely mutiny, taking his badge and threatening to fire him for good.

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Episode 2 shows the same scene from Outie-Mark’s perspective. At exactly 9:03 a.m., he arrives at work and greets the friendly guard posted by the elevator, Judd (Mark Kenneth Smaltz). At 9:15, Outie-Mark emerges from the elevator, wishing good evening to a perplexed Judd. From the scene, it’s evident that Outie-Mark thinks he has finished a whole day of work and that Judd was not warned about Mark returning so soon from the elevator. However, Severance never addresses the time gap. The very next scene is Mark returning to work the next day, around 9 a.m. So, what happened during these lost hours?

What Happened to Outie-Mark for the Missing 24 Hours?

Given Severance’s disposition to play with viewers’ perception and the flow of events, the show may retrace Outie-Mark’s unaccounted time to better explain his motivations. The reintegration subplot remains largely unexplored since the first season, and we still don’t know if or when Dr. Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) ever contacted Mark after their fateful encounter at the university. There is a chance Outie-Mark is working on some level against Lumon, hoping to discover what’s happening at the severed floor.

The most straightforward explanation, though, is that Mark found a note telling him a work accident has forced his Innie to vacate the premises. Lumon often lies to Outies about what happens at the severed floor to keep the appearance of a functional company, and they wouldn’t hesitate to deceive Mark again. 

Nevertheless, this option comes with some drawbacks. First, Outie-Mark no longer has his badge, so he had to contact someone from the Administration before returning to work the next day. Then, Mr. Milchick wanted to fire Innie-Mark, which is why he took his badge. That indicates no safeguards were in place to explain the situation to Outie-Mark. Consequently, some awkward conversation must have happened before Mark returned to work the following day. The fact that it happened out of frame is likely important for the plot.

There are no coincidences with Severance, as the series’ creative team has shown how even sound cues can reveal the truth about key characters. The only thing to do now is keep our eyes peeled to learn more about what happened with Mark on his missing day.

New episodes of Severance come to Apple TV+ every Friday.