The fifth episode of Severance‘s sophomore season saw Helly R.’s (Britt Lower) highly-anticipated return to the severed floor, where she, Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Mark (Adam Scott) navigated the difficult aftermath of the calamitous ORTBO.
The team held a funeral for Irving (John Turturro), Dylan found the directions to the mysterious black hallway, Mark and Helly had trouble reconnecting after Helena’s betrayal, Milchick (Tramell Tillman) received a hauntingly bad performance review, and Outie Burt (Christopher Walken) invited Outie Irv over for dinner with his husband, Fields…
Spoilers for Severance Season 2, Episode 6 ahead.
Season 2, Episode 6, “Attila,” took relationships in and out of the office to the next level. Severance is many things, but now more than ever before, the series reminded us it’s a love story.
After learning that Mark and Helena “shared vessels” at the ORTBO, Helly and Mark “shared vessels” in the office! Innie Dylan and his outie’s wife Gretchen (Merritt Wever) kissed! Helena pursued Mark’s outie off Lumon property! And Outie Irving joined Outie Burt and his husband Fields (John Noble) for an awkward ham dinner! Relationships aside, Milchick struggled to process his performance review, and after moving forward in his reintegration process, Mark had a seizure that leaves his fate up in the air.
Since Severance is such a meticulously-crafted show, every Friday until the March 21 finale, Decider will be taking a closer look at each episode and highlighting five moments that deserve to be put under the microscope. Whether they’re blink-and-miss-it details or major scenes that need to be talked through in greater depth, we’re here to obsess, hypothesize, and dissect the series alongside you.
From the return of a Season 1 song and a casual mention of a nearly forgotten character to a suspiciously placed pineapple, unexpected concerns about Burt, and more, here are five things you may have missed in Severance Season 2, Episode 6, “Attila.”
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Miss Huang’s Wintertide Fellowship
In Episode 205, we watch Milchick get his terrible performance review, which includes three anonymously reported contentions. It’s heavily implied that the complaints were made by his righthand gal Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), and in Episode 206, it’s clear that Milchick isn’t pleased with her. He calls Miss Huang into his office, says he’ll be addressing the concerns raised in his review, and reminds her in a mildly threatening tone,”You can not graduate from this fellowship until I have deemed you Wintertide material. This will mean using your time well, focusing on your own duties, and eradicating from your essence childish folly.”
At long last, Severance gives us some crucial insight into Miss Huang’s presence at Lumon. With Season 2 theories suggesting everything from her being Gemma’s clone, to a robot, to Mark and Gemma’s daughter (I don’t understand the timeline!), we finally know that she’s working at Lumon because of something called a Wintertide Fellowship. It seems that child labor was the explanation all along!
Those who follow the Lumon Industries LinkedIn page know that around a month ago, the company posted, “Felicitations are in order for this quarter’s Wintertide Fellow: Ms. Huang. Her green outlook is precisely what Lumon aims to cultivate as an organization. She will be invaluable on our severed floor.” As for more details on the fellowship or what happens when Miss Huang graduates, we’ll have to stay tuned!
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Hello, John Noble: Recasting Burt’s Husband, Cecil Fields (Aka Attila)
In Season 2, Episode 6, Severance fans finally meet Outie Burt’s husband, Cecil Fields, played by Lord of the Rings star John Noble. Irving goes over to Burt and Fields’ home for a ham dinner, where the trio talks Lumon, religion, severance, and unprotected workplace sex. We also learn that Burt and Fields call each other “Attila,” the title of the episode and a reference to Attila the Hun, who ruled the Huns from 434 to 453 and murdered his brother — just like Kier killed his brother, Dieter. INTERESTING…
If Fields looks a bit different than the last time you saw him in the Season 1 finale, when Irving watched him and Burt through their window, that’s because actor Arthur Brooks initially portrayed the character. Some fans incorrectly identified Fields as Noble back in Season 1, and in Season 2, Noble was actually cast in the role.
“I was very jealous. Very jealous. Very hurt, you know,” Severance star John Turturro told Decider when asked about welcoming Noble into his scenes with Walken. “Anything with Chris is always delicious and delightful. So it was odd being like, ‘Well, this is the other person.’ It was odd for both of us, I think, because we’re really close outside of work. I love working with Chris, and that’s a special, very long and old relationship. And we’ve done it lots of times. But it was interesting to be in that situation in this show.”
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“Chinese Surfer” Returns
In Season 2, Episode 4, Helena Eagan (disguised as Helly) slept with Innie Mark during the ORTBO. And in Season 2, Episode 6, the Lumon CEO in waiting goes out of her way to pursue Mark’s outie at a Chinese restaurant. (Remember in the Season 2 premiere when Milchick accused Cobel of developing an erotic fixation on Mark and his outie in what might be termed a throuple? Looks like he got the wrong girl!!!) Anyway, Helena spots Mark from across the restaurant, walks over to his booth, and sits down to engage in some sick, twisted, incredibly layered small talk. As the two chat about Lumon, engage in seemingly flirtatious banter, and Helena intentionally mistakes Gemma’s name as Hannah (!!!), a familiar song plays in the background of the restaurant: “Chinese Surfer” by Kava Kon.
For those who need a refresher, the song also appeared in Severance Season 1, Episode 8, “What’s for Dinner?” and helped set the mood for MDR’s coveted AF pre-waffle party egg bar social, where Mark and Helly memorably made goo goo eyes at each other from across the room. And as a reminder, this isn’t the first time Severance has reused a song. “I’ll Be Seeing You” by Billie Holiday appears twice during the show, once during the background of Mark’s date with Alexa (Nikki M. James) in Episode 2, and again when he taped Gemma’s torn photo back together in Episode 7. Interesting…
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The Rich Lady From Baby Camp
Speaking of Season 1, in Episode 206, before Mark has a reintegration-induced seizure and collapses, Devon starts to float a potential plan by him, saying, “I have had an idea that is a little dumber. Do you remember the rich lady from baby camp? The one that I kind of had a crush on? I was thinking —”
While she’s unable to finish her thought, “the rich lady from baby camp” is Gabby Arteta, the wife of the pro-Lumon senator we met in Season 1. We learned that Gabby received the severance procedure so her outie could avoid remembering the pain of childbirth, and she gave birth in the same cabins that Devon did. So perhaps Gabby or the cabins will reappear again in Season 2 if Devon ever gets the chance to put her plan into motion…
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Is Burt Goodman…A Badman?
And now, perhaps the most troubling takeaway from Severance Season 2, Episode 6: Is Burt Goodman actually Burt Badman?!
Burt inviting Irving over to dinner with his husband Fields was weird, but Irving did knock on their door screaming his name, so it made sense the couple was curious — especially after Burt was fired for having “an unsanctioned erotic entanglement” with a co-worker. I expected the dinner to be slightly awkward, but I didn’t expect to leave Burt’s house with a pit in my stomach and the nagging feeling that he might not be the Good man we thought he was.
Burt low-key stalking Irving in his car whenever he went to the phone booth at night didn’t feel great. But when he laid on that Christopher Walken charm, I let the creepiness of it all slide. At several points throughout the night, however, Severance made me suspicious of Burt, starting with the pineapple!!!! in his kitchen, perfectly positioned behind Fields and Irving as they shook hands.
The tropical fruit first popped up in the Season 2 premiere’s “Lumon Is Listening” video, when Keanu Reeves — I mean the Lumon administrative building — told MDR that “pineapple bobbing” was one of their exciting new Severance Reform incentives. In Season 2, Episode 2, Milchick showed up to Mark’s house in hopes of convincing him to return to work post-Overtime Contingency chaos. But because he has impeccable manners, he didn’t come empty-handed. He brought a Lumon fruit basket, featuring a pineapple as the star of the show. Milchick also brought pineapple gift baskets to Dylan and Irving’s outies to entice them to return to work after he fired them. And before the episode ended, Ms. Cobel had a heated conversation with Mark outside their homes and dropped the curious p-word, too.
Hungry for answers, I asked Severance creator/writer/EP Dan Erickson for the tea, or the pineapple juice, if you will. His response? “There’s always a deeper significance.” You can read Decider’s deep dive into the pineapple concerns here, but could the conveniently placed pineapple in Episode 206 mean that Lumon has recently paid Burt a visit?!
On top of my tropical fruit terror, there’s the fact that Burt was “a scoundrel” in his younger days and admittedly thought he was going to hell. There’s the fact that Fields confidently claimed Burt had been working for Lumon 20 years prior, before the severance procedure exited. There’s the fact that Mr. Drummond calmly let himself into Irving’s apartment to snoop around during his dinner with Burt, as if someone made him aware that Irving would be preoccupied at that time. And there’s the menacing glare that Burt shot Irving after he left his house, which was emphasized by Severance‘s thrilling end credits song, Ella Fitzgerald’s “Sunshine Of Your Love.”
When asked how worried Burving fans should be after Episode 6’s ending, John Turturro told Decider, “I can’t really talk about it. You’ll discover it when you discover it. We’ll see what happens with them.” *screams* Dan Erickson, did you not read my passionate plea to “Protect Burt And Irving At All Costs”?!
BONUS: Dylan’s Wife Is An Award-Winning Dispatcher
Since Severance is so detailed, it’s hard difficult to narrow this list down to just five things you may have missed, so every so often you’ll get a BONUS or two as a fun Decider perk! As Milchick said when he delivered a fruit basket to Mark’s door in Season 2, Episode 2, consider it “compliments of the company!” We got a glimpse of Gretchen’s uniform in Episode 3, suggesting she was an EMS, police department, or fire department first responder. But in Episode 6, we learn that she once won Dispatcher of the Month!
New episodes of Severance Season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.
The post ‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 6: 5 Things You May Have Missed, From John Noble As Fields To “Chinese Surfer” appeared first on Decider.
