CRITICS

Kathryn VanArendonk on Severance's second season... Roxana Hadadi on The Last Showgirl... Jasmine Vojdani on Aria Aber's Good Girl.

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All second seasons carry the weight of expectations. In the case of Severance, the burden is especially heavy. Many of the shows that have premiered in the past few years have been excellent, poignant, and ambitious; none of them has had the lightning-bolt sensation of crackling, thrilling creative force that came with Severance’s first season. It had the too-rare science-fiction concept that unravels something otherwise inexpressible about contemporary life: characters who “severed” their work selves from their home selves, intending to create pure separation between those two parts of their lives but actually creating two entirely distinct people. There was the totality of the show’s visual conceit fully united with its thematic preoccupations, an interior corporate landscape that looks otherworldly and bizarre yet more tangible and alive than life in the cold, dark outside. Most enticing, there was a palpable impression of confidence in the storytelling, a calm self-assuredness underneath the superficial oddities. But then there was the long wait for a post-cliffhanger return, an unusually extended hiatus even given the intervening Hollywood strikes. That sense of built-up pressure shapes the season-two experience, more than may be good for a show previously known for its sudden arrival.

Viewers who want answers—who long for definitive, clear-cut explanations, for explicit expositional lore drops and puzzlebox plotting—will be pleased, and disappointed, then intrigued, and very likely flummoxed, on and off throughout the season’s run. But those who show up mostly for the impressionistic