‘Severance’ Aftershow: Adam Scott & Ben Stiller on Mark’s Frantic Search for Ms. Casey (VIDEO)

[Warning: The below and video above contain MAJOR spoilers for Severance Season 2 Episode 1, “Hello, Ms. Cobel.”]

Severance is back and hitting the ground running in its Season 2 premiere, “Hello, Ms. Cobel,” which picks up in Lumon’s offices, moments after Mark’s (Adam Scott) innie is reactivated following Season 1’s fateful revelation.

As he zooms through the halls with the single goal of finding Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) in mind, Mark is startled to find the wellness center has been abandoned with no evidence of the woman he learned was his outie’s wife who was presumed to be dead. During Mark’s wandering of the halls, a mysterious figure appears behind him in the periphery, but mysteries won’t be solved so quickly as the work day proceeds.

When entering the MDR (Macrodata Refinement) space, Mark meets a new set of coworkers moments before Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) welcomes him back. According to the new Severed floor supervisor Mr. Milchick, Mark and his former coworkers had led a rebellion known as the Macrodat Uprising, which supposedly began five months prior.

He tells Mark that former Severed supervisor Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) had been dismissed after it was believed she had developed an erotic fixation on Mark’s innie and outie. Of course, viewers from Season 1 will recall that Ms. Cobel lived next door to outie Mark as Mrs. Selvig, but operated as innie Mark’s unsevered boss at Lumon Industries during the day.

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Presumably, Milchick’s explanation for Harmony’s absence is a lie, but when it comes to Lumon, it’s hard to know who to trust. In the meantime, Mark tries to understand his former team’s absence, seeking an explanation for their apparent refusal to return to their roles. Stuck with three new coworkers (played by Alia Shawkat, Stefano Carannante, and Bob Balaban), Mark tries sabotaging their roles and eventually reunites with his innie pals and colleagues, Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irv (John Turturro).

Mark informs the team of what he knows, and they end up sitting through a presentation reiterating the story beats that Mr. Milchick had relayed to Mark upon his initial return. Filling his friends in, Mark explains that Ms. Casey is his outie’s wife, but that she is nowhere to be found on the Severed floor.

This prompts a mostly collective desire to help Mark, at least initially. Irv is heartbroken following the revelation that his work love Burt’s (Christopher Walken) outie is in a relationship, and he attempts to leave the Severed floor for good but Dylan convinces him not to. Meanwhile, Dylan is presented with a unique perk by Mr. Milchick, who offers apologies for their last interaction, and shows off plans for a family visitation suite where innie Dylan could have the chance to connect with his outie’s family. The only rule? Dylan can’t tell anyone.

With Irv and Dylan somewhat distracted, Mark’s desire to find Ms. Casey falls on Helly, but only time will tell if they’re able to accomplish the task. For now, it appears to be business as usual within Lumon’s MDR.

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“Early on we were having a conversation and Ben was throwing questions out there [like], ‘What is the first thing Mark would do when faced with this brand new explosive information?’ [And we] thought he would just run and try to find Ms. Casey and tell her to find out if she knows anything. Maybe he doesn’t even know exactly what he would do, but his gut is he just needs to find her,” Scott tells TV Insider as part of our series, iLUMONations: A Severance Aftershow.

As Mark readjusts to his innie work life and moves through the first episode, Scott notes, “He has to figure out what and how he can do anything from down [in] MDR. Does his outie know this information? If not, how does he get the information to him? Can he find Ms. Casey? And once he does, what does he do with her?”

“If there’s any justice in the world, he can get her out of here, but who knows how to do that? And I think that his gut need is to have his team back to have Helly and Dylan and Irv back because these are the people he loves and trusts more than anyone else,” Scott continues.

Ben Stiller, who serves as executive producer and director of the series, was eager to jump back in with these questions and Mark’s confusion, noting, “That was a fun collaboration with [showrunner] Dan [Erickson], of course, and with Adam and the whole cast and crew of just diving back in. And it was fun to find these little moments within the humor within the episode and kind of reset [and] get the band back together by the end of the episode and give a little hint of what’s coming at the very end.”

For Stiller, one of the most exciting aspects of the premiere was “doing the stop motion film. For me, [it] was a dream come true.” As viewers see in the episode, Mark and his fellow original colleagues are presented with a stop motion video that explains the Macrodat Uprising.

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As Stiller puts it, “Growing up with these Rankin Bass Christmas specials… it was really fun to do that.”

“I remember Ben telling me about his idea for the stop motion… video that’s made for the MDR folks. And I just couldn’t believe it and couldn’t wait to see it,” Scott chimes in. According to Stiller, when Season 2 went back into production, the stop motion video was “one of the first things we made.”

Meanwhile, of the mysteries set forth in the premiere, showrunner Erickson acknowledges that there was a mystery individual in the background as Mark ran around the hallways of Lumon’s severed floor upon his return. The question is, will we learn who they are? “That was just me. I just wandered into frame and Ben yelled and I left,” Erickson teases, before adding, “No, yeah, I think everything on the show is something to clock. I don’t want to say for sure whether we will or will not get the full story behind that mysterious specter of a person, but keep an eye on it.”

Consider our eyes peeled. Watch the Severance aftershow video, above, for more from Scott and Stiller, and stay tuned for what’s in store as Season 2 continues to unfold. And let us know your theories about the latest episode in the comments, below.

Severance, Fridays, Apple TV+