Summary
Last week’s second season premiere ofApple TV+’s acclaimed seriesSeverancewas full of the kind of unsettling, surprising, and unexpected moments that make the show so fun to watch and wonder about. After a three-year absence from streaming, creator Dan Erickson and director Ben Stiller knew they couldn’t waste any time bringing viewers back into the series' carefully crafted sci-fi workplace dystopia, especially after themajor shake-up of the first season finale.
The premiere introduced a number of strange new happenings on its way to getting the old Macrodata Refinement band back together, from new innies to anew deputy manager, Miss Huang, who appears to be an actual child. But one scene managed to stand out as probably the most memorable: the newly promoted Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) shows the MDR team an animated instructional video titled"Lumon is Listening.“Narrated by an uncredited Keanu Reeves as the voice of the Lumon building, the video lays out a new era of life at Lumon. But as witheverything to do with Lumon, nothing is as it seems. The cute and cuddly cartoon also reveals something much more sinister.
“Lumon is Listening” Has a Double Meaning
On the surface, “Lumon is Listening” is clearly meant to make the innies feel like they have a voice at the company, and convince them that Lumon is willing to hear their concerns and improve their working experience. The video lays out how company policies have changed sinceMark S. (Adam Scott)and his colleagues used the “Overtime Contingency” toawaken their innies on the outsideand spill the beans about severance to the world. According to the video, the event has come to be known as the “Macrodat Uprising,” and the four innies are considered heroes for their actions.
But of course, the “bounteous reforms” the video references really only seem to amount to new snack options and more weird perks like “hall passes” and “pineapple bobbing,” rather than any meaningful change to the severed employees' working lives. With this fake nod to corporate accountability, Lumon seems to be trying to flatter the innies into submission, making them believe their actions had a positive outcome while not really changing anything.
But “Lumon is Listening” doesn’t just imply that the company is willing to listen to its employees' concerns. It also makes clear that Lumon can see and hear everything its innies do. When depicting the so-called “Macrodat Uprising,” the video uses sound bites from the first season as the innies formed their rebellion, likeIrving’s (John Turturro)line “let’s burn this place to the ground,” and Mark’s appeal to share knowledge with Optics and Design.
It’s clear that the innies are under constant surveillance, even as their handlers struggle to keep them on task. Mark and his fellow innies knew they were being watched the whole time, but these direct recordings imply that not only did Lumon know what they were up to, but they were willing to let their rebellion go forward. Milchick’s line about how the innies should be able to meet without having to huddle in a supply closet implies that they were being surveilled even when they thought they were safe.
Why Lumon Let the Rebellion Happen
If Lumon knew about the rebellion before it happened, the question then becomes: why did they let the innies go through with it? They could have easily quashed their plans bycanceling Dylan’s waffle partyor disabling the Overtime Contingency. Yet, the company’s mysterious board may have decided it was more to their advantage to let the rebellion happen. Perhaps they wanted to give the innies the false sense that they accomplished something, when in reality they didn’t.
As of now, the audience can’t be sure what kind ofimpact the “Macrodat Uprising” hadon the outside world, if it had any at all. The premiere took place squarely within the boundaries of the severed floor, never showing even a glimpse of life on the outside. The only information the show has given about the uprising has been from within Lumon itself. Milchick holds up a newspaper with a headline about the innie whistleblowers, but there’s no way to know at this point if that paper was real or just a prop to placate Mark.
It’s clear that Lumon did listen to what the innies had to say during their foray into the outside world, but this only served to show them what they needed to do in order to maintain control. The innies want autonomy and basic personhood, so Lumon is going to do whatever it can to make it appear as though it is willing to give that to them. If Mark and his fellow innies are going to try again to take Lumon down, they’re going to have to find a new way to do it. Because, after all, Lumon is Listening.
