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Severance's Season One Trope Mastery, Part One

Before I share my tropes obsessions re: Severance, just a heads up that next week my Trope Con, A Virtual Event April 5-6, 2025 will open for registration. It’s a two day event with presentations about tropes, genres and trends. I’ll share more info soon!

Now, back to beloved Apple TV’s Severance!

I was obsessed with Severance’s first season and like many others have waited for season two with mixture of anxiety and dread. This is on brand for Severance as that is the emotion the Lumon Corporation fosters. As the second season unfolds deliciously, it’s a good time for me to recap my thoughts on the previous season.

Severance uses tropes but twists them while adding in flawed characters and detailed worldbuilding. Below, I identified many tropes in season one. They provide hooks to get audiences into the story. Next week, I’ll discuss more about how the tropes are used. But right now, let’s get a sense of how much tropey goodness is packed in Severance.

Severance Trope Synopsis, Season One, Apple TV.

Widower, tortured hero Mark Scout is overwhelmed from his wife’s death (scar), so he elects to be severed—a surgical procedure that permanently separates his memories (amnesia) into two categories—his work life versus his private life (twins). This is performed by the company Lumon, so he can work on the severed floor (with other severed employees). A severed person’s memory transitions during the elevator ride to/from the severed floor (road trip). Mark’s “Outtie” (life outside his work) is as a loner despite his sister’s (family) attempts to encourage him to socialize.

Meanwhile, Mark’s work self or (his “Innie” identity) has no recollection of his life outside of work (fish out of water, victims, stranded) and no past memories (amnesia). He works (profession) at the secretive Lumen Corporation’s Macrodata Data Refinement (MDR) (forced proximity) with three other employees (victims) and their supervisors, Mr. Melchek and Ms. Cobel (antagonist, boss).

As the story opens, Mark is promoted (boss) because MDR colleague #4, Petey (best friend, boss) has suddenly left Lumen Corp. Mark, Irving, and Dylan try to help their new replacement #4 colleague, Helly, settle into their division. However, she arrives freshly severed and fighting her procedure (fish out of water), finding her memory loss intolerable (amnesia). As her boss, Mark tries to protect her against running afoul of the Lumen rules with poor results. Helly’s hidden identity/across the tracks/billionaire/secret heir tropes as the Lumen Company CEO’s daughter are massive end-of-season reveals but little clues are planted along the way that she’s not a regular employee. Later, Helly’s “Innie” learns that her “Outtie” has chosen severance to further her family’s business and political goals.

Mark’s two non-severed bosses, Mr. Milchek and Ms. Cobel, struggle to keep Mark S’s increasingly unfocused division on meeting their quarterly goals (ticking time bomb). The team must capture and bin sets of numbers (bet wager) to clean the files before the quarter’s end, but they don’t know (secret) what the numbers refer to or represent (MacGuffin). The workers are kept in line by “visiting the breakroom”, a confined space where they (victims) must repeat the same phrase hundreds of times and receive physical punishment (violence).

Mark’s severed floor best friend, Petey (who is on the run from Lumen), stalks him outside of work much to Mark’s confusion. He has no memory of Petey outside of work because of severance. Petey explains who he is and what he’s investigating—namely the secretive work of the MDR division (MacGuffin). Petey has also undergone reintegration as a renegade--- the nature of reversing the severed procedure. He asks Mark for help before he dies because he suspects Lumen Corp (antagonist) is lying to them.

As the story progresses, Mark’s “Outtie” (protagonist in peril) begins to investigate the clues Petey has left behind (quest). The clues lead Mark to witness the Lumen Security Chief’s death by the surgeon who completes all the severance procedures (boss, secret, violence).

Meanwhile, back at Lumen, the team visits another department, Operations & Development (O&D), at the urging of the department head, Burt. He develops a friendship (forbidden love) with Irving in Mark’s division.

Information sharing is formally discouraged between Lumen departments and treated harshly by the dreaded breakroom visits. Lumen’s founder Kier Egan developed a strict set of principles for the employees to follow (guardian). There are rules and punishments for every small infraction along with a significant mistrust between departments.

Meanwhile, down on the severed floor in MDR things are changing (forced proximity, workplace). Helly tries to commit suicide (violence) to escape being severed but she is unsuccessful. Melchek and Cobel struggle to get Mark’s department back under Lumen control and fail despite using the breakroom (violence). Mark has found a map left by Petey of the severed floor that the team starts to investigate, thinking their bosses are unaware.

A self help guide written by Mark’s brother in law, is stolen from the Mark’s Outtie residence and makes its way by accident to the MDR members. Mark’s Outtie mocks his brother in law’s new age philosophy but Innie Mark is fascinated by ideas other than those touted by Lumen. The team members take turns reading the book.

Team member Irving has the most startling journey from handbook quoting sycophant to rejecting Keir Egan’s rules to search for the newly retired Burt. Team member Dylan, who is the reigning champ of MDR quotas, treats his severance with ambivalence. But when a stolen piece of Lumen property comes to Milchek’s attention, the boss has no choice but to utilize the “overtime contingency” (secret, fake relationship, hidden identity)—bringing Dylan’s “Innie” identity to the surface in his “Outtie” home setting. In the process, Dylan has a brief interaction with his young son (family) before Milchek revokes his “Innie” identity after he has retrieved the information.

The result is Dylan’s “Innie” now has a scrap of a memory of his “Outtie” life (secret). This information tortures him so much that he attacks Melchek (violence). And he shares the overtime contingency information with his three colleagues (secret) so that they hatch a plan to wake their “Innie” identities in their “Outtie” bodies one evening (hidden identities).

Despite increasingly desperate attempts to keep Mark’s division under control, the MDR team (ugly duckling) is determined to break out of their “Innie” Severed floor prison while appearing to follow company protocols (red herrings, fake relationship).

Mark’s unaware that his sympathetic next-door neighbor, Mrs. Selvig, is also his mercurial Lumen boss, Ms. Cobel (hidden identity). She is spying on (stalking) him to track the effects of his severance procedure and his grief (secrets). Mrs. Selvig also befriends Mark’s sister as a nanny (domestic servant, fake relationship, hidden identity) to gain more information about Mark.

Like any large organization, the Lumen Corporation is full of politics. The tension between Ms. Coble, Natalie (the board’s human conduit), and the mysterious board continues to increase over the season. When we learn Helly’s “Outtie” identity and it makes much more sense why the politics pressure spikes.

The blackmail trope is used several times with Dylan telling Melchek that he’ll tell Cobel about his interrupted sleep visit. Also, when Ms. Cobel tells Helly R that if she goes onstage and tells the truth about being severed, she will inflict pain on her other team members at the season finale.

Every day after Mark and the other MDR members take the elevator away from the severed floor, they return to their “Outtie” lives (return to hometown).

Working together, the team activates their “Innie” identities during their “Outtie” evening (mistaken identity, redemption) trying to get their questions answered. Helly realizes her identity as Lumon’s heir and she prepares to speak to a crowd of political billionaire investors about her “Innie” experience when everyone else believes she is still her “Outtie” self; Helly hopes to tank Lumen Corp (revenge).

Mark’s dead wife Gemma and Ms. Casey, the wellness resource director at Lumen, are one in the same (amnesia, hidden identity, reunion). Mark’s wife did not die in a car accident (red herring, fake relationship) as he thought; she’s been kidnapped by Lumen. Larger questions await such as the kiss between “Innie” Helly and “Innie” Mark.

In the final scenes, their “Innie” identities are woken up (ugly duckling, quest/journey) in their “Outtie” bodies (fish out of water, amnesia) at critical moments. Three things are happening at once. Helly R is about to tell the Lumen executives the truth about the severance procedure onstage at a fundraiser. Mark is at a party with his sister’s family and Mrs. Cobel/Ms. Selvig is there when Mark sees a picture of his deceased wife. He recognizes her as the human relations expert, Ms. Casey, at Lumen. He rushes out to his sister shouting “She is alive!”. Irving knocks at the door of Burt’s home as Melchek finally bursts in the room and dislodges Dylan from employing the Overtime Contingency.

Join me next week as I discuss how these tropes are used. It is exciting to see how they are layered and pulled together to create such a thrilling storyline.

What additional tropes do you see? Are you surprised to see certain tropes? If so, which ones?

If you have already watched Season one, Season Two releases new episodes every Friday on Apple TV).