“Severance” was a better show in its first season. But with its dystopian 10-minutes-in-the-future view of a big, faceless corporation using cutting-edge technology to control its employees, it’s a timelier, more relevant and oddly unsettling one in its second-season return.
Chalk that up in part to the long lapse between seasons, as the Apple TV+ show premiered in 2022 and didn’t return until January of this year, steadily building audience toward last week’s season finale.
In between, the underlying premise has felt increasingly urgent and resonant in Hollywood and across media, as the series premiered before the 2023 strikes by writers and actors that hobbled the entertainment industry — where technology, and specifically the use of AI, was among the sticking points — and returned to find lots of lingering apprehension about artificial intelligence being used to put humans out to pasture.