This stunner of a Severance episode, “Woe’s Hollow,” speaks for itself, but let’s just say that nothing will be the same from here on in. The team is sent to the woods on a team building exercise, where secrets are revealed leading to a shocking ending no one will see coming…
Team Building | The episode begins with Irving (John Turturro) waking up in the middle of a frozen lake on a very snowy day. He sees Mark (Adam Scott) standing at the top of the cliff overlooking the lake and climbs up the path, where he meets Helly (Britt Lower) halfway up. They meet at the top of the cliff, where Dylan (Zach Cherry) is there, as well as a TV set on wheels a few feet away. The four of them head to the TV and it triggers a video of Milchick (Tramell Tillman), who informs them that over the next two days, they will search the forest for the Eagan family’s hidden fourth text as part of a group building exercise. The next thing they see is an identical copy of Mark a few feet away pointing into the forest.
After trekking through the frozen forest, they see another copy, this time of Helly, pointing into a small opening in a rock formation. It’s big enough for them to fit through, so in they go, where they see a book with the roman numeral IV on it ingrained into the wall. Helly reads the book, which tells of Kier Eagan’s twin brother Dieter and that both of them took a journey to Woe’s Hollow. Naturally, the group heads there, but halfway there, a copy of Dylan stands in a clearing pointing at the ground.
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The Camp | After some more treading, Irving privately tells Mark that he doesn’t believe that Helly was telling the truth about what she saw when the Overtime Contingency was triggered. They make it to a waterfall, where copies of all of them are waiting at the top. Milchick is there congratulating them for reaching the waterfall, which he says is the world’s tallest, before taking the group to a campsite with four blue tents as the sun sets. There, Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) is cooking meat for them and Milchick shows off their outhouse stocked with toilet paper and torches for heat.
Helly visits Irving in his tent and he asks her what she really saw on the outside, but of course, she doesn’t tell him. As Miss Huang plays the theramin, Milchick reads to them from the book, which tells a disturbing tale of Dieter’s eyeball falling out and his body dissolving, which for some bizarre reason makes Helly laugh. This troubles Milchick to the point that he orders Miss Huang to throw the marshmallows into the fire before he leaves. Irving once again presses Helly about what she really saw, but Mark and Dylan stick up for her and Irving storms off as a result.
Termination | Mark goes into Helly’s tent to check on her and the two end up having sex, while Irving ventures into the forest, but trips on a log and face plants in the snow. As Mark and Helly talk in their tent, Mark suddenly sees Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) in place of Helly, but brushes it off. As dawn comes up, Irving wakes up in an empty forest, but his cubicle is sitting in the middle of the woods. He sits down in his chair as he sees Burt (Christopher Walken) sitting across from him, but the whole thing turns out to be a nightmare as he wakes up in the same spot he was before.
Mark wakes up to find that Helly is missing and he and Dylan find Milchick to look for her and Irving. Irving finds Helly waiting by the waterfall. He confronts her and theorizes that she is not Helly at all, but Helena, since only an Eagan could have the power to send their Outie to the Severed floor. He grabs her and tries to drown her in front of the others to prove it, but much to everyone’s shock, Milchick speaks into a walkie talkie and Helly wakes up as her Innie, confirming Irving’s theory. Milchick orders Irving to walk into the forest and officially terminates him from Lumon, saying that all evidence of him will be erased from the building. One more word into his walkie talkie and Irving ceases to be.
Severance streams new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+
A native of Boise, Idaho, Bradley is a hardcore entertainment junkie whose interest span many different genres. Favorite shows include: The Originals, Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Silicon Valley and Powers.
