Severance: Why Lumon's Severance Departments Are So Small
Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Severance.
The established basement departments in the Apple TV+ show Severance seem oddly small for a large corporate office like Lumon, but there's a reason for this. Created by Dan Erickson, with executive producer Ben Stiller directing six out of season 1's nine episodes, Severance's two-episode premiere introduces Lumon, a company with a large office campus employing half of a town's population. Lumon handles its sensitive data through employees that have their memories between their work and personal lives surgically separated. Mark S. (Adam Scott) begins training Helly R. (Britt Lower, Man Seeking Woman), the replacement for his friend Petey (Yul Vazquez) after he leaves the job under mysterious circumstances. The show follows the themes of films and shows like '90s cult classic Office Space and The Office by exploring the banality of corporate life, yet it takes a significantly darker twist towards its observance of the work-life balance.
People employed in the labyrinthine basement of Lumon go through the process of "severance" in the elevator ride down to their office, transitioning from their personal or "outie" self to their "innie" work self. After walking through disorienting white hallways, Mark and Helly work in the Macrodata Refinement department with coworkers Irv (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry), and the four of them work in a two-by-two cubicle arrangement in the middle of a relatively large space. Irv later meets Burt (Christopher Walken), who establishes that he's part of the two-person Optics and Design department.
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Even in a corporation as large as Lumon, smaller-sized departments aren't
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