Severance‘s Creepiest Addition Since The Goats Is A Child

“Why are you a child?”

It only took ten minutes for Severance’s Season 2 premiere to introduce the question that will surely be on everyone’s minds for the remainder of the season. Asked by former Lumon retiree Mark W. (Bob Balaban), the question’s target is Miss Huang, played with bone-chilling apathy by Sarah Bock. Huang is one of the newest additions to the Severance world, and her mere existence on the severed floor comes with some disturbing implications. And that’s before we get into how she acts like a Lumon Terminator awaiting kill commands.

The Season 2 premiere isn’t the Season 1 epilogue we may have hoped for given the cliffhangers of that season’s finale, but it does expand that maze of a world in terrifying ways. In the aftermath of what Lumon has dubbed the “Macrodat Uprising” involving the Macrodata Refinement crew’s Innies awakening in the outside world, Lumon has tried to clean up its act in a way only a soulless corporation would if their insidious operation was exposed to the public. Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) has been replaced by Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) as the floor manager, with her manipulative intrusion into Mark S’s life reduced to her being a sadist scapegoat who “developed an erotic fixation on [Mark S.], and had plans to pursue [him and his Outie] in what may be termed a ‘throuple,’” according to Mr. Milchick.

The break room is now a lounge instead of a punishment chamber, a new family visitation room will allow Innie Dylan George (Zach Cherry) to spend time with his Outie’s wife, and Innies can walk around freely with a Hall Pass like grade schoolers. Lumon’s rebrand is suspicious at best, and deceptive at worst. And Ms. Huang is a reminder of how evil that company truly is.

Outside of the baby goats, no type of child has been seen on the severed floor, which makes sense because the work of adults is seldomly appropriate for a child. The fact they brought her in after an employee tried to hang themselves, another employee bit a superior and broke into the security room to wake themselves up, and the former floor manager was stalking one of the other employees either means they have no regard for a child’s safety, or that child is frighteningly equipped to deal with all of that. By the looks of the Season 2 premiere, it might be the latter.

Ms. Huang’s jovial nature is as contrived as that of any Lumon superior, and she can go from friendly to ferocious frighteningly fast. When Mark S. sarcastically intimates that she’s one of his new friends, she shoots him one of the iciest stares in Severance history before telling him, “I have to remind you I’m a supervisor…not a friend.” Then, she lets her subtle scolding hang in the air in a staring standoff with Mark S., almost as a way to let him know she is not to be fucked with like past supervisors.

There’s no telling how brainwashed the youngest Severance speaking character is but even so, the Season 2 premiere put enough fear in our hearts of just how depraved Lumon will reveal itself to be in the new season.