The 5 Worst Outie Lives In Severance Season 2, Ranked

Due to its very premise, "Severance" tends to focus on the "innie" workers who toil away on the severed floor of Lumon Industries' headquarters in Kier, PE. These characters lead a mysterious, isolated, and utterly strange existence that forms the backbone of the show's mysteries. However, the very reason they exist is that at some point, a person agreed to undergo Lumon's infamous and controversial severance procedure. This split their personalities into their usual "outie" selves and the innies, the latter of which only exist within the confines of the severed floor — or, in rare circumstances, when Lumon activates them off-site with a process called the Overtime Contingency Protocol.

As the show slowly reveals, the severance process is drastic, and many of the outies have equally drastic reasons for agreeing to it. Some of them are on a mission, others are looking for better opportunities, while others still are simply trying to escape something. Regardless of the reason they took up the Lumon gig, however, the one thing that connects them is that pretty much none of them are happy campers. Let's take a look at the "Severance" outies who have it the worst in season 2.

After he meets Optics and Design department head Burt (Christopher Walken) and gets over his overzealous corporate attitude, Irving B. (John Turturro) establishes himself as one of the most insightful, rebellious, and driven innies on the entire show. Once season 1 introduces us to his outie, Irving Bailiff, we find out that there's a reason for this: Mr. Bailiff is a very cool figure with an implied military background. He spends his downtime hanging out with his equally cool dog, compiling information about Lumon, and rocking out while obsessively painting pictures of what we eventually learn is the elevator to the testing floor.

Since there appears to be some memory bleed between Irving's innie and outie selves, Irving B.'s deep love for Burt ultimately affects his outie as well, which creates some speed bumps in his life after innie Irving gets fired for exposing Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) in "Woe's Hollow." Ultimately, however, even heartbreak isn't enough to deter Irving Bailiff. Sure, things don't end very well for him, romantically speaking — but at least he, Burt, and Burt's partner Cecil Fields (John Noble) are able to talk things through like adults.

The last we see of Irving is in season 2, episode 9, "The After Hours," when Burt forces him to leave the town of Kier by train, very possibly for good. While this might seem like a downer ending, Irving ultimately doesn't seem to mind too much. He's a survivor who, at the end of the day, is off to have new adventures with his cool dog. There's still a lot we don't know about him, but there's every reason to suspect that Irving will be just fine.

Early on, Dylan George (Zach Cherry) is implied to be the most well-adjusted guy on the show. Dylan G. has created a whole mythology around his amazing outie, believing he can do no wrong. Even when we first catch a glimpse of his life in the season 1 episode "Hide and Seek," the revelation that outie Dylan is a father only amplifies this message.

Season 2, on the other hand, reveals that things aren't quite as cozy as that. Extended looks at Dylan George's life and innie Dylan's conversations with his outie's wife Gretchen (Merritt Wever) peel the layers of Dylan G's respect until little is left. We find that outie Dylan is struggling to find his place in life while innie Dylan is a confident, talented, and highly decorated member of his work team. It doesn't exactly help that innie Dylan and Gretchen grow increasingly close, which further complicates the innie-outie divide.

In truth, this attraction really only stems from innie Dylan resembling the younger, less downtrodden version of his outie, and Gretchen walks away from the situation before anything truly irreversible happens. She's also extremely willing to talk things out with outie Dylan, so all of this seems like a relationship hiccup more than anything else. The "Severance" season 2 ending shows outie Dylan even outright admitting that he likes having the comparatively cool innie Dylan around, so at the end of the day, he gets to have his family, job, and the knowledge that a capable, professionally successful version of him exists in the depths of the severed floor. All things considered, it's not a bad deal.

Putting the show's resident sad sack this low on the list might seem strange, but there's a good reason for it. Mark Scout (Adam Scott) lives a sorrow-filled life and is incapable of moving on after losing his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) in a car accident. Still, even at his lowest, he leads a very comfortable life and has a pretty decent support network. He has a job, a spacious house, and loved ones who try to drag him out of his shell — especially his sister Devon (Jan Tullock), who stops at nothing in her efforts to make Mark feel better.

Yes, his job is secretly a hellscape. Sure, unbeknownst to him, his boss, Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), is secretly keeping tabs on him as his friendly neighbor, Mrs. Selvig, until her cover is blown at the end of season 1. Still, regardless of his inability to actually enjoy it, Mark the outie has all the makings of an extremely comfortable life ... and when he finds out that Gemma is still alive, he even finds new meaning for his own life. All of this means that while his existence is not exactly free of trouble, outie Mark is doing far better than some other severed characters. Well, at least he was before he ended up on a collision course with his innie.

Sure, she's an Eagan and a Lumon higher-up. Nevertheless, Helena Eagan also lives under the thumb of her deeply creepy, distant father Jame (Michael Siberry), who outright tells the Helly R. innie in the season 2 finale that he has no love whatsoever for Helena. Just seeing her sitting in the sparse, vast Eagan mansion in episode 9, "The After Hours," while Jame is staring at her and criticizing the way she eats her breakfast eggs is enough to convince the viewer that this person is leading an incredibly unhappy existence.

What's more, both emotional and physical gut punches just keep coming for Helena. She clearly doesn't enjoy her mission to the severed floor too much, especially after two separate innies — her own and Irving Bailiff's — have attempted to kill her. She also learns some extremely hard lessons about herself; for instance, the very reason Irving attacked her was that he realized she was far too cruel to be the real Helly R.

It's obvious that Helena is carrying some serious psychological baggage, and there's precisely zero relief on the horizon. She has to continue fulfilling her undefined but no doubt considerable Lumon duties, which may or may not include some seriously unsavory stuff — for instance, we still don't know whether she slept with Mark S. in "Woe's Hollow" and later flirted with outie Mark in "Attila" as part of her mission or not. What's more, "Cold Harbor" reveals that her father prefers Helly B. over her, so her very personality might be at risk should Jame decide to abuse the Overtime Contingency Protocol and leave the Helly persona active. While Helena Eagan is no doubt a villain, she might just be the most tragic one the show has introduced.

Really, the competition for the worst outie life on "Severance" ended when season 2, episode 7, "Chikhai Bardo," dropped. The most disturbing episode of the season (and arguably the whole show) is devoted entirely to the plight of Gemma Scout, whom we discovered was still alive back in season 1. Here, we learn that her time in Lumon's clutches has enough layers for a show all on its own, and unsurprisingly, the episode that focuses on her contains the most important reveals of "Severance" season 2.

Gemma has been living in Lumon's testing floor since her supposedly fatal car accident, all the while being subjected to regular experiments where her multiple innies have to undergo repeated, nigh-invariably uncomfortable actions that are tied to specific files Macrodata Refinement has been working on. This makes some of the innies' lives absolute, never-ending hell, although things aren't much better for Gemma herself.

Even though her various innies are the ones who actually go through the assorted torments, she's still going to feel the physical aftereffects once they leave their rooms. What's more, while it's implied that Gemma originally participated in whatever's going on quite voluntarily, she's definitely a prisoner by the time of "Chikhai Bardo," spending the majority of her outie hours in a decently-equipped but unpleasantly sterile room without fully understanding what's going on, and with only the decidedly creepy Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson) and Nurse Cecily (Sandra Bernhard) to keep her company. Even without the heavy implication that the aftermath of finishing the Cold Harbor project will kill her outie persona entirely, that sounds like a truly hellish existence.