The sci-fi series was hailed as a dark, timely satire of office life—but its return is bogged down by abstract ethical conundrums and rote emotional ones.

Severance Season 2 premieres Jan. 17 on Apple TV+, with a new episode every week. Belen Edwards is an Entertainment Reporter at Mashable. She covers movies and TV with a focus on fantasy and science fiction, adaptations, animation, and more nerdy goodness.

Really, what season 2 proves is that Severance wasn’t a great show because it was such a surprise — it was just a great show. And at least in the first half of season 2, its quest to expand its scope hasn’t dulled any of its sharp, strange edges.

Lumon employees grapple with newfound information about their alter egos in Apple TV+’s striking, superlative series

Now, the lauded Apple TV+ drama from creator Dan Erickson returns with a briskly paced sophomore season that refines its many themes into a timely, rewarding, and challenging debate about the power and parameters of personhood.

The characters on "Severance" - at least, the "innie" versions of them - don't experience time like the rest of us. Innies exist only on a subterranean floor in the headquarters of Lumon Industries, a company that splits some employees' consciousness into a work self and a not-work self.

Three years after its home-run debut, which layered mysteries upon mysteries so that even answers begat further tantalizing questions, Severance finally returns for its sophomore run. (Well, it will shortly;