‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 5 Breakdown: Trojan’s Horse

The Ben Stiller-directed thriller follows Mark (Adam Scott), a macrodata analyst at Lumon Industries, who went through a procedure called “Severance,” a memory partition between your work and home life. As Mark befriends his team members Helly (Britt Lower), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Irving (John Turturro), they begin to devise strategies to break free from their entrapment.

This article contains spoilers for Severance Season 1 and Season 2.

‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 5 “Trojan’s Horse” Breakdown

On the previous episode of Severance, Mr. Milchick fired Irving for drowning Helena at Woe’s Hollow, and Mark was experiencing effects of his reintegration from the end of Episode 3. The four had been assigned a mission (dubbed an ORTBO) to recover the appendix of Lumon Industries’ work handbook. Along the way, Irving raises suspicions that Helly was really an executive at Lumon, and the episode ends with Irving uncovering that Helly R. had never returned to Lumon and that Helena had been masquerading as her the whole time. 

Episode 5 opens with a Lumon employee (Robby Benson) pushing a cart through the hallways. He stops at the O&D department and picks up tools from Felicia (Claudia Robinson) and Elizabeth (Rachel Addington). The man walks through the hallways again right into the Export Hall from Irving’s paintings, and he descends the elevator. The opening credits play.

Mark is ready to go to work when Reghabi (Karen Aldridge), who’s now living with him, enters. He asks her if they’ll continue the reintegration process because he hasn’t been able to remember anything, and she responds that they may continue that night. We then follow Helena in a meeting with executives about how to move forward after Woe’s Hollow, and Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander) responds to play it safe as Mark is almost done with the Cold Harbour file.

Helly R. wakes up in the Lumon elevator, confused about her reappearance and curious about why Irving was trying to drown her. Milchick explains that Helena was able to execute what she did using The Glasgow Block, and Helly immediately becomes disgusted at the thought of Helena impersonating her on the severed floor. Milchick then follows up this transparency with stating that Irving will not return to Lumon.

Milchick leads Mark, Helly, and Dylan to their new office space; now with only three cubicles instead of four. As Milchick explains the continued expectations for MDR, Dylan interjects that they should hold a funeral for Irving. Milchick asks for approval from Mark and Helly, who both respond yes, forcing Milchick to comply in order to boost the team’s productivity.

A funeral service for Irving is quickly conducted, and Dylan shares a speech he wrote. Milchick brings out a watermelon shaped in the head of Irving, and leaves the three to grieve on their own. Mark gets up to leave, feeling silly about throwing a funeral for someone who’s still alive, and Dylan angrily reveals to Helly that Ms. Casey’s his wife. Mark storms out and Helly follows.

The two have a conversation about why Mark won’t talk to Helly, and he responds that he doesn’t trust that Helly’s who she says she is. Dylan, now alone in the funeral room, remembers Irving’s final words to him (“Hang In There”), and glances at a poster with the same words. He removes the poster from the wall and finds a notecard with directions leading to the Export Hall. 

Milchick is called in for a performance review conducted by Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), who points several faults during Milchick’s limited time as department head. He emphasizes for Milchick to focus on Mark completing the Cold Harbour file as soon as possible so that Milchick can take credit for, what Mr. Drummond calls the Cold Harbour file as, “one of the greatest moments in the history of this planet.” 

Mark finishes up his work day a few minutes early, standing at 85% completion of the Cold Harbour file, and enters the elevator to descend into the Lumon lobby. But not before Milchick corners him in the elevator to pressure him to finish the file ASAP and reveals that he knows that him and Helena had sex during the ORTBO. 

We catch up with Ricken (Michael Chernus), who’s been tasked by Natalie to create a propagandic version of his book “The You You Are,” as Devon (Jen Tullock) walks in. Devon expresses how wrong he is for feeding into Lumon’s evil strategies and, annoyed, leaves to go to bed.

Irving, alive and well, makes a call at a phone booth and reveals to someone that he’s been fired from Lumon. He catches a driver sitting in a car watching him and immediately hangs up the phone to find Burt (Christopher Walken) sitting in the drivers seat. Burt reveals he just wanted to understand why Irving was at his doorstep the night of the Overtime Contingency, theorizing that they might have been in love at Lumon. He invites Irving to dinner the following night with his husband, Fields.

The final scene of the episode follows Mark and Reghabi discussing pushing back the reintegration for the following night to mitigate risk. Mark begins to hallucinate the scene where Ms. Casey explains what Mark’s outie is like from Season 1, and imagines himself back in the hallways of the Severed Floor as Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) shows up to repeat her quotes. After a match cut to Mark imagining the moment in real life, we cut to credits.

Apple TV+’s Severance Season 2 was created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle. The series stars Adam Scott as Mark, Britt Lower as Helly, John Turturro as Irving, Zach Cherry as Dylan, Tramell Tillman as Milchick, and Patricia Arquette as Ms. Cobel. The first five episodes are streaming now on Apple TV+.

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