Warning: This review of Severance season 2 episode 4 will contain spoilers.

There’s a number of reasons I’m glad that Severance isn’t streaming on a binge streamer like Netflix, but episode 4 is further proof that the weekly drop is the perfect model for the show. It’s not that dropping the entire season all at once entirely prevents showrunners from making the kind of left-field episodes like “Woe’s Hollow”, but they’re typically more inclined to push the narrative in continuous ways. The episode comes essentially out of left field based on where the show ended last week, but it’s one of the best episodes of the series so far.

Episode 4 is almost tailor-made for the Severance Reddit sleuths, salivating over every detail which Dan Erickson gives that’ll help them “solve” the show. Sometimes this version of fan service can steer a show in the wrong direction, but the episode is more focused towards advancing the season’s storylines and the journeys of the characters.

The episode begins with easily the most bizarre cold open since the show’s series premiere, as the innies of Irving (John Turturro), Helly (Britt Lower), Mark (Adam Scott), and Dylan (Zach Cherry) find themselves not only outside in the wilderness but separated from one another. Once they join up, they learn, via pre-recorded video from Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) that they’re part of an Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence (ORTBO) in the Dieter Eagan National Forest, and must walk the mystical path that Kier himself once walked.

There’s so much to unpack thematically just within the lore found within episode 4, but my biggest takeaway is in Kier’s telling of his twin brother. As the innies journey through the woods, they learn that Kier and Dieter, though equals, came to hate one another. Severance has always shown Kier Eagan as a kind of Christ-like figure, but “Woe’s Hollow” directly shows his writing in a Biblical nature, retelling how Dieter died and literally transformed into the world around them. Milchick’s fireside reading also provides Helly and Mark more opportunities to bond romantically, finding similar ridicule in the story.

On a molecular level, episode 4 provides a number of revelations for the characters. This is literally the first time the innies have ever seen the sun (it was night time when the overtime contingency occurred last season), and, presumably, the first time they’ve seen fire. Severance retains its thesis statement about the stranglehold that companies place on their workers in a humorous way as well, when Milchick declares that the paltry waterfall within the park is “the largest waterfall on the planet”.

The meat of the episode comes in the second half, when Irving pokes Helly further and further into telling the truth about what she saw during the overtime contingency. It feels a little strange for Irving to bring up the matter after so many weeks in real time, but in the world of the show, it’s only been a few days (at most) since the season premiere. Helly’s truth was destined to come out eventually, but to see Irving force the issue – and be correct about his hunch – provides Severance with an additional bit of juice as season 2 hits its stride. Many shows would see Irving come to the same conclusion through unbelievable means, or stretch it out for the length of the season, but I found his sleuthing to be in line with his character of late, always questioning what Lumon is selling.

Helly’s post-coital confession of “I didn’t like who I was on the outside” reads completely differently once we learn that her outie had infiltrated the innies all of this episode. How long has Helena been posing as Helly, and what did she hope to accomplish? Was she acting on behalf of herself, or at the behest of her father and/or the Lumon higher-ups? I continue to go back to the moment in episode 2 when Helena watches and re-watches the clip of Helly kissing Mark, and seeing something missing from her own life that she wants.

Episode 4 is a game-changer not just for season 2 but for Severance overall. How can the MDR team trust one another going forward? How will Mark react, now that his romantic feelings may have been fabricated by Helly? How much further can Lumon go to assert its control over the severed employees? How will Mark react to having sex with Helly? He already began seeing Gemma (Dichen Lachman) in her, and that’s before he learns the truth about Helly. The end of the episode sees Irving summarily fired, so how much will we see of him going forward (that goes for both his innie and his outie)? Stand-alone episodes can give a show the opportunity to try new things in format and storytelling, and episode 4 unlocks a brand new avenue for a show that’s already teeming with possibilities.

• You Got Your Lost in My Severance!: What was with the doppelgangers of the MDR team helping the innies along the path? It wasn’t just one of the characteres hallucinating, so was it some kind of malfunction with the severance chip, or a feature that Lumon can utilize? Much like the purposes of the goats from last week’s episode, I’m fine with never receiving an answer.