[Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” Season 2, Episode 9, “The After Hours.” For coverage of earlier episodes, read our previous reviews.]

As the little blue bus pulls up to Lumon’s office building, Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock) looks more childlike than ever. A drooping bookbag hangs from her back. Puffy earmuffs frame her plump cheeks. Whatever administrative authority she wielded on the severed floor is gone, and in its place is the apprehension of a young girl moving to a new place. Whether Ms. Huang knows where she’s going is less important than the sudden displacement itself (though Svalbard’s proximity to the North Pole may clarify Mr. Milchik’s irritations with his would-be successor). Tonight, rather than sleep in her room, next door to her parents, she will be napping on a plane before spending night after night at the Gunnel Eagan Empathy Center. She may have her same bed, as Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) suggests, but what comfort a consistent mattress provides pales in comparison to a stable adolescence at home. A real home.

Miss Huang may be alone on her journey, but she’s not the only one stepping out into the great unknown. Episode 9, “The After Hours,” sees each of the Macrodata Refiners take a major leap of faith. Some, like Miss Huang, feel they don’t have a choice. Others choose to live or die rather than take a risk. One does roll the dice, while one other employee simply has to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, no matter where it takes her.

So let’s start with her. Dan Erickson bookends Episode 9 with Helena and Helly (Britt Lower) alongside their paternal and professional father, Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry). In the opening sequence, Helly’s morning swim leads to a peculiar breakfast supervised by her strange papa. Slicing her hard-boiled egg into sixths and spreading them evenly across a plate adorned with a worried young lad being held to his seat by two elders, Helly voluntarily holds her chair and consumes her eggs (a coveted treat among severed workers) as Jame looks on, groaning ominously. “I wish you take them raw,” he tells her before leaving.

When we see the reigning Lumon CEO again, he’s sneaking up on Helly at work as she tries to memorize directions to the black hallway. “You tricked me,” he says. “My Helly.” “What the fuck?,” she responds, sliding the instructions under her keyboard. WTF, indeed. Why Jame is visiting the severed floor remains a mystery, but Helly’s mission isn’t. Alone in the office, with Mark’s (Adam Scott) whereabouts unknown, Irving (John Turturro) fired, and Dylan (Zach Cherry) quitting, Helly pushes ahead with the plan to save Gemma (Dichen Lachman). She needs answers. She needs independence, and if the pursuit of both means fending off a few Lumon weirdos who want to scare her, stop her, or worse, she’ll try. If it means risking it all, she will. If she has to go after it alone, she goes.

Little does she know, she’s not alone. Out in the wilderness, Mark’s Outie is reluctantly embracing his own plan to save Gemma. Well, it’s more like Devon’s (Jen Tullock) plan, or maybe Harmony’s (Patricia Arquette) plan, but it’s the only plan he’s got. Neither sibling is under any delusion of control. On their way to the meet-up, they debate whether to go through with it without ever questioning the facts. They don’t trust Harmony. They’ve given her far more information than she’s given them, and she’s complicit in whatever has happened (and could still happen) to Gemma. But they need her. “There is literally no other option than to do what the fuck she says right now,” Devon says. “For Gemma. She knows where she is, Mark.”

“Literally no other option” may be pushing it a bit — cops could be called, a private investigator could be hired, a small army of severed workers could be recruited to overthrow the Lumon board — but if what Cobel says about Cold Harbor is true (that they have to find Gemma before it’s completed), then they don’t have time for any of that. Harmony is promising them a way into Lumon right now. Wouldn’t they be more foolish to refuse it than to take it?

Irving faces a similar question. While he wants to stay and find out if he and Burt’s (Christopher Walken) Outies can rediscover the romance they shared as Innies, he’s also got a one-way ticket to safety. Burt is offering him a way out. They wouldn’t be together, but Irving wouldn’t be in danger either, as it’s implied he is now, if he stays. Is it more foolish to stay and hope to rekindle a love neither of them can remember, than to go and find love somewhere else, with someone else, without the peril?

In Season 1, Burt and Irving’s arc ended with Irving attending Burt’s retirement party at Lumon. There, Irving fought for his man, and Burt calmed him down, shook his hand, and said goodbye. They accepted their separate fates… until Irving couldn’t stand it any longer. In Season 2, will Burt and Irving’s arc end the same way? At at train station, with Irving fighting for the love he’s never had, being told no, and sent off on his lonely road with nothing more than a handshake? Will he again come back to Burt, pounding on his front door, refusing to let go of his first and only love?

Dylan also shoots his shot, and Dylan also falls short. After Gretchen (Merritt Wever) tells Dylan’s Outie about the kiss she shared with his Innie, the latter’s subsequent freak-out leads to the former’s return to isolation. Gretchen informs Dylan’s Innie she can’t see him anymore, and as sweet as his marriage proposal proves to be — he made an engagement ring out of a finger trap — it’s an empty gesture. He can’t give her the life he promises, even if he does treat her better than his Outie. He’s an Innie. He lives at work. She can’t live there with him — her Innie wouldn’t know either Dylan — and he can’t leave.

Dylan has come a long way since we first met him. Obsessing over meaningless titles (Refiner of the Month!) and clinging to his vague proficiency (he’s good at his job but he also doesn’t know what he’s doing?), everything changed the night when Dylan woke up in his closet and saw his Outie’s son. The knowledge that his other half had a wife and kids awakened a part of Dylan’s Innie that had been buried under a pile of perks. Pencil erasers and caricature portraits just aren’t enough anymore, not when genuine love and affection are on the table, and losing Gretchen is a bridge too far for a family man denied his family.

So Dylan quits. Despite Helly’s pleas to stay — for Irving, for her, for the greater good — his heartbreak is too much to bear. He fills out the paperwork, he shoulders Mr. Milchick’s disapproval, and he steps onto the elevator, not knowing when or if he’ll wake up again. While Irving chooses to live rather than risk death to be with Burt, Dylan chooses to die rather than risk living without his family (an Innie’s death, to be clear, but a fatal choice nonetheless). Now, their fates are tied to Mark, Helly, and Harmony (give or take a Devon). Will their leaps of faith land on firm ground, or will the unknown remain frustratingly out of reach? Here’s hoping everyone, somehow, finds their way home.

Grade: B+

“Severance” releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+. The Season 2 finale is set for Friday, March 21.

Further Refinement:

• For those of you keeping track, the remaining MDR employee referenced in the second paragraph — the one who rolls the dice — is Mr. Milchick, who chooses to stand up to Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) even if it leads to more paper clipping torture sessions (or his outright dismissal). Chastised for using big words again, Mr. Milchick apologizes once but refuses to do so again. Instead, he tells him to “devour feculence,” which he also translates “mon-o-syll-ab-ic-ally” to “eat shit.” Goddamn, I love a bitchy Milchick. Switch sides, my man!

• “I’m sorry, the wind was whistling over the hole in the back of your skull, so I didn’t quite get that. Did you just call my plan a fucking mistake?” Oh, Devon. In another world, you and Mark could’ve carried a multi-cam sitcom about a brother and sister who go on crazy adventures together. Never change.

Code Detectors:

• “We’re seeing to Mr. Bailiff.” Helena’s bizarre breakfast included a tip-off toward Irving’s fate, but how to interpret it is still up for debate. Taken one way, Helena saying they’ll “see to” Irving could mean she dispatched Burt to escort him out of town. After all, Burt’s intentions have been suspicious all season. This week, he says his old job was “driving people places,” and Irving asks, “Is that what today is?” It sure could be! Burt never answers, just like he doesn’t answer later when Irving asks if Lumon will come after him for “helping” Irving get out of town. Perhaps the answer is that he’s not helping. Perhaps he’s just back on the job again. Perhaps he never left.

But this brings up an old bugaboo of mine: We all know Christopher Walken is a great actor, but is Burt? He would have to be if he’s been lying to Irving this whole time, especially when they say their grief-stricken goodbyes at the station. And I’m sorry, but drivers don’t have to be great liars, and former “goons” probably shouldn’t be emotionally adept enough to channel such exacting emotions just to get a guy on a train. So I think Burt was likely ordered to drive Irving somewhere — just not the train station.