Is Irving Really Dead After Severance Season 2 Episode 4? It's Complicated

Well, Severance fans, the last episode was certainly a tough one. It was hard to collect any thoughts immediately after watching it, but now that several hours have passed, it seems that we can finally talk about whatever the hell happened in this episode.

Warning: heavy spoilers ahead for Severance season 2 episode 4!

The episode Woe's Hollow starts with Irving being outside in some wide snowy location. After some time, the rest of the MDR group started popping out somewhere near him. Needless to say, they were all confused about being out, as it happened for the first time in the history of the severed floor.

They discover whatever is going on after they find a TV with a video of Milchick in it, explaining that they are on the first ever Lumon's Outdoor Retreat Team Building Occurrence. They also soon find out that Kier had a twin brother and how that fact affected him. But in addition to taking us deeper into Kier's origins, episode 4 finally answered the most intriguing question about Helly.

You remember from episode 1 that Irving had a feeling that something was wrong with Helly. And the fans also thought that it was not Helly who came back to the severed floor, but her outie Helena Eagan. So Irv was determined to prove it to the group this time. As he carefully follows Helena through the episode, he finally reaches the moment when she can no longer deny who she really is.

So he just grabs Helena and takes her to the waterfall, nearly drowning her to prove his point before Milchick gives out an order to switch from Helena to Helly. This is a very important moment for the show, and it definitely turned out to be a game-changing reveal.

Irving’s Sacrifice Is the Turning Point Both for the Episode And for the Show

Well, as we could have predicted, Irv's actions cost him a lot. After switching Helly back, Milchick turned to Irv and ordered his permanent dismissal. And despite the blissful look on Irv's face, we knew that this meant: his innie will be turned off forever, just like Helly R. was. For innie Irving, this is basically death.

But let's not forget that in the Severance universe, everything is far from straightforward, and Irv's death is not as simple as it seems. One of the main themes of the show is the manipulation of memory and consciousness, and it does a perfect job of drawing the blurry line between life and death.

So Irving's apparent death could be another plot device to explore the boundaries between Lumon's severed employers. In reality, this is probably how things work for Irving now: his innie is in some kind of limbo (which Helly R. may or may not elaborate on in future episodes), and his outie is probably living his fairly normal life.

Severance season 2 is available to stream on AppleTV+. New episodes come out every Friday (may Kier help us wait for the next one, we guess).