This text incorporates spoilers for “Severance” season 2 episode 9, “The After Hours.”
As “Severance” actor Tramell Tillman advised /Movie in his 2022 interview, his character, Mr. Milchick, is not the type of man who yells and screams at folks. “On the surface, he looks as if a duck on water — very nonetheless, calm — however on the within, beneath the water, there’s a lot happening,” Tillman stated. “With that, it helps to create that suspense, that thriller, and simply retains everyone on their toes on the severed ground, which I consider is 100% manipulation. It is all tactic.”
Regardless of his serene exterior, the trippy “Severance” season 2 has been arduous on Milchick. After Concord Cobel (Patricia Arquette) was fired and the Macrodata Refinement Crew’s innies managed to briefly take over their outie selves in season 1, he is been scrambling to carry down the fort. His severed underlings problem him and provides him grief at each flip. His superiors give him borderline unimaginable duties, together with recovering the totally disillusioned members of the unique MDR group and retaining their morale up with an more and more elaborate system of rewards and punishments. He is instrumental to the success of Chilly Harbor, a very powerful venture within the historical past of Lumon (and presumably the world?), but he will get zero respect, and the corporate rewards his Herculean efforts to maintain the wheels from falling off with extremely inappropriate pseudo-religious imagery and direct criticism of the very approach he speaks.
In different phrases, it has been more and more clear that Mr. Milchick will not be a cheerful camper. In “The After Hours,” the kettle lastly boils over. True to type, the character barely raises his voice in your complete episode — however “The After Hours” however permits Milchick to have the meltdown that is been a very long time coming.
Milchick lastly lashes again at Lumon
Seth Milchick would not flip tables or punch partitions. When he cuts free, he does so in his characteristically reserved approach. Nonetheless, nearly each motion he takes in “The After Hours” is that of a person who’s lastly had sufficient and has the time of his life letting the world know.
Milchick has made clear earlier than that he is not a fan of Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), however now, he takes motion. It is closely implied that he cuts her internship quick as a result of he desires to eliminate her, and appears to have particularly pulled strings to ship her to a Lumon facility in faraway Svalbard, a particularly remoted Arctic archipelago. As a cherry on high, he can barely disguise his mirth when he forces her to smash her sole prized possession, a handheld ring toss recreation, as a “sacrifice.” Remoted, this would possibly look like easy workplace politics, however Milchick ups the ante when Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) blames him for Mark’s (Adam Scott) absence from work. After some inner seething, Milchick intentionally returns to the overly floral language Lumon beforehand reprimanded him for utilizing, telling Drummond to “devour feculence” earlier than helpfully translating it as “eat s***.” He then goes on to close the shocked Lumon higher-up down in a relaxed however extraordinarily hostile vogue earlier than strolling away with no care on the planet.
After metaphorically devouring feculence for therefore lengthy, Milchick has lastly discovered his breaking level, fortunately burning bridges because the completion of Chilly Harbor attracts close to. Proper now, there is not any approach of figuring out whether or not he is about to interrupt fully dangerous or if he is slowly releasing himself of Lumon’s thrall like Cobel earlier than him, however one factor is for certain: Viewers can anticipate large issues from Seth Milchick within the season finale.