Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Severance Season 2.
Apple TV+’s Severance is a show full of colorful characters. From Irving’s (John Turturro) kind and silly persona to Ms. Cobel’s (Patricia Arquette) piercing gaze, we initially believe the cast can’t get much stranger, only to be introduced to someone like Gwendoline Christie‘s Lorna in Mammalians Nurturable, who’s immediately convinced Mark (Adam Scott) and Helly’s (Britt Lower) arrival in her department means they wish to kill her. However, there is one character who we were already introduced to via brief cameos in Season 1 but is immediately having a thoroughly unsettling effect on the entirety of Severance‘s second season so far: Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander).
Episode 3, “Who is Alive?,” gave us the most Natalie we have seen in one episode as we saw her deliver Milchick’s (Trammel Tillman) “gift” from the mysterious and sinister Lumon Board as well as visit Devon’s (Jen Tullock) husband, Ricken (Michael Chernus) to propose a new version of his book, The You You Are, specifically for innies. Through Alexander’s fantastic performance, her character provides a fascinatingly complex relationship with the Board and heightens the series’ overall tension by giving us someone who has to hold both her commitment and fear to the Board within herself at all times.
Sydney Cole Alexander’s Performance Personifies the Tone of ‘Severance’
Alexander’s performance as Natalie is simply magnificent, and her scene with Milchick and the blackface paintings from Lumon is arguably her best so far. At first, she looks almost unfazed by the Board’s gesture; however, Natalie’s repeated blinking and strained smile give us the slightest hint that she might acknowledge the wrongness of the situation, almost reminiscent of Betty Gabriel’s performance in Get Out when her facade begins to falter for a brief moment. The stare between Natalie and Milchick is like a silent warning that both understand: neither can utter a word while the Board may still be listening.
Furthermore, Alexander’s performance offers viewers a character who helps to nail the overall fear factor that Lumon instills through its control of its workers. No matter how Natalie feels or what she knows, the fact that she can’t fully express herself outside the Board’s words permeates through the rest of the characters via their innie and outie dynamics. By making the person who is seemingly closest to the Board the one who is also terrified of them, we sense that no one is protected from this evil entity. What makes the terror even greater is the lack of physical or even verbal abuse that we see used by Lumon. If only the innies are sent to the Break Room, then we are invited to imagine what potential threats Natalie may have faced in the past.
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“Let’s find out what’s for dinner.”
Natalie’s Inner Struggle Might Be the Worst of All ‘Severance’s Characters
While every Severance character has an intensely different struggle of their own, especially the dynamics of the innies versus outies, Natalie has to hold all of these contradictions within her single soul. Her seemingly constant teetering on the edge of a breakdown makes the audience aware of how much inner conflict she must be feeling. It’s reminiscent of Milchick’s line in the first episode of Season 2 — that, as a non-severed person, he has to live with the constant knowledge of what he has done to people. In doing so, it invokes the idea in our own world that, no matter how much we can all acknowledge the terrible things that are happening within the system, most of us feel powerless to stop them. Therefore, we exist in the same state as Natalie, wavering between stoicism and hysteria, letting the world burn so we can go about our day or breaking down in tears because of the hard truths we know.
Overall, it has been fascinating to see so much more of Natalie through Season 2 of Severance. What’s more surprising is the reversal in opinion that has occurred with the increase in her screentime. In Season 1, she was a thoroughly unlikable character who felt like a creepy follower of Kier. But Alexander’s performance this season has offered someone far more complex, who clearly understands the wrongness of what she is made to do and say to people like Milchick but is powerless to prevent it. In the end, it could be Natalie who is suffering the greatest conflict of conscience at Lumon, and we might not even know it.
New episodes of Severance Season 2 are released every Friday on Apple TV+.
