Severance Season 2 ends with a song from the 1960s that perfectly reflects the horrors of day-to-day life for Innies a Lumon Industries.
Music has been of paramount important throughout the two seasons of Severance, with Theodore Shapiro’s atmospheric score making a weird show even weirder, and the song choices always a surprise.
In Severance Season 1 the tunes were as wide and varied as ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica, ‘Times of Your Life’ by Paul Anka, ‘I’ll be Seeing You’ by Paul Anka, and ‘Ace of Spades’ by ‘Motörhead.’
Season 2 has been equally eclectic, featuring ‘Love Spreads’ by The Stone Roses, ‘Eminence Front’ by The Who, and ‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald‘ by Gordon Lightfoot. While the song that ends it all couldn’t be more apt. Though beware, there are SPOILERS ahead…
Why ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ is perfect for Severance
Severance Season 2 ends in dramatic fashion, with Mark switching between Innie and Outie as he rescues Gemma, before Innie Mark gets her to safety, then decides to stay within the Lumon walls to be with Helly.
The final sequence sees Mark and Helly run through the corridors hand-in-hand as the song ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ – sung by Mel Tormé – plays on the soundtrack. And it’s a tune that perfectly captures the horrors of life inside Lumon.
The dreamy music for the song was written by French composer Michael Legrand, but it’s the lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman that tell the tale. The song starts out with the lines:
“Round, like a circle in a spiral,
Like a wheel within a wheel,
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever-spinning reel.”
Those words sum up the repetitive nature of Innie existence, with the MDR employees permanently at work, and repeating the same tasks over and over again.
“Like a tunnel that you follow,
To a tunnel of it’s own,
Down a hollow to a cavern,
Where the sun has never shone,
Like a door that keeps revolving,
In a half-forgotten dream.”
These lines could be describing the endless passageways and corridors inside Lumon; a maze that has employees walking in circles, trapped like rats, and lost unless they know exactly where they are going.
“Pictures hanging in a hallway,
And a fragment of this song,
Half-remembered names and faces,
But to whom do they belong?”
This refrain – which repeats multiple times – couldn’t be more perfect for Severance. “Pictures hanging in a hallway,” are the closest thing Innies get to entertainment or exposure to art, and each painting in the show tells a story of its own.
Apple TV+While “half-remembered faces” sums up the severance process itself, with memories disappearing with Outies become Innies, but gradually returning as Mark undergoes reintegration during the final few episodes of Season 2. All of which makes it sound like the song was written for Severance.
But ‘Windmills’ was actually composed for 1968 movie The Thomas Crown Affair. Writer Alan Bergman says he and wife Marilyn wrote the lyrics as a stream of consciousness, and admits that the finished song is something of a “mind trip.” So it’s fitting that ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ now plays a major role in trippiest show on TV.
Severance is currently streaming on Apple TV+. Head here for director Ben Stiller on how it all ends, while we’ve also got Season 2 recaps of Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6, Episode 7, Episode 8, and Episode 9.
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