SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 9 of “Severance,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
Does the penultimate episode of “Severance” Season 2 put a bow on the story of Irving and Burt?
The star-crossed lovers, played by John Turturro and Christopher Walken, share a dramatic goodbye at a train station. Burt buys Irving a one-way ticket and wishes him well as Irving heads off into the unknown.
But let’s back up for a minute: This season, Irving and Burt reunite in the outside world after each of their innies are permanently retired. Burt and his husband Fields (John Noble) host Irving for an awkward dinner, in which they theorize about their at-work romance and discuss Burt’s origins at Lumon. He seems to lie about how long he had worked at the company and admits to being a “scoundrel,” telling Irving that he decided to get severed after a priest told him his innie would be judged separately from his outie and would therefore have a shot at going to heaven. (To make things creepier, Burt and Fields affectionately calls each other “Atilla,” in both a play on the pet name “hon” and a reference to the murderous ruler of the Huns.) It’s clear Burt had a dark past, but his motives are still shady: During the dinner, Mr. Drummond breaks into Irving’s apartment.
In Episode 9, Irving comes home to find Burt seated in his apartment, reading his notebooks: “Goodman may have participated as a low-level Lumon enforcer or goon.” Burt laughs: “Lumon goon, that stings. We never used words like that.” Irving says he wrote the note “before” they forged a relationship. “I know now that I was wrong. I know you’re not with them,” Irv says.
Burt convinces Irving to “take a ride” with him, and he tells him that he only served as a driver for Lumon, never knowing what happened to his passengers once he dropped them off. Burt brings Irv to a train station and buys him a ticket. “This line goes as far as you can go,” Burt says. “I can’t know where you get off, and you can never come back to Kier.”
Lumon must be coming after Irving — perhaps he knows too much — and Burt is helping him get out of town. He implies that it’s an attempt at redeeming himself for past deeds. Irving admits that no one has ever loved him before, and he’s “ready” to start a life with Burt, even though neither of them have memories of their innie romance. Irv leans in to kiss Burt, but Burt recoils: “We can’t.” He offers him a handshake and says, “Bon voyage, buddy.” It’s a tender farewell, but is this the last we’ll be seeing of these characters?
Asked whether this is the end of Burt and Irving’s story, Ben Stiller told Variety, “For now it is.”
“Lumon is a very powerful company, and Burt knows that,” the executive producer and director said. “He makes this choice, and we don’t know what’s going to happen to Burt after that.”
As for whether Burt is still in cahoots with Lumon, Stiller said, “I get the feeling that what he’s doing is definitely on his own, and he’s probably putting himself at some risk by doing that.”