After three long years, 'Severance' returns with a knotty Season 2 that's as impressive for how much it untangles as it is for what it refuses to.

Severance season 2 defies expectations in the best possible way. Read our spoiler-free review of the long-awaited new season here.

The characters on “Severance” — at least, the “innie” versions of them — don’t experience time like the rest of us. Innies exist only on a subterranean floor in the headquarters of Lumon Industries, a company that splits some employees’ consciousness into a work self and a not-work self.

Season 2 of the surreal sci-fi workplace satire returns to Lumon Industries, where office workers severed from their outside identities search for answers at their existential peril.

Praise Kier. For anyone worried that “Severance” could have a sophomore slump — especially since the wait between seasons was three years long — put aside your woes. Season 2 (premiering Jan. 17 on AppleTV+) is just as phenomenal as Season 1.

Now, the lauded Apple TV+ drama from creator Dan Erickson returns with a briskly paced sophomore season that refines its many themes into a timely, rewarding, and challenging debate about the power and parameters of personhood.