Severance’s Keanu Reeves Cameo Lines Up Perfectly With A Big Theory

The second season premiere of the Apple TV+ sci-fi thriller “Severance” offered plenty of things for its dedicated fans to obsess over. Did Lumon really celebrate the core four members of the Macrodata Refinement unit for attempting to rebel against their masters and tell the truth of the world of the innies? What exactly happened in the outside world when people found out about what it means to be severed? All of these questions feed into the various fan theories people have about “Severance” and what its intense mythology all means. Are the innies unknowingly working on a way to transfer human consciousness from one body to another? Maybe the goats seen in the first season are being bred to take over as humans in the outside world. And so on. But one specific theory — that the innies are cogs in some grand simulation, one that may impact both innies and outies — may have just gotten a bit more weight thanks to an unexpected cameo appearance in the premiere.

As fans already know, a key aspect of the episode comes in the form of some Claymation that Mark and his fellow innies are shown by Mr. Milchick. The point of the brief animation is to convince the innies that their act of rebellion in the late episodes of the first season was respected and embraced by Lumon, as told from the perspective of the Lumon Industries building itself. The building is voiced by none other than Keanu Reeves, in an uncredited cameo. (Though his name doesn’t appear in the credits, his voice is almost instantly recognizable thanks to so many years of being an A-Lister.) It’s a pleasantly jarring moment, partly because modern popular culture isn’t often directly referenced in “Severance,” and partly because the first season didn’t boast a lot of unexpected cameos from well-known actors. But aside from the fun of hearing the erstwhile John Wick lay out some corporate jargon with a smile, there’s another thing to keep in mind: If you believe that this show is about characters in a simulation, who better to further that notion than the star of “The Matrix”?

The entire concept of “The Matrix” is centered on the harrowing idea that its main character, white-collar worker Thomas Anderson, is gradually becoming aware that the world in which he lives may seem normal, but is a total facade meant to lull humanity away from their true dystopian surroundings. There’s no cult-like figure such as Kier Eagan in “The Matrix” — if anything, Anderson himself, who transforms into the all-powerful Neo, is the closest you get to a cult-like figure in the non-simulated world. But it’s hard to shake those early images of Thomas, before he becomes Neo, in a sterile office environment being aroused to the sense that all is not well in his carefully designed world. No doubt there are key differences between “The Matrix” and “Severance,” not least of which is the fact that the former film wastes little time in clarifying to the audience that the “real” world isn’t real at all. “Severance” is a bold and unexpected show, but it’s not likely going to give away its endgame quite so soon in the second season (if at all this year).

Instead, what “Severance” does (and has done so well over its short history) is provide morsels, creative bread crumbs that are both detailed enough and vague enough to allow all sorts of theorizing. It’s easy to focus more on the Claymation video itself and what Reeves is talking about, as opposed to the nature of why he was chosen for the brief role. The language used in the video is enough to make the innies’ heads spin, as Lumon is attempting to put a positive emphasis on their actions, when they (and all of us in the audience) assumed that they would be grievously punished for what they did. Reeves’ delivery does veer slightly into the menacing at times, but is meant to be jovial and upbeat for the most part, masking whatever Lumon’s true intentions are. If nothing else, the casting here feels like the equivalent of when Pixar cast Sigourney Weaver in “WALL-E” to voice a maternal-sounding computer system on a high-powered space cruise; she had gone from rebelling against such a maternal computer in “Alien” to becoming that computer herself. And now we have the man fighting the system becoming the embodiment of the system itself.

“Severance” has proven itself to be full of surprises now that it’s finally back after a painful three-year hiatus. Like some of the great genre TV shows, from “Twin Peaks” to “Lost,” the series seems to thrive on its most impassioned fans trying to suss out what its endgame is. It was easy to get tripped up out of delighted shock at the fact that one of Hollywood’s most enduring modern stars lent his voice to the show for a few brief minutes, and because fans tend to theorize based on the tiniest bits of information, it’s just as easy to imagine that the star of “The Matrix” appearing here is just a happy, if deliberate, coincidence. But it doesn’t feel like a true accident that when the show’s creative team planned this out, they wanted to loop in, of all people, Neo to deliver a message of supposed goodwill to a group of rebels. 

Could it mean nothing at all that Keanu Reeves showed up here to be that messenger? (Or, failing that, could it be just a fun tie-in, a la the “WALL-E” example above?) Of course, but of the various fan theories floating around online, the notion that Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan are all part of some massive simulation, one that may be encompassing the innie and outie worlds in tandem, already felt believable enough before we got to hear from Neo. (It’s also worth wondering: In the world of this show, is Keanu still as famous as Keanu is here? Does “The Matrix” exist in that world? That could also open up a strange little Pandora’s box of ideas.) As with much of “Severance,” this could mean nothing or it could mean everything. The possibilities are endless, as are the ramifications of such a notable cameo.

New episodes of “Severance” season 2 hit Apple TV+ on Fridays.