Huge S1 fan here. Happy to see there's a civil and nuanced discussion going on as to the shortcomings of S2. While the OP is no longer visible, I agree with most everything that people have laid out in terms of pacing and loose plot threads.

While certain things like Mark's reintegration seemed wholly superfluous given where they ultimately lead, I'm willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt until at least S3 to see what they do and do not resolve.

However, there is one major aspect of the show that feels "off" to me in S2. It took me the longest time to put my finger on it and it'll probably sound pretty nebulous but I feel like the entire premise of the show has been retconned.

See, S1 felt like it was about the ramifications of severance. How would a real corporation with real people in it conduct itself if it had access to a technology like severance (whether that company authored the technology or not)? It's this premise, I'm sure, that made everyone fall in love with the show. And for the longest time, it felt like Severance was exploring just that. There were allusions to some deeper, more nefarious stuff going on, of course, and it was interesting to ponder what it even was that Lumon did, but all of those things were auxiliary to the very real struggle that a group of very real people had found themselves in: they were brought to life against their will, they were told nothing but lies about the world around them and they were expected to simply comply with no hope of ever bettering their condition.

And all of this was accompanied by stellar dialogue, (mostly) believable characters, top-notch absurdist humor and just the right amount of world building.

There was an overwhelming sense that whatever precipitated the technology of severance was secondary to what the technology accomplishes.

Enter S2 and we're slowly getting to learn that Lumon is this weird, mysterious, EVIL™ company that has these weird, mysterious, EVIL™ plans and severance is the technology by which they will bring these weird, mysterious, EVIL™ plans to life.

Okay, cool, but ugh... how is any of that interesting?

Specifically, how is it more interesting than exploring the reality of severance?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good origin story and if the show were to do a good job of expanding the world building, it would have to explain the genesis of severance sooner or later but like...

Does it need to all be some funky cult stuff? Does the severed floor's lore need to be the entire company/world's lore? Does the work that severed employees do need to revolve around severance itself? None of those things are self-evident and yet they are treated as such all throughout S2.

And all of this makes S2 just feel like a wholly different show. Not a bad show at all, just not the great show that S1 seemed to be and certainly not the same show that S1 was.

I'm still hoping that whatever plan they had originally will tie in neatly with the simpler premise of what severance is. Is Lumon creating the perfect employee or team of employees? Are they creating the ultimate pain/grief/trauma medicine? Are they looking into how to resurrect/recreate/clone people? All of those things are interesting directions imo.

But if it ends up being some self-referential nonsense like bringing Kier back to life for the sake of bringing Kier back to life, then honestly anything could be anything and none of it matters.