Severance Hid a Keanu Reeves Cameo in Its Season 2 Premiere

AFTER A THREE-YEAR wait, one of television’s best and most eccentric shows has finally returned. The second season of Severance picks up—more or less—right where the thrilling first season left off. Well, kind of; it picks up right where things left off for the Innies, while we actually have no idea what’s going on with the Outies. That kind of mystery is exactly what makes Severance so thrilling and unique, and it’s what gives the whole show and every endeavor within it such an uncanny vibe—as much as we think we have an understanding of what might be going on, there’s always another curtain waiting to be pulled back to reveal something entirely new.

The second season premiere, titled “Hello, Ms. Cobel” picks up just about five months after the body-swapping of the first season’s finale. Innie Mark (Adam Scott) awakens in a panic to find that Ms. Casey’s (who is actually Outie Mark’s presumed-dead wife and played by Dichen Lachman) Wellness Check area is gone, that his team has been replaced by a new group (which includes characters played by great actors Bob Balaban and Alia Shawkat), and that Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) is gone and Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) is now in charge. Wild!

Mark isn’t pleased with these changes; he wants the old team back, and, after a day, he gets it, when he sees Irving (John Turturro), Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Helly (Britt Lower) return to the severed floor. Well, two of the three are definitely his old teammates—there’s something a little suspicious about this returning version of Helly. Mainly that it seems to be her Outie, the pretty evil Helena Eagan, in disguise. But I digress.

Mark and the crew learn that their actions five months ago have made a pretty major impact on the outside world, and that they’ve become the face of what’s begin called “Severance Reform.” Mr. Milchick brings them to the Break Room—now a screening and relaxation room of sorts, certainly no longer used for torture—where they watch a stop-motion animated film that will supposedly be shown to every severed-innie for the rest of Lumon’s history. The video feels like something you’d be shown in school; an overly-positive recap of the great big changes made at Lumon, and an overview of how all the old problems have been solved, and, you betcha, everything is better now. Our Innie heroes seem largely unconvinced (though Irv at least looks a bit amused).

This all makes for some of the great set-up of the season: What happens now? Who’s side is everyone on? What’s going on outside? And is everyone in here who they say they are?

These are all serious questions put forward by the video, and the changes that have supposedly happened in the months since the events of the season 1 finale (which is now being called “The Macrodat Uprising.” But while the Lumon video essentially serves as a (biased, and unreliable) info dump on what’s happened in the time off-screen and what changes are occurring, you also may have noticed that the smooth, positive voice of the video is one that you’ve certainly heard through the years watching all sorts of hit, classic movies.

That’s right: the voice of the Lumon building in the video is not just a familiar actor—it’s that of a legitimate superstar and legend. The voice of the Lumon building in the Severance video is that of Keanu Reeves.

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Keanu Reeves plays the voice of Lumon Administrative Building, Branch #501—or just “Lumon” in Severance season 2

It takes a disorienting second—and the role is uncredited—but Keanu Reeves is unquestionably the voice of the Lumon Administrative Building, Branch #501—or just “Lumon” in the Severance season 2 premiere, Hello, Ms. Cobel.

Creator Dan Erickson joked about the surprise superstar voice actor during an interview with Slashfilm. “I certainly have no idea what you could be talking about. I’m not actually familiar with that actor.” he said. “Is that the guy from The Lake House?”

He talked about it a little more in an interview with Collider. “All I can say is that we talked about a couple of different people for that role,” he said. “We always wanted it to be somebody that people have certain associations with, but also, it had to be a very warm presence. The Lumon building is very friendly in the context of this video, and there’s a friendliness to that particular voice and a heart to that particular voice.”

Anyone who’s seen Reeves in any of his starring roles through the years—from The Matrix films and the John Wick series to stuff like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Constantine, and My Own Private Idaho—likely recognized Reeves’s signature dulcet tones. His voice in particular may have been in some people’s minds, as he just recently voiced Shadow the Hedgehog in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (while also providing his voice for projects like Toy Story 4 and the video game Cyberpunk 2077 in the past).

It’s not the first time Severance has made great use of a voice cameo. Reeves is joined by Saturday Night Live star Sarah Sherman in the season 2 premiere; she voices a friendly water tower also featured in the animated video.

Back in season 1, episode 8, titled “What’s For Dinner,” Helly got a personalized congratulations by way of a creepy video message from an animated “Kier Eagan.” Eagan in the video is voiced by Severance executive producer and frequent director Ben Stiller, which was originally only meant to be temporary before the show decided to keep it in; the idea being that Lumon would have hired an actor to provide the voiceover for the game. “This isn’t canon, but I like to think it is Ben,” Erickson said in an interview with IndieWire. “I like to think that in the universe they hired Ben.”

So, by that metric, can we assume that Lumon hired the friendly, beloved voice of Keanu Reeves for its return-to-work Innie video? It doesn’t seem very far off.