5 Reasons Ricken From Severance is Actually Brilliant — and Dangerous

Severance was my favorite show of 2022 — It’s dark, desperately sad, mysterious, hilarious, and frightening, and we all have theories about what’s really going on in the labyrinthian halls of corporate giant Lumon. While impatiently waiting for season 2’s release date, I’ve been re-watching the show. Again. And this time I’ve started to see some things in a new way.

Mark’s brother-in-law, Ricken, would be an easy character to dismiss as a vaguely culturally-appropriative (I don’t know, kelp hanging?), philosophizing douchebag — this is, after all, how Mark sees him — whose main role on the show is to add comedy, but the more I watch Severance the more I see the brilliance — and potential danger — of Ricken.

1. He seems to have a following.

The first time I watched the no-dinner dinner party, I saw it as a very funny display of pretension for pretension’s sake. It set up the playful, dry, and loving relationship between Mark and his sister, Devin, and paints Ricken as the perfect earnest, self-important foil to Mark’s practicality and cynicism.

But each time I watch it my appreciation for what’s really going on here, and Ricken’s role in it, grows. He has gathered a group of… friends? Colleagues? who all seem eager to bend over backward to agree with him or otherwise display their intellectual prowess. Unfortunately, it turns out that there’s not much to display.