On Season 2 premiere of Apple TV+ sci-fi thriller Severance offered plenty of things for its devoted fans to obsess over. Did Lumon really glorify the core four members of the Macrodata Refining Unit for trying to rebel against their masters and tell the truth about the iny world? What exactly happened in the outside world when people learned what it meant to be cut off? All of these questions feed into the various fan theories people have about The Unraveling and what its intense mythology all means. Do inies unconsciously work in a way to transfer human consciousness from one body to another? Perhaps 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 could affect both innies and outies — may have just gained a little 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 the Claymation that Mark and his colleagues show Mr. Milczyk. The point of the short animation is to convince the Indians that their act of rebellion in the late episodes of the first season was respected and accepted 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. (Although his name doesn't appear in the credits, his voice is almost instantly recognizable thanks to so many years as an A-lister.) It's a pleasantly chilling moment, in part because modern popular culture isn't often directly referenced in The Breakup, and partly because the first season didn't boast many unexpected cameos from famous actors.But aside from the fun of hearing the erstwhile John Wick utter corporate jargon with a smile, there's another thing to be had. mind you: if you think this show is about characters in a simulation, who better to advance that notion than the star of The Matrix?

The entire concept of The Matrix is ​​centered around the terrifying idea that its main character, white-collar worker Thomas Anderson, gradually becomes aware that the world he lives in may seem normal, but is a complete facade designed to silence humanity. away from their actual dystopian surroundings. There is no cult figure like Keir Egan in The Matrix — if anything, Anderson himself, who transforms into the all-powerful Neo, is the closest thing to a cult figure in the non-simulated world. But it's hard to shake those early images of Thomas, before he became Neo, in a sterile office environment that boils down to the sense that all is not well in his carefully designed world. Without a doubt, there are key differences between The Matrix and Unraveling, not the least of which is the fact that the former film wastes little time making it clear to the audience that the "real" world isn't real at all. "Severance" is a bold and unexpected show, but it probably won't deliver its endgame so soon in season two (if at all this year).

Instead, what Severance does (and has done so well in its short history) is provide morsels, creative breadcrumbs that are both detailed enough and vague enough to allow for all kinds of theorizing. It's easy to focus more on the Claymation video itself and what Reeves is talking about than the nature of why he was cast in the brief role. The language used in the video is enough to turn Inyes' heads, as Lumon tries to put a positive spin on their actions, when they (and all of us in the audience) assumed they would be severely punished for what they did. Reeves' delivery veers a little into the menacing at times, but for the most part it's meant to be cheerful and upbeat, obscuring whatever Lumon's true intentions are. If anything, 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 went from rebelling against such a mother computer in "Alien" to becoming that computer herself. And now we have the man who fights against the system, becomes the embodiment of the system itself.

"Breakup" is proving to be full of surprises now that it is 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 avid fans trying to figure out what its end game is. It was easy to stumble over the delighted shock of the fact that one of Hollywood's most enduring modern stars lent her voice to the show for a few short minutes, and since fans tend to theorize based on the tiniest bits of information, it's only so easy to imagine that the Matrix star appearing here is just a happy, if deliberate, coincidence. But it doesn't feel like a real coincidence that when the show's creative team planned this, they wanted to enlist, of all people, Neo to deliver a message of supposed goodwill to a group of rebels.

Doesn't it even mean that Keanu Reeves showed up here as a messenger? (Or, if that doesn't happen, could it just be a fun hookup, a la the "WALL-E" example above?) Of course, but from the various fan theories floating around the internet, the idea that Mark, Haley, Irving , and Dylan are all part of some grand simulation, one that perhaps spans the worlds of innies and outs in tandem, we already felt believable enough before hearing Neo. (Also, it's worth asking: In the world of this show, is Keanu still known as Keanu? Does The Matrix exist in that world? On "Dissolution," this could mean nothing, or it could mean everything. The possibilities are endless, as are the ramifications of such a significant cameo.

New episodes of "Severance" Season 2 hit Apple TV+ on Friday.