Severance Season 2 has one of Star Wars' most famous sound effects

This entry contains spoilers For Season 2, Episode 2 “Severance”.

After ending its first season on a heartbreaking cliffhanger, Severance is back delve into Lumon's dark web of conspiracies. While the last season sees things from the perspectives of the Innies (who are experiencing the disturbing consequences of their own rebellion), Episode 2 focuses on overseas and how they cope with to the incident that ended Season 1 of the show. While Outie Dylan (Zach Cherry) struggles to get a new job due to his cutoff status, Outie Irving (John Turturro) makes an undercover payphone call while being harassed by outsider Burt (Christopher Walken). Meanwhile, Helen Egan (Britt Lower) tries to salvage Lumon's tarnished reputation, necessitating a drastic administrative change that seems more ominous than comforting.

In the middle of this quiet chaos the world outside Lumon's austere officesMark (Adam Scott) struggles with possible revelations about his apparently dead wife, Gemma, and considers leaving Lumon. However, the ever persistent Milchick (Tramell Tillman), who has now replaced Harmony Cobell (Patricia Arquette) as floor manager, convinces her to stay. When Outie Mark encounters Mrs. Cobell leaving her home, he confronts her, demanding answers about her involvement and the deception it caused. Instead of rewarding him with answers, Mrs. Cobell expresses her disappointment that he hasn't quit yet. “You're so easy to sway,” she quips just before trying to drive away.

When Mark blocks her path and asks if she knows anything about Gemma, loudly silence follows. Just when we think Cobell is about to open up, she backs away and almost runs Mark over as she flees the scene. If you listen carefully, an iconic sound effect can be found beneath the sonic elements that contribute to this real moment. You've heard that sound a thousand times, even if you weren't consciously aware of it. I'm talking about Hollywood's most used “secret” sound effect: Wilhelm's scream.

You're watching the 1977 movie Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope and you reach a scene where Han, Luke, and Leia are using blasters to fend off some nasty stormtroopers. Just then, a lone worker comically falls from a ledge, and that's the action accompanied by a short, loud scream. The film's sound designer Ben Burt popularized this existing sound by including it in that moment, and every Star Wars film since has included the effect as a kind of air. An even wider influence followed, with over 400 Hollywood films using Wilhelm's scream to varying degrees and effects, making it a very popular horror scream. a major inclusion in a significant part of American cinema.

This begs the question: how and when did Wilhelm's scream originate? Well, it was a standard sound effect recorded for the 1951 Raoul Walsh film Distant Drums, used in a scene where an alligator bites a soldier and drags him underwater while wading through a swamp. This same sound effect was later used by a character named Pvt. Wilhelm in “The Charge at Feather River” where Burt got it and then coined the term by which it is now known. Even before “Star Wars” started the Wilhelm scream craze, it was used in many titles to help keep sound effects costs down, including 1954's “A Star Is Born,” “Land of the Pharaohs” and “The Wild Bunch.”

This sound has been used in everything from the Indiana Jones movies to War for the Planet of the Apes, and you can even find it in popular shows and video games like The Simpsons and Grand Theft Auto V. There are three separate instances where it has been used in the Toy Story films to evoke different emotions: once when Buzz Lightyear screams before being thrown out a window, and two other times when the characters are in situations that create tension or horror. Given the flexibility of Wilhelm's scream on screen, it's not surprising that Severance used it in a dramatic moment that was meant to feel both lightly humorous and deliberately anticlimactic.

New episodes of Severance Season 2 air every Friday on Apple TV+.