#mark x helena

[dinkykate]

S02E04 “Woe’s Hollow”

(Couldn’t quite find a gif set of this entire scene so I made one for REASONS)

[inexpressiblybeautiful]

"Love transcends severance" is such a cliché thing ngl. What if it's actually just, every version of you falls in love with every version of me, and every version of me falls in love with every version of you because the chemistry between us is that potent?

[sorrydetka]

outie mark: our wife is being TORTURED. stop having sex with helena eagan and get her OUT!

innie mark: don’t care + didn’t ask + L + ratio + you’re an alcoholic with no drip

[helly-ena]

SEVERANCE + textposts (credits to the markhellyna hivemind 🙂‍↕️🫰)

[limitedseries]

Sorry if I'm distracting you from... From what? From looking for your wife.

[acidiccherry]

dude, look at the hair on these doofuses lmao

ain't no way they're fooling anyone with that shit

[fckyoulumon]

Helena keeping the dolls for herself to play with when nobody looking

[sleazyjanet]

a lot of people point out how little the innies actually work, particularly in mdr, and i have to say that apart from the fact that it solidifies that this is practically an experiment, i THINK it's because this is all the life they get.

if your life were just eight hours in a brightly lit job, you'd stop working as much as you can, because humans are not meant to work 24/7. but that's what the innies are supposed to be doing, according to the outies. they imagine them as their worker bees, their slaves, as they get to do none of the actual working. but of course, the worker bees have such a limited lifespan, that they grasp for freedom wherever and whenever they can. this is all they have.

it's why i think they love so intensely too, if they can. yes, it's all new to them, so there's also that, but it's more than that: they feel more quickly because life passes by more quickly. they could be "asleep" for five months without even knowing. lose friends (like petey) and not know how or why, if they're even alive or not. their lives are so little, and they need to live them to the fullest

it's like something ms casey said about how her life had been so short, and how valuable those hours shadowing helly had been. this is all they have. the human connections matter so much

[syn-edits]

SEVERANCE / silas denver melvin (via @helly-ena)

[shallanigans]

Severance: the only show where the relationship dynamic is so fucked up ao3 has four separate tags for the same couple

[erikakohuts]

SEVERANCE, "Woe's Hollow"

Stop making goo-goo eyes at her.

[notdanerickson]

Mark Scout and Helena Eagan in the Season 2 Finale - Analysis.

He said “Helena Eagan, right?” like a some old dude flirting with his son’s girlfriend. Lol.

Mark Scout sees Helena Eagan as a sexual object, since he’s only seen her in sexual contexts (reintegration flashes) and flirted with her at the Chinese restaurant. “Taking me home, already?”

Helena Eagan and Mark Scout are similar. They both think with sex. They dehumanize Innies. They get their names wrong. They are both self-serving. They’re both somewhat dishonest.

This is the smile of a man who didn’t hate the flashbacks he was getting. But also didn’t take their relationship seriously, and diminishes his own experiences as an Innie.

But then Innie Mark says something unexpected: “Helly, actually. It’s the person I’m in love with.”

This moment forces Outie Mark to look at himself. He has a moment of shock. He’s speechless for a while, for the first time in the conversation, then he starts apologizing. One of the few times he’s actually honest during the entire exchange. (Even the first message of him being “nice” was followed by his fake smile disappearing as he stopped recording.)

This moment potentially makes oMark re-evaluate the way he flirted with her at the Chinese restaurant. The fact that’s it’s love and not just lust for his Innie is a terrifying thing for oMark, who’s been trying to diminish all these flashes.

Not just to diminish his Innie, but also diminishing whatever he felt when he looked at Helena.

Them flirting was confirmed by both Adam Scott and Ben Stiller. They said there was a heavy flirtatious charge in the air. (Partially due to Britt Lower and Adam Scott’s chemistry, but also because this is just the dynamic between Helena Eagan and Mark Scout.)

Ben Stiller: “Its a question of what permeates, what pheromones are there, what’s the love feeling like…” They both said there’s an unexpected connection, and it’s more ‘lived-in’ that their previous connections.

Finally, when Mark Scout gets the name wrong, which is exactly what Helena did, this is ultimately what seals his fate. Being similar to Helena Eagen is what seals his fate. Now, he’ll be trapped down there as their Innies take control over the floor.

But the Outies aren’t exactly invincible to the way their Innies feel about eachother, either.

That’s why Mark and Helena felt something for eachother at the restaurant, when Innie Mark and Mrs. Casey felt nothing at all.

It’ll be interesting to see where Season 3 goes.

[inexpressiblybeautiful]

The shot of the fortune cookies on the red napkin under their handshake is making me insane. 😵‍💫

[sorrydetka]

mark getting his chip flooded to see his dead wife and instead the first memory is of him fucking helena eagan.. she flooding on my severance chip till i hemorrhage

[jesterkoops]

It’s really funny to me to see people suddenly going all SHOCKED PIKACHU after this episode with the realisation that the show will have to address how Helena being complicit in Gemma’s.. whatever it is is going on down there has repercussion for Mark and Helly's (and Helena's) relationship. And saying this suddenly changes how they see Mark and Helly’s relationship and HELLY BAD! NO MORE HELLY FOR MARK! NO!

Really?? It took THIS episode for you to realise this was literally going to be THE major point of conflict for them?? I remember finishing the rewatch before this season began and saying this very thing to my friends. Why else would they even make MarkHelly a thing and reveal she was Helena in the very next episode, if that’s not precisely where this was going to go? This episode hasn’t really changed how I see Mark and Helly/Helena’s relationship at all, because for me it was a given all along this was bound to come up. It was literally THE thing that shot my interest in their dynamic through the roof, when before I was like "meh, another workplace romance between leads". There was literally nothing in this latest episode that changed how I see any of these dynamics. The specifics of whether Gemma was braindead, or alive, or cryogenically frozen, or what have you has no impact on the fact that Helena is to some degree complicit in all this (to what degree, and just how much she actually knows, is still TBD; she's still such a mystery - I have another post about this in the works).

And what baffles me is that some seem to think that the people who came up with THIS show couldn’t possibly find a way to develop this that hasn’t yet occurred to us. "Well, I can't see any other way this ends if not with Mark getting Gemma back, and Helena evil/sacrificing herself for Mark and Gemma/dead" (or something along those lines). Like, sure, that's the most logical conclusion and THAT is what intrigues me: what am I missing that these writers have up their sleeves? It baffles me that it took ONE episode for some to be willing to strip away the entire complexity of the show and the innies/outies dichotomy and the moral and empathy dilemma it is supposed to force upon us through Mark acting as a 'conduit' for the audience.

Pitting up the two relationships against each other as one being superior to the other trivialises innies and their feelings the same way Lumon does. You can't on one hand feel empathy for Gemma's multiple innies and consider their feelings as valid and the impact they have on Gemma and in the same breath dismiss innie Mark's and Helly's feelings as childish and unimportant.

Being able to dismiss innie Mark's feelings as unimportant or inferior to outie Mark's feelings is an easy solution to the struggle reintegration is supposed to present. Take away that struggle, and you remove what's narratively interesting about reintegration.

Along these lines, the last few days I realised that Gemma HAD to be alive for this to be interesting because her being actually dead gives Mark (and consequently the audience) an easy way out. If the whole point of reintegration involves Mark dealing with the fact that he merged a part of him that loves Gemma with a part of him that never did and loves someone else instead... well, if Gemma is actually gone, that doesn't pose much of a challenge for Mark, does it? If Gemma were gone, his predicament would be the same as any other widower who falls in love again. But if she's alive, he has to actually wrestle with the two parts of himself that pull him in two different directions and want two different lives.

And we circle back to point 2: the only way point 3 is narratively interesting is if innie Mark's feelings are just as strong and important and valid as outie Mark's feelings.

And, to a lesser extent, for his feelings to be as strong and important and valid, Helena CANNOT just be a straight up villain because then we would circle back to point 3; it would be the equivalent of Gemma being dead. It would strip the dilemma from Mark because it would be easy for him to dismiss his feelings for her/Helly.

I admit, this is a very very tricky situation to navigate for the writers to avoid falling into cliches and to wrap it up in a way that's original and satisfying. But it's ridiculous to be definitive about an endgame at this stage when there is still so much story to go through. You are literally jumping the gun and reaching conclusions while missing a ton of information and development still.

[cococat38]

My analysis of the MarkHellyna musical theme in Severance It is such a beautiful theme that carries so much meaning and complexity for the 3 characters that it represents The theme is heard often, but this is just a short video to show my understanding of how it is used!