#severance theory

[percyvalli]

I literally cannot get over the religious allegory in Severance. More specifically how the Eagan handbook and The YOU you are by Ricken are presented as opposing religious texts in the innie world. Like The YOU you are is so incredibly important to Mark's innie while being something that outie Mark wouldn't even open is just so poignant. I love the idea that while Ricken is for sure a weirdo he also has ideas that are transformative for the right crowd.

His book is redundant in the outie world because it contains things an outie is already aware of (and some things that an outie would know are false depictions of history). Mostly sense of self and relationships. But an Innie has no prior info on how any of these social/personal conventions are supposed to work except what they are fed by Lumon so a book full of drawn-out explanations of what it means to be a person and what it means to have relationships with other people would in fact change an innie's life enough to warrant a religion-like following of the book. Much like how the Handbook functions for Innie's like Irving.

[no-longer-in-the-laboratory]

As tiny and inconsequential of a moment that it is, there's one singular line in Severance s2 EP 5 that absolutely shattered my heart,

It's in that scene after Irving's funeral, after Milchick pulled Ms. Huang out before she can perform the Theremin, she protests with a simple "But I practiced!"

It's such a harsh reminder that she, above all else, is still a child. It means that she was proud of her theremin playing, and that she actually looks forward to actually getting to play it for people. She complains to Milchick in that scene like a little girl complaining to her father because she missed a chance to prove herself. It's the most human thing we ever hear Ms. Huang say.

And looking at her, what do we even really know about Ms. Huang? Other than the fact that she's young, and claims that she was a crossing guard before working the severed floor? We know she takes the place of Milchick's previous position, and he's not severed. But we got to see Milchick outside of the building. We never see Ms. Huang up to any activities outside of what goes on in the severed floor. Does she live there? After all, how would Lumon be able to cover up the optics of a child working for them? If a kid was publicly working for them, wouldn't the anti-lumon crowd be vocally condemning them? Wouldn't we see someone on the news with a 'Lumon practices child labor' sign?

And if she does live there, and her life working as assistant manager of the severed floor is all she knows, then does that mean that Milchick really is the closest thing she has to a father? And the Innies she oversees, as detached from them as she is- (hence the "I'm your supervisor, not your friend" line) Close enough to a family that some part of her craves the idea of impressing them?

When did she practice? Does she have any free time to do so? Did she cram extra time on the instrument during meal breaks? Did she learn the theremin completely from scratch down there? If so, did she start practicing by playing kier hymns? Has she tried to compose her own songs?

'But I practiced!' is the most emotion we see Ms Huang express and I think it's absolutely gutwrenching considering the implications.

[angelofdumpsterfires]

severance as a concept fascinates me bc where and how do you draw the line between an individual’s memory and generalised knowledge of a populace, when does someone know too much trivia about something for it to just be pop culture, the innies know the names of US states and their general geography (did you see any buttes?) but when does that become personal experience? is there a standard for general knowledge they set? if so are certain “general knowledge” areas deemed “inconvenient” and made blank like memory ? does an innie have any knowledge of the baseline laws/political state of their country? (i’d argue they don’t given their reception to ricken’s book)

alternatively is it just hoped that cutting off personal memory is enough to remove the individual’s knowledge? is irv’s knowledge of art theory a standard amount or is it an artifact of his outie being a painter?? WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE? IS THE LINE DRAWN DIFFERENTLY FOR DIFFERENT INDIVIDUALS?

[happybirthdaydarling]

S2e8 really said no actually Cobel was obsessed with Mark because he’s the perfect test specimen of her invention. It’s not deeper.

She’s loyal to Kier because they indoctrinated her. She created severance and that’s why she wanted the severed floor so badly. She’s a mad scientist who got had her invention stolen by the company that created her.

Cobel’s backstory being simple and to the point was so shocking and refreshing. Her mother died from breathing problems caused by the Lumon factory. She was huffing ether at 8. She never got to grieve or say goodbye.

Did the idea of severance get birthed from her grief too?

[girlfailure-helena]

My biggest theory/prediction for s3 is that Helly will be forced to switch places with Helena, basically getting trapped again but in a different way. I feel like Jame telling Helly she has "Kier in her" (that Helena doesn't anymore) is foreshadowing for that or at least something similar happening. We never got an explanation why Jame even visited Helly, imo him telling her that he doesn't love his daughter is basically admitting he likes Helly more. Considering the insanity of the whole Eagan cult, Helly would be a preferred person to become the heir to the company (even though she hates it). I don't think she would have any sort of freedom, and would probably be forced to act a certain way, which would literally cause her to re-live what Helena had to experience, resulting in Helly gaining empathy for Helena. I'm not sure what would happen to Helena herself - if she becomes basically the "innie" or if she just gets "killed off" (temporarily). It's possible Mark's arc would be around being conflicted if he wants to just stay with Gemma or if he wants to save Helly, maybe the reintegration would cause that. I think forcing the viewer to empathize with Helena + making Mark not be able to be satisfied with just Gemma (his life started revolving around her absence after all) would be what the creators meant when they said s3 will make people mad?

[tsunamiholmes]

Irving telling Dylan to "hang in there" is absolutely a reference to the poster in the break room.

Why? Here's my take:

In s2e03 we didn't see the result of Irving asking Felicia about the Exports Hall. There was clearly something that took place after their conversation (whether it was her showing him where it is or something else damning) and I think he left some sort of clue for Dylan behind/near this poster.

Now, that's a stretch. I know. How/why would Irving risk that kind of endeavor? Why this poster?

I think it's possible that he could have learned enough through his conversation with Felicia to catch onto some of the other lies or reinforce his suspicions of Lumon & Helly/Helena and he was already planning to risk his job (and thus, his life) to uncover the truth.

He had already told Dylan about his discovery, so it makes sense that he'd leave the clue somewhere Dylan would be able to find it. This poster? Extremely aimed at Dylan. There is no way he wouldn't remember its existence and where it is. I mean, really, if you saw a poster of yourself in your most stressful moment you wouldn't remember it vividly?

I suppose we'll have to wait and see, but for now, I need to go continue tearing my hair out.

[markhellyna]

okay more severance theorizing based on the last few shots from the trailers we haven’t seen in the show yet!

i think jame is going to attempt to finish cold harbor HIMSELF. e9 begins with jame and everyone else under the impression that mark will complete cold harbor that day and how momentous that will be and obviously that doesn’t happen. jame coming down to MDR and telling helly she tricked him could be him referring to the fact that he and helena thought cold harbor would be finished that day? regardless of his exact meaning there, there is a clip we haven’t seen yet of someone who looks like jame working on a computer

and the next shot is of one of the cold harbor buckets reaching 100% completion

despite mark’s connection to gemma making him so good at refining, if they need to finish cold harbor before the file expires for whatever reason, i could definitely see jame using his power as ceo/the fact that he’s an eagan and well-versed in the four tempers to take on the task of getting the file past the finish line himself if none of the refiners are left to work on it

based on the trailer clip voiceover of cobel saying “she’s still alive!” and just…the direction the entire season has been going it’s safe to say the finale will be a gemma breakout attempt. it’s gonna be mark and probably helly racing against the clock to save gemma before jame completes cold harbor himself…potentially aided by a fed up milchick? maybe he’ll just help them deal with drummond idk if he would go so far as to get gemma out…but these clips seem related

idk who knows but i love trying to piece this together even when my theories turn out to be 10000% wrong

[but-i-want-to-live-with-you]

Interesting exchange I found on reddit about the "meet you at the equator" moment:

(link in the last comment: https://people.com/crime/donald-cline-netflix-documentary-fertility-doctor-impregnated-patients-own-sperm/)

Also (if you haven't noticed already) Lumon in its logo is at the equator- a building so big it's a continent

[severanceconfessions]

i think there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for miss huang's entire Deal and that it's clearly set up from season one: the Myrtle Eagan School For Girls.

[sageshouldknowbetter]

POST-FINALE GRÅKAPPAN IMPLICATIONS

Okay, so this is from the Gråkappan’s Wikipedia article. I posted this earlier thinking, “Huh, that’s weird. Wonder if it means something for Severance, haha” and GOOD LORD. IT DOES. IT DEFINITELY DOES.

Because what did Jame say to Helly down there? He doesn’t love his daughter Helena. But he sees the spirit of Kier in Helly — in her.

She grew up in the “poverty” of isolation from the outside world, and thus has an unspoiled, purified mind — a lavish church. Jame believes her outie, meanwhile, was given everything, but has been broken and irreparably tainted. Kier’s spirit… is gone.

So maybe Jame’s going to do what the Gråkappan does. Maybe he’ll switch the priests.

[cursedwithcaution]

Okay idk if this has already been theorized but I think I know what MDR is doing.

MDR spends all day sorting numbers based on, essentially, vibes. Helly is told that she needs to look for “scary numbers.”

Down on the testing floor, Gemma is put through rooms whose names align with MDR’s files.

Lumon is trying to create a version of severance that will allow people (probably the ultra rich) to siphon any unpleasant experience, ranging (from what we’ve seen) from dental procedures to writing thank you notes.

Gemma is asked how she feels afterwards. She tells them that her hand hurts. Not the emotion, just the physical pain that stays with her when she leaves the room.

The severance chip as we know it is locationally activated. We have the exceptions with OTC and the ORTBO (unless that wasn’t actually outside the facility), but the chips are based on location or manual control by a third party.

But we don’t always know where there will be an unpleasant experience. We can predict that the dentist will be uncomfortable or painful, but we don’t know if we’re going to, for instance, fall down and scrape a knee. But once we know something unpleasant or “bad” is about to happen, our brains react with stress, fear, etc.

I think MDR’s job is to isolate the numbers that represent Gemma’s uncomfortable (“negative”) emotions, repeating this process over and over until Lumon can use the data to activate severance chips with emotional responses rather than based on location. Because the goal, based on what we know and can guess, is for severance to be used to keep certain people from suffering, leaving a portion of themselves to experience anything they deem too mundane, painful, or upsetting.

Gemma’s brain has been severed into who knows how many innies. She’s been pushed to the limit, likely in ways worse than what we saw in episode 7.

I think MDR are sorting the numbers that represent pain/discomfort, and each room is designed based on the greatest amount of pain experienced in the other rooms, leaving Cold Harbor as the final boss of “how much can we make an innie suffer before they break?” Or something like that.

For some reason, Mark S is the only person who can finish Cold Harbor. He is unknowingly creating the worst torture specifically for Gemma. By sorting scary numbers into little boxes.

[percyvalli]

Another interesting thought I had about severance is the idea of innies being literal child-adults. Like they ARE children just with basic understandings that children don't have like how an elevator works, how to write, etc. There are a lot of things a child learns about how to live life as they grow up that are hard to explain or pinpoint exactly. You might be able to convince a child to clean their room with candy, but only for a while. Then after that, you'll need to convince them of the personal importance of cleaning their room, so they'll do it without a bribe, and then continue to do it for years after by themselves. This can apply to a lot of things like basic hygiene and even respecting elders or people above you in the social hierarchy. I think the Lumon execs who designed the severed floor know this and that's why they framed the handbook as a religious text.

Dylan specifically started out as a more selfish character, prioritizing perks and success within the company but he slowly moves away from that and completely disregards his previous opinions on perks as he gets older and develops a more adult attachment to his friends. You can only bribe a child for so long, eventually, they are going to realize that what you are offering them isn't worth the task without a proper explanation. Irving is a good example of an older innie who has graduated from the age where a bribe would work. So the legacy of the Eagans is what is most important to him. Lumon doesn't need to convince him to work anymore because they've set him up to convince himself every day. He has a higher reason for working that satisfies his adolescent need to understand the world he lives in.

What's really interesting is that Helly doesn't seem to follow normal child development at all. She immediately has no interest in perks, no interest in the Eagan legacy, and no respect for her "betters". Right after Helly's birth, Dylan tries to convince Helly of the worth of perks. This doesn't even remotely work. Then, when things keep getting worse in terms of Helly's compliance, Milkshake throws a party for her reaching 75% (73%). Once again trying to bribe her with a perk, which is something that should have (and has) worked for an Innie of her age (meaning newborn). Not only does she reject the developmentally appropriate motivators, but she also rejects the motivators of innies much much older than she is. This honestly makes me think she's on the autism spectrum because it reminds me of how I acted as a kid too. The path kids normally take made no sense to me so I refused to follow it and the adults around me really hated that.

Her outie has lived long enough to know that while she may not like or function well in the path made for her, she must walk it anyway. Her outie has never had a choice and while we don't know anything about Helena's upbringing, I can assume the will to go her own way was snuffed out a long time ago. (I think Helena knowing that she'd be difficult as an Innie is pointing towards all of this as well)

[tripleburger]

Three of my favorite things are when a show’s opening sequence tells the audience outright what’s going to happen, when sweeping thematic parallels exist between characters, and when mythological and etymological references abound. Many spoilers up to S2E6 and crack theories below because Severance does it all best.

Like many Severance theorists, I believe Gemma is in a coma or is otherwise completely brain dead. She is the Eurydice to Mark’s Orpheus. Mark is special because Gemma is special because her body and brain were well preserved. Unlike Lumon claimed, the title sequence implies that in the accident her car sunk into frozen water, a cold harbor. Because of this, her file is called Cold Harbor and she has more time than most before her body, brain, and file expire. Lumon staged her totaled car beneath the tree, burning it to hide the evidence and the removal of her actual body. Her husband, who loved her so much he choked on her ghost, consented to or was coerced by the company into splitting his own consciousness to escape her memory. Then his Innie somehow managed to make enough progress on her file to have her semi-dead body and partially reconstructed brain actively work on the Severed Floor as an almost normal wellness counselor. The opening sequence shows a car sinking under the ice of a frozen lake, and I believe it’s Gemma’s, not Cobel’s. Mark’s new focus on taking down Lumon will distract him from finishing her file, Cold Harbor, and it will expire. She will expire. Eurydice won’t walk out of the underworld because Orpheus looked back.

Then there’s Helly, the second drowning woman, a more tangible and present Eurydice who may still be lost in the end, a parallel to Gemma. The season 2 title sequence shows Helly R and Ms. Casey beneath Mark and under the water, running away from him in opposite directions. He can only follow one at a time. Helly is depicted under water in the pineapple bobbing sequence of the Lumon propaganda video and again when Irving waterboards Helena/Helly during the ORTBO. In one title sequence basement elevator shot, Gemma literally becomes Helly, all blurred into one person from Mark’s partially reintegrated perspective, just like how he sees Gemma’s face when he has sex with Helly and Helena. Their fates are tied.

The S2 opening sequence is full of babies and Helly/Helena is certainly pregnant. The last baby in the opening sequence has a Kier head, another Eagan for the family dynasty, courtesy of Mark. In the opening, Mark’s own reintegrated head morphs into a portrait of the Malice Ram typically associated with Helly, symbolizing their union in the form of a baby, and Mark watches the painting being carried away. Then the camera pans over to Gemma’s car half-sunk in the water. He can follow the Malice goat (Helly and their child) or follow his Bride of Woe (Gemma) into the lake. He can’t do both.

In S2E5 there is a faceless character (Petey? Fields?), apparently a Lumon doctor, who travels to the sub basement while whistling Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a song about a real shipwreck with no survivors and how Lake Superior never gives up her dead. The Lumon painting “Kier Invites You to Drink of His Water” depicts Eagan looking out over what appears to be the Great Lakes as if he owns them. Superior—Kier—will never give up his dead. Gemma will sink under the cold water, too deep to retrieve.

But aspects of Gemma may live on. Ms. Huang, the only child in the show with a major role, is not depicted directly in the opening sequence. Other than Cobel, no Lumon employee is (unless you count Helly/Helena as one person, which should be illegal). I think Ms. Huang is likely not Mark and Gemma’s lost child, as some theories speculate. She may be a clone of Gemma, given the apparent goat cloning happening in Mammalians Nurturable, though that’s a stretch with the timeline and her age. This would be more likely if Gemma had been working for Lumon for years prior, much like Burt seems to have been involved with Lumon as early as 20 years ago despite the Severance procedure only being 12 years old. I don’t have a grand, unifying theory of Ms. Huang except to say that her surname translates from Chinese to mean yellow, gold, bright, shining, or phoenix, which is interesting when tied to Gemma. Lumon doctors could potentially take Gemma’s finished Cold Harbor file, which is stored on her Severance chip, and implant it in Ms. Huang’s brain, a true resurrection of both body and mind, exactly what Lumon needs to restore its founder, Kier Eagan.

Another interesting breadcrumb is Ms. Huang’s handheld water toy of Kier swimming with rings. It has green rings (Woe, the Bride), blue rings (Malice, the Ram), and red rings (Dread, the Crone), but no yellow rings (Frolic, the Jester). Milchick tells Ms. Huang, “You must eradicate from your essence childish folly” before truncating this statement to simply “Grow” while punishing himself for failure following his performance review. If the Gemma clone theory is true, Lumon may want Ms. Huang to mature faster (removing folly and frolic) to ensure Gemma’s adult consciousness can successfully integrate with Ms. Huang’s preteen brain. Gemma is the closest they’ve ever come to fulfilling Kier’s wishes. The phoenix has to rise again.

Now for Devon, absolute queen that she is. Mark outright calls her “Persephone” when she asks him to name her. She’s the Queen of the Underworld, the wife of Hades (Ricken, who I hope isn’t actually evil), splitting her time between the living surface and the dead world below. Devon’s a mother, she’s associated with life giving and pregnancy and caring for her little brother at the lowest point in his life. In the myth, Persephone is so moved by Orpheus’ music and plight that she convinces Hades to give him a chance to save Eurydice, as long as Orpheus doesn’t look back. I think she’ll convince Ricken to use their new “in” with Natalie, the Board, and Lumon to help Mark, however tragically it ends.

Last but never least, Harmony Cobel. The blank, glowing face staring down at a book of the grassy goat field, watching Mark and Helly heads roll around the pasture. Innie Mark carries Outie Mark into this field, illuminated by Cobel. She’s not done watching them and, quite literally, has Mark on the brain. The sequence then follows the Mark in her head to the basement elevator. I believe that Cobel is Apollo, god of light, prophecy, and music (she sings!), in the Orpheus and Eurydice analogy, a parent of Orpheus himself. This is not to say that Cobel is literally Mark and Devon’s mother, though I’d love to see that madness, but that she views Mark as her son, often mentioning her own mother when they chat. She wants Mark to thrive like Apollo wants Orpheus to thrive. Extending this comparison to the Greek gods of the Orpheus myth, you have Milchick as Hermes, the messenger god so fond of his big words, the god who travels the world (on his motorcycle), and leads souls to the Underworld. Hermes takes Eurydice back to hell when Orpheus turns around to see her one last time.

[agir1ukn0w]

love does transcend severance. we can clearly see this with dylan and irving, and I think the reason why the love they have for their so's transcends severance is because they don't have the same traumatic relationship to love that mark and helly do. for them, love does not transcend severance. dylan's innie and outie both adore gretchen, in the same way that irving's innie and outie both adore burt. but mark's relationship to love is severely crippled by his grief over gemma. he severed himself in order to completely forget about her, so it follows that his innie would have no emotional connection to her. similarly, helena is emotionally stunted by her upbringing and lack of a healthy parental figure, as well as her own internalized self-hatred; whereas helly's feelings for mark s constitute actual love, helena's veer more towards lust and craving for something she's never had.

tldr; love transcends severance. but not for everyone. each character has a different experience of severance, influenced by their traumas and relationships.

[happybirthdaydarling]

There’s like a 0% chance Mark actually gets Gemma back. But like. I don’t think her officially dying or being unable to come back to full consciousness is the only option - it is very likely that by reintegrating he’ll never finish Cold Harbor, so I can easily see the tragedy being that she can never leave Lumon, that she cannot live without them or function without the completion of Cold Harbor.

My proposal is this: Gemma lives. She is the same Gemma (not a clone) but she is completely divorced of her past and memories. She lives but she is no longer Mark’s Gemma. She doesn’t know this man. She won’t just exist to be his wife. She cannot make herself love this stranger who saved her life. She is grateful. She thanks him. But she is not his wife anymore; and he isn’t her husband anymore either. They’ve changed too much. She goes off to live her own life and figure out who she is since she awoke as a clean slate. The beauty and the tragedy is that she doesn’t choose him in every life just like he doesn’t choose her in every life. But they got the one time. And it was good.

[tinseltrinkets]

Severence Theory: Was Dieter Eagan the First Ever “Innie”?

(Content Warning: Mentions of CSA, Spoilers)

Woe’s Hollow was an incredible episode and divergence from the cadence of the story.

While a lot of its emphasis was placed on the relationships between the current characters, we get significant insight into the lore of Lumon with the text found in the Scissor Cave.

Kier tells of his twin brother Dieter, a figure who up until now was unheard of and undocumented as a member of the Eagen family. On its face, the story tells of Dieter taking Kier into the forest where he masturbates and is subsequently melted presumably by or as a result of the temperament of Woe into “chaos’s whore”.

While this may be a specific detail to hone in on, in the description of Dieter’s self pleasuring specifically uses the word “thrust.”

Thrusting does not imply self pleasure but instead penetration.

This description appears to be somewhat akin to a warped perception of Kier having been assaulted in the woods.

His association with Woe and the subsequent “punishment” of Dieter seems to represent a sense of self punishment or guilt in regards to sexuality.

As a result of being presumably assaulted, Kier’s trauma could have been manifested into either a non-tangible idea of Dieter or as an alter.

Many cases of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) stem from childhood sexual assault where the brain compartmentalizes its consciousness and memories into separate “personalities” called alters.

Dieter could be Kier’s alter that holds his sexual trauma and is blamed for its infliction of the temperament of “Woe”.

Kier and Dieter being within the same person can be further indicated in how the marshmallows showing Kier’s face are thrown into the fire, the imagery reflecting Kier’s face being melted as Dieter’s was in the story.

This is shown after Milchick reprimands Helena for mocking the story and “not understanding” it. Rather than as a punishment for misbehavior, this could be Milchick’s inadvertent way of trying to explain to Helena what her ancestor’s story meant.

To a degree, Helena may already understand without consciously knowing it. When Helena says that Helly is like her sister, she may not be lying. She could view Helly as a sister in the same way Kier views Dieter as a brother.

The Innies in the Severance universe highly resemble Alters and how they function.

They have the same perception of concepts that their Outies have but hold different memories. Their disorientation and lack of memory reflect the amnesia that is often used as a defining symptom of DID.

Kier’s experience with DID could be what inspired Lumon to develop the Severance procedure and their view of Innies.

Whereas Kier views humans as holding the four tempers, Innies may be viewed as only having one, hence why they’re viewed as subhuman. Kier views his alter Dieter as embodying Woe and subsequently seen as subhuman, as “no one’s brother”.

This would reflect how the four MDR workers resemble the four tempers respectively, Mark (Woe), Helly (Malice), Dylan (Frolic), and Irving (Dread).

In terms of theming, Severance references repression and compartmentalizing them as separate entities to deal with strong emotions, especially in the case of Mark Scout, who’s reason for severing was so he could forget his Woe in relation to Gemma, that Woe which now embodies his Innie Mark S.