#what if she works for lumon

[boygirlctommy]

the fact that weve seen so much of marks life, and irvings paintings, and dylans kid, but absolutely NONE of hellys life does worry me

[bumblingbabooshka]

It's obviously a diabolically infantilizing move by Lumon to make all the innies' manager a child but do we think it's also some sort of dig at Milchick? His computer's home screen still says 'Cobel' AND he has a child as his second in command and there's a moment near the end of the first episode where he seems to be terse with her, ordering her out of the room and closing the door when she tries to talk to him.

[oldtestleper]

i wonder if it all Has To Do With Gemma actually. like i thought for a minute lumon was effectively just using her reanimated body as a prop to induce an unresolvable misery in outie mark so he would keep coming back to work (because for some reason his mystery work is so important and hes the best at it...) but she "died" before he started working on the severed floor. so they collected her body, faked her death, and started testing severance or some aspect of severance on her, and then they either headhunted mark, or he applied to work at lumon and genuinely volunteered for severance, and then he became the most important boy whose work must continue--but either way gemma's death and severance came first. she was abducted by lumon before she was made into an instrument of lumon's manipulation of mark, such that the manipulation couldn't have been the purpose of her abduction. unless the car accident was somehow staged in order to induce a grief in mark so profound that lumon anticipated he would be able to be guided to pursue severance because for some reason they thought this college professor was that important to their work and there was no other way they could get him. but that just seems convoluted you know. occams razor what does lumon WANT. employees that you can do anything to and who have no context for your demands or sense of their own personal rights and dignity and never expect to leave perhaps?

[mawklee]

needed to post the scene in severance that always makes me laugh the hardest

[horsegirlhob]

One very funny thing about Severance to me is how like, they reveal Ms. Cobel lives next to Mark and I thought "oh wow the company really keeps a tight eye on their employees." Then time goes on and it becomes increasingly obvious that no actually this woman is just a huge freak about Mark specifically. She's baking him weird cookies. She's breaking into his house. She's making him spend time with his dead wife he doesn't remember. She's skipping work to pretend to be his sisters lactation consultant. She's going to parties with him and hugging him when he says he'll quit Lumon. I'm obsessed with how much she's obsessed with him I need to know what her fucking deal is.

[consultingfujoshi]

absolutely certain that helly is in fact helena is in disguise by this point and it was not a difficult thing to work out frankly but what absolutely knocks me on my ass is the REASON she's down there. after 2x01 we all assumed she was trojan horseing herself to spy on the rest of MDR and dissuade them from causing any more trouble. makes perfect sense right the fate of this company is in her hands. but NO!!! helena with her incredibly privileged spoiled brat outlook on everything, who has been told she's part of the most important lineage that's gonna save the world her whole life, sees a version of herself she heretofore did not even see as HUMAN forging the kinds of connections she has never had once in her life, and you think she's just gonna keep sending her down there and letting her have that? when she, the heiress of lumon and great granddaughter of kier, doesn't? she wants to experience what it's like to have no one expect anything of you, where you can express yourself however you want and kiss people just because you feel like it!! she views her innie as so far beneath her and yet she's so desperate for a taste of what it's like to be her! so much she's willing to KILL HER!! she's down there because she's fucking jealous of her innie!!! girl oh my god!!!!

[athetos]

Some thoughts from severance s2e3, and the season in general:

I 100% assumed the reason the goat people were asking to see their bellies was to see if they had belly buttons. Since the prevailing theory is that the goats are for cloning purposes, i figured they wanted to make sure they weren’t clones (clones not having belly buttons because they weren’t birthed/have need for an umbilical cord). If we take the pouches line at face value, I’d guess that they were told a rumor that MDR had pouches, to sow division and fear between the departments (like the fake uprising told to MDR about O&D, and vice versa).

The Export Floor. The fact that O&D used to deliver things there themselves, but then a courier was used. My theory is that someone saw something there they shouldn’t have. I don’t know how o!Irving knows about it, but I’m not here to discuss that right now. What I want to talk about is the name. The obvious one is exporting goods (or even ideas) to other countries, and this could simply mean it’s where stuff made by O&D gets sent up to the ‘outtie’ world. But there’s another possibility - export as in transferring data to another software/format. I think it’s this meaning that is critical, and has big implications for Gemma/Ms. Casey. They could be transferring the data MDR has refined to her chip, or in some way or another, working on “Cold Harbor.”

I am very firmly in the ‘that’s Helena’ camp now. I don’t think this is in character for Helly, as the extremely awkward conversation in the hall with Mark as well as telling Irving they ‘got him’ sealed it for me. I’m fairly certain that management knows it’s Helena; after all, they don’t activate her chip, although I won’t rule out she paid someone off/threatened them to do it. That said, I like to believe she compromised with the board to go down as herself, instead of as Helly. This would also mean that she can encourage Mark to go places that Lumon specifically wants him to see, instead of ones that are much more confidential. However, I think she’ll end up siding with the innies by the end, simply because the connections she will forge with them will be the only genuine and loving relationships in her life.

I didn’t mention this before, but i’m pretty sure Irving knows that Helena/Helly is lying, because he was the only innie who spent enough time outside to know that it was winter and she couldn’t have been gardening. He distrusts her, that’s why he only told Dylan about Burt.

Upon immediately seeing Dylan’s wife I assumed she was a hired actress. However it genuinely appears to be her (granted, I’m faceblind, but the voice sounded the same when she was with his outtie later in the episode). Lumon clearly thinks that this perk will keep i!Dylan in line, but I think it might backfire spectacularly, or at least cause significant drama - his wife is going to fall in love with his innie. Think about it, if their marriage is going through a rough patch, and she gets to spend time with a version of her husband who lacks all of the assumptions/grudges he has against her - basically starting all over… yeah, it’s gonna get strange. The way she talked about it to o!Dylan was like she was hiding it from him, almost like it’s the beginning of a potential affair…

(I also am still of the mind that either she or one of their children is terminally ill in some way, hence the benefits/insurance that Dylan is always looking after. He also complained a few times about having sore arms and jokes he works out. I feel this might be related somehow? But not sure…)

I stand by my theory that the board is actually the motherboard and is Kier’s (and his successors?) consciousness, or something of that ilk. The board was referred to as “it” in this episode (also “they”, but I believe that was meant as in plural, including Natalie). So I think we actually don’t have any proof that it’s multiple people or even people period. It will be like the export double meaning I mentioned earlier. Again, the board is hot on Mark staying and working because it wants him to finish Cold Harbor so it can begin the revival of Kier’s family (the rotation could potentially mean their minds being uploaded. Or something of that nature.)

No big theories or details to chew on here, but things that got big reactions from me: the Black Kier portraits I was expecting but still not prepared for. I desperately want to see Natalie’s portraits that she received; were they all biracial, all women, or both? The idea of genderbent biracial Kier family is killing me. This is like Hamilton (I think). Cobel definitely was going to die if she went into the building, she made the right call, I was terrified that her car might explode as she left. Phew. Next episode is going to be a roller coaster, I can tell. Shocked that he’s starting reintegration so soon but I’m here for it. Worried that Devon is going to get murdered. And I’m waiting for Cobel to get hunted down by Mark or for her to willingly seek him out as she realizes this is her only chance left to… do whatever the fuck it is she wants to do.

[jjcattt]

okay I have. sooooo many thoughts about the new severance episode. here they are in roughly chronological order:

what's up with the breathing tube (?) in cobel's car?

mr milchick did NOT look happy about those paintings. with this and the screensaver I'm wondering if his dissatisfaction with lumon higherups will be a big plot point this season. I hope he gets a redemption arc his ass is too fat to be evil

what the fuck is up with the goats???? with the introduction of all those new characters it seems like they'll be important later. I also noticed a goat statue in Devon's house. what does it meannnnnn

we didn't see much helly in this episode but I'm still very firm on my position that helly is NOT helena.

irvingggggggg...... he drew burt EVERY SINGLE DAY..... irving was the only thing that burt was scared of...... if they don't see each other again this season I'll cry

note that irv seems to have a photographic memory though. I wonder if that'll come into play later.

serious props to Natalie's actor. she's so perfectly terrifying this episode.

interesting to see them trying to rework the you you are. I'm willing to bet good money that they'll manage to turn it into some crazy pro-lumon propaganda with those "slight changes".

the thing with the light is so insanely smart. bet you it was Devon's idea lol

mark's reaction to the confirmation that Gemma's alive... god I hope the brain death theory isn't real I can't stand seeing him so distraught like that.

THEY DID IT. HE REINTEGRATED.

that ending in general was just. so fucking good. as a big Tech Guy i loved all the little sciencey stuff. the oscilloscope? the resonant frequency sand thing? all the little switches? fucking awesome

the cuts were much quicker and less disorienting than petey's were, so I hope that means it actually worked and he's not going to lose it like petey did. please?

AND THE CREDITS. THEY'RE WHITE ON BLACK. NOT BLACK ON WHITE. THERE'S BEEN A HUGE SHIFT AND I'M SO READY FOR IT.

I think this is my favourite episode of season 2 so far. I know that's not saying much because we're only 3 episodes in but I loved this episode so so much. can't believe we have to wait another week for episode 4...

[ninthprime]

severance 2x01 thoughts (spoilers)

bit late but i’m just throwing a few things down just in case

three things about the new MDR employees that stuck out to me: 1. mark w. and gwendolyn used to work in the same office (but not dario!); 2. mark w. states his old team (presumably also gwendolyn’s) never made quota; and 3. every bizarre thing that dario says about how low-tech his old office was. i don’t know how important these characters are or which aspects of this are relevant but they all feel like pretty purposeful lore details.

i’m like 65% sure on the “helena pretending to be helly” theory- it’s the occam’s razor explanation- but i think if that’s the case, we’re going to know about it within a couple episodes. the tension will be us as viewers worrying about what helena will do with the innies and whether helly can be helped, not about whether it’s helly in the first place. the other 35% of me thinks that’s helly but something happened over the timeskip that we haven’t seen yet, most likely some sort of threat or manipulation of her by lumon (maybe something on the testing floor?). my absolute wildest theory would be that they’ve reintegrated her, but i feel like something that big wouldn’t happen offscreen…

i also think miss huang’s deal is going to be either way more simple or way more complicated than anybody is guessing. my kneejerk thought is that she went to the same school as cobel did, but there’s gotta be something to that “crossing guard” line. the other scene that stuck out to me was her and irving glaring at each other for an extended moment before they went into the break room- but i can’t tell if that’s foreshadowing a later reveal or setting up a future connection/rivalry?/etc. (it does kind of remind me of that “irving used to have milchick’s job” theory)

i think milchick’s being purposefully messed with or tested somehow. being given a child as his new subordinate/replacement, his computer not being updated, etc. he probably knows or is at least guessing at it, too. why the board is doing that, though, is beyond me. maybe they think he could’ve been collaborating with cobel?

i keep seeing people asking why the outies would go back to work after the s1 finale. i actually think the guys, at least, all have good reasons- mark needs to understand what “she’s alive” means, irving has his lumon investigation, and dylan has to support a family (which i’ve been guessing is the reason he took a severed job in the first place). helena’s the only one who may have been reluctant, but the decision may not have been hers alone depending on lumon internal politics. i suspect what actually happened is lumon didn’t want them all back due to risk of another rebellion and either fired or suspended dylan and irving- but they let mark come back because they need him for whatever they’re doing with gemma/ms. casey. that’s also why they let everyone come back when mark started causing trouble; they want mark there and working specifically.

the easiest way for the MDR team to figure out how long it’s actually been since the s1 finale would probably be to find and talk with burt’s old O&D co-workers, but i’m not sure they’re still on that floor? it looks like we might have multiple basement floors now? not sure about that but then where did mark w., gwendolyn and dario go. are they just fired/dead

at the end of this season i need to make a compilation of every absolutely batshit milchick line that tramell tillman delivers with 100% seriousness. give him an emmy. we’re underrating the bit after the “throuple” line where he just follows it up with “thankfully, she failed at this” while the camera stays on mark’s baffled face. peak comedy.

i would kill and die for irving

[queerfandomtrifecta]

I’m convinced we haven’t seen Helly R since season one.

I have another short post about a little part of this but just gonna combine it all into one here, but I do NOT trust s2 Helly R yet. There’s a lot of reasons and I’m currently rewatching for mannerism differences between Helly v Helena, but Helly R in s2 has felt very stiff and off in a few places (when she asked Mark if he was okay in the breakroom, telling Irving “we’ve got you”) which felt SO uncomfortable compared to s1 Helly R to me. That bothers me almost more than her lying about what she saw when they did the OTC thing and withholding the knowledge that her outie is an Eagan. Also, it’s Helly who very very quickly (and conveniently) notices the cameras are missing and says “wait, what happened to the security camera?” when it’s suggested Milchick was probably listening.

I think it’s totally plausible that if they can wake the innies up on the outside they can let the outies into the severed floor. I think Helly R saw too much and we’ve seen Helena Eagan pretending to be Helly the entire time.

I fully believe that they’re telling the truth when they say there are no cameras or mics on the severed floor anymore. Why would they need them with Helena Eagan herself there listening to everything?

Also, Mark is trying to find Ms. Casey/Gemma with “Helly” helping him. Helena Eagan and Lumon clearly don’t want that to happen, so with Helena in there acting as Helly R, she could point Mark in every direction but the right one and seem like it’s all genuinely an attempt to help. If it ever didn’t and Mark called her out on it, the fact that Helly had feelings for Mark at the end of s1 and was having a hard time helping him find his wife because of that is a good enough excuse to not blow Helena Eagan’s cover.

I’m rewatching to compare the two characters and see if there’s anything uniquely Helena that’s coming across in s2 Helly R or anything that would definitively rule this out as an option, but right now I don’t think we’ve seen Helly R yet this season.

Bonus theory/analysis that I cannot articulate well yet but am including anyway for some reason: s2 Helly is in solid blue every time weve seen her so far. Blue top, blue skirt. Every episode of s2 so far. She started in that in s1e1 and moved away from it, but that’s not happening here yet. Wish I could wrap up my train of thought here in a way that is coherent and concise, but TL;DR, blue (and green) is a Lumon color throughout, especially when severed characters are involved. (Petey reintegrated then died wearing that red and blue striped robe, the blue and red beta fish in the divided tank in Mark’s house, Gemma’s red and green candle Cobel takes from Mark’s basement, etc etc) I’m working on a longer piece of meta about color symbolism in Severance as I rewatch but yeah for now, im just not trusting the head to toe blue every single day for s2 Helly R.

[eightw]

what if ms cobel is an innie that got out? like she was originally a severed employee, but proved to be fervently passionate about the company (like irving but 100x more intense) and so they promoted her to manager. that would make sense from lumon's POV - you have someone who has no prior memories and is loyal only to you. if you're worried about keeping secrets, or having someone do the dirty work, she's perfect, because she's already doing it.

some of this is inspired by another post i saw theorizing that the harmony s. in the control room is our ms. cobel; we already know that cobel is her maiden name. which, in my opinion, it would make total sense for her to no longer go by selvig, because in essence she's killed harmony selvig. everything she does on the outside, as wacky old mrs. selvig, is a pantomime of a woman she's only heard about, maybe seen recordings of. a wardrobe that was there the first day on the outside, maybe some old pictures of people she doesn't know. lumon would've given her all the info they had on her outie, but does it matter, when cobel's life is lumon? the shrine in the basement is an effort to bring the order she was used to on the severed floor outside, to make her world continue to make sense. even if she loves the job, that is an inherently miserable existence - not to mention that she knows nothing outside of it. cobel could literally be only ten years old or younger, for all we know.

and maybe harmony s. initially took the job because her husband, like how mark took the job because of gemma's death. but cobel can't remember this husband (or her mother, or family) at all - her obsession with both innie and outie mark comes from that empty space inside of her. a desire to understand what that love and that loss feels like, to understand the thought process of someone who would get severed because of it, and to understand how she feels about it. it would make her experiments on mark s. and miss kacey make total sense. she wants to see if you can make the innie remember.

if you wanted you could even connect her to reintegration - she knows it's possible because either she's looked into it herself or she started experiencing signs of it, after going without a switch for so long.

the theory that helly r. in s1e2 is actually helena is what started me thinking about this. if that's true, then they clearly have a way to alter the procedure somehow and make it so the brain doesn't switch. if they can do it one way, they can most definitely do it the other.

[lesbianalanwake]

Severance S2E3..... I'm chewing through drywall:

-- Natalie referred to the Board as "it"..... it? it??

-- speaking of that: Natalie? are you good?? how literal is the concept of speaking for the Board? Natalie??

-- Milchick packing away the box of paintings (and it doesn't quite fit.... girl....), and Cobel driving away from Helena's invitation to speak to the Board (sleeping in her car.... where is she driving to)..... obsessed with them and everything they do, actually. enemy of my enemy please god 🙏

-- Devon and Gretchen meeting the innie version of someone they love, and seeing how innocent/lost/earnest that person is, how they echo the person they know but less closed off and worn down..... Devon's face when she said Mark's a good egg, and Gretchen's face when Dylan G said he would make her proud..... oh I'm chewing through drywall AND glass. (the stark contrast to the contempt that Helena's father shows towards Helly..... ough)

-- the unhinged conversations between Cobel and Helena..... careful flat affect and measured tone while simmering with cold rage. makes me wonder if it's a "raised by Lumon" thing, which makes me wonder about Miss Huang and her impassive mannerisms..... Miss Huang get behind me. Dylan worrying about her.... 😢

-- Dr. Asal Reghabi's first in-person appearance: beat a man to death with a bat. Dr. Asal Reghabi's second in-person appearance: unsevered Mark's brain. what WILL she do next. how long did she work for Lumon? going to make a tentative guess that it might have been for quite some time, because she's got those funky off-putting ways of saying things, but she emotes a bit more than, say, Cobel. so maybe more of a Milchick type

-- Lumon wanting to edit Ricken's book.... trying to absorb and rewrite every part of the narrative in order to control it. a dumb out of touch self-help book, but it meant something in an environment stripped of most anything else, just like Miss Casey's "wellness" sessions meant something to the goat people. scraps of some kind of meaning, and now getting twisted and taken away. I am actually sick in the head over it

-- we have GOT to get a copy of The Body Keeps The Score down there to them next

-- that has to be Helena because 1) we don't spend time with her that isn't driven by another character, and 2) Irving's instincts. and girl must have studied the security footage closely because she's got a lot of Helly's mannerisms.... but not all of them, and so much of what she does is stilted or subdued. even the register of her voice isn't quite right. studying Britt Lower's microexpressions and body language under a microscope like who ARE you

-- Reghabi talking about 5 brain waves while the macrodata files emphasize the number 4..... chewing thoughtfully on it..... the input survey also has 5 questions. is this anything

-- also pondering how Reghabi says the only way for Mark to get information in and out of the severed floor is through reintegration. locked down tight with code detectors, and an afterimage is too ephemeral, but information is encoded within the brain, and that can't be locked down so tightly despite every effort to control it.... you carry it with you.... the body keeps the score

[iam-the-wild]

I can't wait to find out what happened to Gemma after the accident. Did she have a funeral or were they unable to find her body? Did she get severely injured and then kidnapped by Lumon? Did she die? Is Lumon just going through the Morgue looking for bodies? But if they could bring people back to life, why wouldn't they bring Petey back? Having a severed worker collapse and die is not good publicity.

Then there is the whole thing with the CEOs and how each one dies while they're a CEO so I wonder if Lumon found a way to transfer consciousness to a different body. That could be what Macrodata Refinement is doing. Taking all the data included in a conscious and refining it so that it could be moved and transfered somewhere else.

That doesn't explain Gemmas body though and how it's still preserved if she did die. She mentions she's only been awake for about a hundred hours when she's not working so where does she go when she's out? Is her body able to just shut off all processes or does Lumon set up everything needed to keep someone alive while sedated? It'd be cool if it turns out Gemma is part human part machine.

[upinyourcortex]

i have a theory that milchick is also severed, but in a different way than the others. petey mentioned a department where people literally cannot leave, and the only time we've seen milchick outside of lumon industries is when he was at dylan's house. i think it’s also linked to gemma/ms casey; because cobel mentioned that she was only part time, and when they fired her they didn't send her away, she went down to the testing floor, and milchick refused to even accompany her to the elevator. these two are the only people whose outies we haven't seen. we know why for ms casey, and we have solid visual proof that cobel isn't severed, we see her living her life (that consists entirely of stalking mark), but again, we never saw milchick outside lumon doing something that wasn’t related to keeping lumon secrets or keeping control of his employees. Surely they would have shown us something that indicates he isn't severed, right ?

Also some of his reactions to the things the others tell him regarding severance piqued my curiosity. When helly r is in the breakroom and tells him "you have to know this is fucked right ?" and he replies "not right now", the implications of that sentence, to me, are interesting, like what do you mean not right now ? Is there any other time where you would have agreed with her ? Are you agreeing with her now but you can't verbalize it because you know you're both being watched and monitored ?

his face when irving goes off on him about still having his memories even when he leaves work. The fact that he says nothing, but still looks like that rattled him, idk it just seems like there’s shit we don't know about milchick, and some of it seems sinister as hell to me.

[waitinbythephone]

if the show doesn't make helena and irving bailiff interact at some point I will literally damn it all to hell and do it MYSELF on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN DOT ORG. this is a threat.

like are you kidding. mr irving bailiff clearly working for lumon, investigating all that he can on previous lumon crises AND fellow lumon employees, and sending subconscious messages to his innie to try and uncover what the hell is going on down there. Interacting. with corporate heiress princess miss helena eagan who is Clearly questioning, realising, figuring out that everything she thought her life was, had to be, nothing more than a personification of lumon, can crumble under the power of genuine, unconditional love, care and respect? of course this is like cocaine to me. GIVE IT TO ME RIGHT NOW. OR I WILL HAVE TO COOK IT MY FUCKING SELF.

and don't even get me started on helly and irving b like they are FRIENDS. IRVING WAS HER CHEERLEADER. IM GOING TO DIE. they're so interesting to me I need to put them under a microscope. god I miss helly r so bad give me my girl back

[an-orca-on-a-stroll]

Severance season 2 ep 2 thoughts/theories under cut

long post!

1. So as I theorized last week, here's the confirmation everything that mr Milkshake told the innies was, indeed, 100% bullshit. It's been 3 days, not 5 months, and also:

this is false bc we know now that Mark didn't want to return, instead it was Milchick who worked very hard to convince him.

This is also false, they were fired and then re-hired after Mark S' outburst.

This is fake as well (this one was very obvious tbh). So I think it's safe to assume that anything else Milchick told the innies should be taken with a huge grain of salt at best, personally I don't believe a single word, especially his claim that there are no more cameras.

2. MS COBEL IS BACKKKKK MY BEAUTIFUL QUEEN WITH SO MANY DISORDERS. Her scenes were very interesting. She was offered a promotion yet was not happy about it. I had my suspicions before but this basically confirms that she doesn't really care about her career at Lumon, she specifically wants to be in the severed floor, so when they promoted her, and as a result removed her from the severed floor, she was not happy. Though of course they didn't give her the option to refuse. I think she's right and that Lumon is scared of her, for some reason they don't want her in the severed floor anymore. Much to think about. I think there is some fuckery similar to the Gemma situation going on with either her (supposedly dead?) husband and/or child. This to me is confirmed by something i bring up in my next point

3. I love that we see outie Mark genuinely furious for the first time ever, it's definitely the most "non-sadness-adjacent" emotions he's ever shown.

I mean think about this guy. His wife dies, he falls apart from grief and can't put himself together, loses his job, then he gets another job that is weird and everybody hates this for him but he does it anyway until after two years it feels like maybe, maybe he might be ready to start moving on.

Then he meets his (alleged) coworker who tells him they're best friends and pulls him into a big conspiracy about Lumon, shortly after said colleague dies in very suspicious circumstances, then he's a witness and accessory to murder (of the head of security of his workplace, no less), then his innie unexpectedly comes out for 40 minutes and wow, nobody told him that could happen except for the fine print in what I'm certain was like, a hundreds page long contract considering how controversial his job is. And his innie says some very unsettling shit about the work he's been doing for the past 2 years, but he is physically unable to remember all this fucked up stuff despite being in the middle of it 8 hrs a day for 2 years. Then his innie claims that his wife, whose dead body he saw with his own eyes, is actually alive. And oh his weird apparently well-meaning neighbor was actually his boss this whole time, stealing his dead wife's things, keeping him under surveillance and repeatedly invading his privacy and trust.

I'm not surprised Mark's first reaction was wanting to get away, he was probably in shock and denial bc that is a lot to take in. He tentatively returns bc, like Cobel said, he does get swayed easily, but I think deep down he knows something fucked up is happening at Lumon (read the paragraph above again for points) but I think he becomes fully convinced something's up with Gemma after his encounter with Cobel. Cobel's reaction is interesting to say the least.

she does this like. Pained sigh, then silence for a WEIRDLY long time, and she looks like she might start crying??? am I imagining this. Like she looks genuinely in pain. Then she screeches, almost runs Mark over, and runs away? I really think Cobel's in a similar position as Mark and something is going on at Lumon with someone she cares about, this is why she's so obsessed with Mark and Gemma specifically

4. Irving's outie is so damn cool. Like there's something about the way he acts?? That makes him so cool, his actor is really good at showing the difference between his two selves.

This line his hilarious considering what actually made innie Irving want to rebel, instead of his outie's weird subliminal messages. Anyway who is he talking to? Whoever is is, they clearly don't want to speak with Irving though.

5. ALSO?

I have no idea what the fuck is going on. WHY does Burt know where Irving lives? Did innie Irving tell him that when they met? Did they even meet?? When we see innie Irving again at Lumon for the first time he's banging against the elevator like he was banging on Burt's door, did they even see each other? If they didn't meet, again how does Burt know where Irving lives? Burt's name was circled in the map outie Irving had, did they already meet in the past? Maybe Irving was trying to convince other severed employees that Lumon is evil? Nothing makes sense but the curiosity is killing me

6. During the sequence of Mark going in and out of work, taking the elevator every day, there's the odd day out where the elevator turns black, like it did in ep 1 from innie Mark perspective. The timing also checks out, it's the day Mark rebelled because he wanted his team back and they threatened to fire him.

From innie Mark's perspective in ep1, he goes "up" the elevator, his eyes kinda roll back like he's having a seizure, then first the elevator turns black, then the screen.

Then the elevator dings, we see a closeup of Mark's eye for some reason,

and he's back on the regular severed floor.

From outie Mark's perspective, he goes down the elevator, and at first it's the transition we see everytime Mark goes up or down the regular elevator.

Then the elevator dings. At this point Mark's eyes roll back, the background fades to black,

Then the elevator dings again, and we see a closeup of his eye

then the black elevator in a distorted perspective, which then morphs into the regular elevator.

Then the elevator dings again, and the doors open to the regular exit.

This pretty much confirms Mark was in the testing floors that day. The same weird sequence with the black elevator as with ep1, plus the three dings of the elevator mean that during that day, Mark got into the elevator three times. Usually, both innie and outie hear the elevator two times during the sequence where they go up and down for a single day. One when they get to the severed floor, and another when they go back up (I checked with scenes from s2e1, and season 1 as well) Which means both the outie and the innie hear and remember the elevator dings, presumably bc the sound plays at the exact same moment they switch, or maybe it's just a cue to help us, the audience (but if not this has fascinating implications that the memories at the exact time of switching are retained by both innie and outie).

Anyway the fact that there are 3 dings means Mark stopped at another floor before going back up. And Mark stayed there until 9:15 pm that day !! We see the clock when he goes back up for the day after this sequence

(Well, I assume it's pm and not am, based on the fact that there are no other indicators from Mark's perspective that his day was odd, if he came out of work the next day at 9am I think they would have shown us Mark's reaction to this. He also tells good night to Judd, the security guard, in a very tired tone, and Judd seems sort of surprised, but I'm choosing to interpret as him being surprised at Mark coming out of work 4 hours late and not the morning after.)

6. HELENA MY BELOVED. Listen, I love Helly, I really do, and I've decided I love Helena as well. I wasn't sure before since we almost never see her directly, but honestly, ever since her "You're not a person" speech (which is one of my favorite scenes in the series) I knew she had something seriously fucked up going on with her and what can I say, I'm predictable, I eat that shit up. Love me a woman with so many disorders. Now that we have an episode with a lot of her perspective... man.

The way she just fucking. Smiles serenely after his father only says TWO (2) incredibly cruel words to her after the incident. Where her body was basically taken out of her control without her consent, which I can only imagine how scary that is (again, for all the outies it must have been very unsettling) And this happened at such a crucial moment, but it wasn't Helena's fault, it was Helly's (techically, arguably, Helly obviously had her reasons and we love her) And it's so fucked up compared on how her father treated her (Helly) in the season finale

He seems like a loving father, but then Helena fucks up, and he calls her a "fetid moppet"? My god, the implications. Does this mean that Helena only has the love of her family, her father, if she meets his expectations? And the instant she doesn't, her father treats her like that? So she grew up in this kind of environment where affection is not unconditional, where she has to hide her emotions, and always be the perfect heir, who can never make mistakes and who lives for her company.

For her company she became severed, and she wanted to keep at it at any cost, even when it was obvious her innie was miserable. Bc I think Helena always pushed herself to the limit all her life, so maybe she thought her innie also had to suck it up, bc Helena doesn't get to choose her life, so Helly doesn't either?

This shot!! Imagine how horrifying this had to be. She went into work and woke up hanging from the ceiling bc her other self tried to kill her. And she still went back to work afterwards. She still pushed on bc failure was not an option. That's so messed up

I wonder what exactly she thinks of Helly, if she really considers her not a person or if she said that just to get her to do what she wanted her to. But I think Helena's feelings changed after viewing the footage of her innie, and she's actually somewhat "jealous" of her now. Because Helly gets to be herself, genuinely, without a mask, she gets to have real friends who like her (does Helena have friends? maybe with Natalie, but are they really friends or is it just because Helena is the boss? Does she have other friends?) she gets to be bold and loud, and finds love, maybe, while not even "being a person".

Imagine how that has to feel, but maybe it's easier to take it out on Helly, instead of accepting that the way she grew up is fucked up. I'm full into speculation territory, I can't wait to see how this evolves. In the meantime, I DO think that Helena went to the severed floor, and she's herself, not Helly. Now that we've seen Helena in ep2, compared to how this "Helly" acts in ep1... it's really similar. "Helly" just looks kind of subdued, less bold, less angry. She lies about her experience outside, she kind of "pushed" her relationship with Mark, etc ...

Plus in the last scene of ep2, we see the MDR gang go down the elevator, one by one. For all of them we hear the elevator ding, but NOT for Helena. Which might be a cue for us that she didn't switch with Helly. Can't wait to find out more but in the meantime. Helena did nothing wrong. I mean yes she did all that (being the heir of an evil fucked up company) but also I love her so I forgive her.

7. It's just very interesting thinking about the innies and outies as a nature vs nurture kinda problem. Innie Dylan being funny and confident while his outie is anxious and stressed. Irving being all cool outside vs how his innie is, plus his anti/pro Lumon difference between innie and outie, bc he needs to give meaning to his actions. And it manifests in such different ways, although innie Irving still decided to rebel in the end. Helena vs Helly, two very strong-willed people but Helena gives it all for her company and familiy, while Helly fights against the system. And Mark, who I still haven't figured out bc I think Mark himself hasn't figured himself out either.

8. Last point, but why do they want Mark back so badly? At first I thought it was because he's the only one whose innie came out where there were clearly other witnesses (besides Helly), so they wanted to make sure he was still loyal to Lumon. But then they said this

They need Mark specifically to complete Cold Harbor (hinted in the previous episode to be Gemma's file) Why? Why does Mark have to do it? What about the previous files, they couldn't all have had connections to the other members of MDR, so why is this different? Or is Mark just that good of a refiner in general, and they just really really need Gemma's file completed? Why is Gemma specifically so important? Much to think about. Can't wait for the next episode !!