WMG / Severance (2022)

Spoilers are unmarked from here on out. Proceed with caution.

The reason MDR and O&D's jobs seem like aimless, pointless busywork that doesn't accomplish much?

Because they're not doing work. Lumon's product is severance, and the workers on the severed floor are its test subjects, which is why they are occasionally tested with "wellness checks" to gauge their reactions and see the effects of severance. It's also why they'd run the risk of someone working closely with a former spouse or lover.

• This is also why none of the leadership seems concerned about productivity. The board is mainly concerned about the behaviour of severed employees and their status, and never asks about progress on refinement. It's also why Cobel and Milchick don't seem to mind all the wandering about and perceived lack of productivity. Finally, employees are severed seemingly on the basis of confidentiality/work sensitivity, but they don't even actually know what they're doing when they're in innie form.
  • They do care about hitting their quarterly quota, but this likely is a minimum performance benchmark to confirm the effectiveness of the indoctrination process and productivity of a severed employee. It likely is part of refining the severance process, testing how well the severed employees can accomplish repetitive work.
• To expand on this, Lumon wants to see how they deviate from their assigned task, both to test out coercion methods to keep them compliant and to gather data on weaknesses and limitations on the Severance technology in anticipation of rolling out more generally and for more general tasking. It’s also why the teams are small and kept largely isolated: to better control the experiments and eliminate as much ‘noise’ as possible from their results.

Some 'innies' never go out.

• Think about it: Why would Lumon, which owns half the town, run the risk of Mark running into his allegedly "dead" wife? And why wouldn't Gemma seek out her family and loved ones once they realized they thought she was dead? Because Ms. Casey never leaves. She might not even be aware that she never leaves.
• Ms. Casey says that her life has been 107 hours long, mostly in the form of half-hour sessions. She notes that her day watching Mark and Helly was "the longest [she's] ever been awake," which could have been a euphemism for feeling alive, but could also literally mean she's never been present in her innie form for more than a few hours. Additionally, at least three weeks pass between Helly's suicide attempt and the penultimate episode – far more than 107 working hours. So is she kept in some sort of suspended animation between sessions?
  • confirmed towards the end of the season, where she's sent further down into Lumon, using the elevator Irving keeps painting.
  • Petey also tells Mark in Episode 2 that there is a department where people “never leave.” This is likely the testing floor.

Irving is painting the door to the testing floor because that's where Burt went after his 'retirement.'

• Jossed, he's merely living a quiet life with his husband.

Irving's outie is an insomniac. He's seen drinking coffee in the evening or at night and appears to have a rather obsessive relationship with painting.

It's also why he's dozed off at his desk in the past. Mark's innie says it's "better to focus on the effects of sleep" since they don't get to experience it. Except Irving's outie doesn't get enough.

Irving's outie isn't an insomniac, he's intentionally trying to make his innie fall asleep.

• Irving is shown using automatic painting to render the hallways at Lumon. This suggests that an outie can access their work memories through the subconscious- and, presumably, vice versa. But how do you get your innie to access their subconscious if it's impossible to even communicate with them? Easy: you force them to fall asleep, so that they might dream of the outside world (this is also why sleeping is so discouraged, besides the obvious productivity loss). An insomniac likely wouldn't chug coffee, that's something you'd do when you're *trying* to stay up late. Outie!Irving's gambit seems to be working, too, because when Innie!Irving starts to fall asleep he dreams about the black paint he uses on the outside.

Ms. Casey/Gemma was involved in something Lumon-related prior to her car accident, and the "accident" was actually a setup by Lumon.

• Gemma may very well work on the Board, only occasionally ‘dropping in’ as needed in the role of Ms. Casey. It could explain why the Board’s identities are kept so secret from even the executive staff. Plus, so far only the staff who keep their memories have been shown to have multiple names.
  • While not outright jossed, the fact that Gemma is stuck on the testing floor, asks if her innie is happy, and even sheds a tear, seems to imply that she is not there by choice.
  • Addressing the above point: Ms. Casey was asking about her outie, not Gemma asking about her innie. Ms. Casey's emotional state is attributable to her own bleak existence, and as exemplified by Helly, the innie's feelings say essentially nothing about the nature of the outie. It's entirely possible that Gemma is a callous conspirator who subjected her innie to an especially miserable excuse for a life.

It's not a coincidence that both Mark and Gemma were teachers prior to working at Lumon.

Lumon more than just seems like a religion. It ‘literally’ is one. Besides the obvious cult-like reverence of Eagan’s words and iconography, there are more disturbing things like...

• The baby goats (which when paired with an offhand mention about hatchets being crafted by O&D imply they are almost definitely being raised for sacrifice).
• Ms. Cobel’s shrine, paired with her freakout over being dismissed (as though rejected by her god) and ecstatic rush to rat out MDR to get back in their good graces (she even begins singing what clearly sounds like a hymn to the MDR team at one point).
• The employee flagellations and seemingly rapped knuckles we sometimes see for minor offenses along with the break room mantra reading almost like a prayer or sacrament.
• The evangelical zeal to spread Severance to the world to the point of offhand mentions of the end goal of making the procedure ‘’mandatory’’ for everyone, not just Lumon employees.
• The number refinement and the programmed emotional fear of errors smacks of certain numerological practices. It could also explain why Helly is so productive despite not really caring about her work. Her other half is intimately familiar with what Lumon really wants from the Refinement, so once that knowledge subconsciously bled over to her Innie self, she could crank out results almost absent-mindedly.
• The paintings and posters from O&D seem to predominantly portray Crusade-like battles.
• The Severance procedure itself sounds like an attempt to separate the Sacred and the Profane aspects of our natures from one another to eventually eliminate/‘retire’ the profane part permanently once the kinks are worked out of the procedure and it’s spread more widely.
• The word ‘Severance’ is very close to the words ‘Service’ and ‘Sacrifice’ and many of the corporate proclamations and quotes to the staff sound like they could be said with any of those words.
• Even the name ‘Lumon’ evokes words like ‘Luminous’, ‘Light’, even ‘Lucifer’.

The chips can do more than just manage the Severance’. They can also read minds and report on certain thoughts.

• It’s ludicrous to think Lumon actually has technology to detect if one tries to smuggle out information. It makes more sense if they have a means of detecting the _intention_ of trying to sneak something out at the elevator. Not necessarily reading specific thoughts, and not constantly. That might help partially explain the staggered schedules where only one person can leave at a time: it can only be done for one person at a time and such a scan could only be initiated manually from the security office.
  • In that case a severed employee could slip a note into the pocket of another unknowing severed employee who leaves earlier. So maybe they read all minds at once.

Irving decided to go through severance as a form of conversion therapy.

Although there's no homophobia expressed by the characters, the fact he lives alone and has been at Lumon the longest could mean at the time he was severed, people in his life were less tolerant. Severance and not retaining any memory might have felt to Irving like he could cease to be gay for 8 hours a day. This could explain why he was so uncomfortable when Burt touched his hand, but was able to overcome that so quickly as innie Irving had never been subject to abuse over his sexuality.

• This also might. be implied in the fact that Irving's father was in the military. With "don't ask, don't tell" laws being about the least of the military's homophobia, that could also be a cause of Irving's own internalized homophobia (or one of them).

Innie Irving is in on Outie Irving's investigation

• Based on Helena/Helly, innies and outies seem to have common personality traits, bout Outie Irving does not seem to be the submissive rulefollower that Innie Irving is.
• Innie Irving is referred to as the longest serving employee
• The Lexington Letter shows Peggy communicating with Peg using 'puglish' until the code detectors were upgraded
• Perhaps Irving's Innie and Outie communicated the same way before the upgrade and Irving's persona is an act
• It also might explain why Outie Irving was painting the hallway even before we see Innie Irving seeing it in the show, if Innie Irving were investigating under the guise of compliance.

Possible second season plot

• The second season will have Helena reintegrated with Helly in order to go undercover to find out what Mark and Irving know. However the fact that she has merged with Helly will cause her conscience problems.
• Alternatively, Helena/Helly will be one of the antagonists of Season 2. Cobel tells her innie at the meeting that "she" will be gone while the others suffer – it's unlikely Helly will show up in MDR again. Helena's innie might not come out for some time, while Helena seems to have nothing but contempt for her innie, even having some idea of how crazy severance and Lumon are making her (for example, she knows that she tried to hang herself, and threatened to cut off her fingers). The season might involve the other refiners, or at least Mark, trying to get to Helena and help her connect the dots.
• Devon will play a bigger role in the second season, as she is the main person who can help Mark's outie bridge the gap between him and his innie's knowledge.
  • Devon will work together with June, after she figures out that Mark shouldn't have been able to recognise her at her father's funeral. June will have access to information Petey was able to hide before he died.
• Cobel will turn from foe to friend to the refiners as her undying loyalty to Kier and Lumon continue to go unrecognized and her dismissal is upheld. All the while, Natalie and Milchick will take on more actively menacing roles.
• In the first episode, the refiners mention that someone named Carol worked in MDR and was the last refiner to leave before Petey, and sat in Dylan's seat. There could be a call back to Carol – as Lumon doesn't seem to take resignation so casually.
• Irving will try to find Burt's chip so that their innies can be reunited.
• In the different objects in Harmony’s shrine to Kier Eagan in her home, there is some medical equipment with the name tag “Charlotte Cobel” on it. Who is Charlotte? Was she a lost daughter of Harmony’s? Is she key to Ms. Cobel’s behaviour and actions in some way?
• Helly fights for freedom and, despite her limited experience and resources, is quite inventive at that. Maybe outie Helena is also plotting against Lumon, and her cruelty towards Helly is merely part of the front she puts up for Milchick.
• Kier Eagan so far appeared only as images, statues, and audio recordings, but is played by a real actor. We might see flashbacks or some Longevity Treatment or Brain Uploading, maybe related to Gemma's fate or the mysterious "revolving" mentioned by Jame Eagan.
  • What's the relationship between severance and Kier that Jame mentions? That the plan is for all innies to live by the Handbook?
• Maybe Dylan reprogrammed the security computer, for example such that triggering overtime contingency becomes easier or automatic, or to manipulate the surveillance or access systems.

We will see more of Lumon's factories/warehouses in Season 2.

• Given that Milchick and Cobel know what the MDR crew did, there's no way they'll be allowed to return to their office. However, they can't simply bump off an entire department without raising some questions, so they'll have them separated and transferred somewhere else:
  • Given how huge the company apparently is, it's impossible that only one office handles all of their business. The few mentions of Lumon making medicines, tech, and more, (not to mention the Severance chips and apparently-custom office equipment themselves), this would require centers for manufacturing these products.
  • Cobel tells Helly that her friends "will suffer" for what they've done; since Lumon is willing to psychologically torture the Innies for minor infractions, it wouldn't be surprising for them to use a more prolonged, physical method for something this major. Given each of them has their own physical challenges (Irving's age, Dylan's weight, Mark's alcoholism), using Defeat Means Physical Labor would definitely cause them some level of pain.
  • Given the addition of several new cast members for the second season, it's clear that we will be seeing more of the company than what was there before; the manufacturing plants seem like a good place to start.

Irving's chip was either damaged or otherwise faulty, possibly by design.

It's likely Irving's severance chip was damaged, or was somehow defective. It would explain why he kept having visions of black ink leaking into the office. And perhaps the other way around, it's how his outie knows about the elevator to the testing floor; Irving caught a glimpse of it one day without paying it any mind, and the image is stuck in his subconscious. It could very well be that his chip was defective or damaged purely by accident, but what if it was specifically sabotaged? It's implied that the anti-Lumon Irving may have severed as a way of going undercover, so maybe he found a way to tamper with his chip on the outside so that his innie might remember some aspects of his outside life?

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