I’m bringing up the spoiler warning statement for Severance fans. Read it. Again:
I am thankful to have been warned of potential spoilers, my fall cut short by those with wizened hands. All I can be is thankful, and that is all I am.
I believe you mean it. Let’s get started!
While last week’s Severance Season 2 premiere hit us with the signature strangeness and disorientation that define this series, episode two, ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig,’ finally delves into the personal intrigue and explorations of humanity that keep the series grounded. Once again, we pick up where season one left off, but this time we get to see things from the Outie perspective.
Life for Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) gets very complicated very quickly. Fresh off having her brain hijacked by her Innie (Helly R.) and subsequently spoiling a corporate event by revealing that Lumon tortures and imprisons severed workers, she is belittled and dehumanized by her father, Jame Eagan (Michael Sibbery, Jessica Jones), when he reduces her to a “fetid moppet,” before temper-tantruming out of the room.
Without getting much of a chance to take a breath, Helena and burly new Lumon enforcer, Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Somebody Somewhere) weave their way through the cold, dark grid of the Lumon corporate offices to sit with Ms. Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette); their recently fired Severed Floor manager who swept in to bail them out after discovering the Innie uprising. It’s a tense tête-à-tête; Ms. Cobel is fearless in her demand for an apology from the board; she is also unwilling to be pacified by an empty offer to head a new department.
Her teeth really come out when she sarcastically calls Helena’s empty corporate apology an act of “contrition.” This word carries clear religious implications and seems to cast doubt on Helena and the board as true believers. In a less subtle show of her feisty spirit, Ms. Cobel also claims that the board fears her, sparking Helena’s ire. Ms. Cobel demands to return to her role managing the Severed Floor, but learns her duties have been handed to Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman). Ms. Cobel doesn’t accept her new job, but says she will, “put some thought to it.”
While Helena records a very unconvincing apology in which she suggests her troubling remarks about severance were some sort of drunken joke, Mr. Mlichick sets out to fire Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) and Irving B. (John Turturro). In quick succession, we learn that Dylan is desperate for employment and Irving is deeply invested in maintaining his connection to Lumon. Clearly, Irving’s desire to stay on board is connected to the work his Outie has been doing to gather intel about Lumon and the Severed Floor. Later in the episode, Irving confirms our assumptions when he makes a mysterious call from a pay phone and we get our first season two glimpse of Burt Goodman (Christopher Walken). He watches Irving with a passionate intensity, but viewers are left to wait at least another week before we learn about their interaction during the Innie uprising.
By the time Helena finishes her apology video, we understand how quick the Eagan family is to publicly shame and ridicule their loyal daughter. Paired with Jame’s dehumanizing “fetid moppet” remark, viewers begin to wonder whether or not Helena is fully on board with her family’s agenda and the legacy of Kier Eagan. It’s worth noting that Helena’s video also contains a callback to season one when she recorded an infamous video for her Innie in which she insisted that Helly R. was not a person; however, in this corporate apology, Helena has a different message: “But I’m also human, just like my Innie, and just like you.” This could be a simple case of corporate bullshit, but it almost feels like a call for help. Maybe the reason it was so easy for Helena to record something so terrible last season is because she is used to being spoken to in the same dehumanizing manner.
Later, we see her reviewing security footage from the Severed Floor. First, she fixates on Mark, and later she checks out her Innie’s Season 1 exchange with Mark that ended in a kiss. It seems likely that Helena is doing research for an undercover operation on the Severed Floor, but it’s hard not to see longing in her eyes as she reviews the footage. While she may still fear failing her family, it seems like she might have some genuine curiosity in experiencing the open and honest human connection that her Innie was able to experience on the inside. Perhaps the privileged daughter of the Eagan clan is actually jealous of her Innie’s freedom and lack of responsibility. Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, after a trippy new title sequence (more on that later), Mark Scout (Adam Scott) and his sister, Devon (Jen Tullock, Perry Mason), are eager to address one of the biggest fan questions from season one: how will everyone react to Innie Mark’s somewhat cryptic exclamation of “she’s alive!” after spotting a wedding photo of Outie Mark and Gemma (Dichen Lachman, Dollhouse), the woman known as Ms. Casey on the Severed Floor?
It turns out that while everyone did connect the dots between the wedding photo and Mark’s vague reference to a “she,” the implication of Gemma being alive is so troubling that they are all eager to assume that the exclamation must have been tied to the “rescue” of Devon’s newborn child instead of a complex conspiracy that is both logistically, politically, and emotionally daunting.
Mark’s dismissal of this notion is tied to his intense emotional survival mode. We know that he knows that the simple explanation doesn’t make much sense, but undermining the trauma-laden existence he has embodied for two years is too much of a shock to his system. Mark’s narcissistic brother-in-law Ricken (Michael Chernus, Dead Ringers) is also in denial; the simpler explanation will allow him to refocus attention on himself and his disrupted book reading (does he pick up where he left off, or start over with chapter one?). Of course, he is thrilled to remind us that Mark’s Innie is a fan of his book: “Your workie…really is a jewel!…[he] was inspired by my book. Found great meaning in it. Profundity.” Devon, on the other hand, goes into detective mode. She certainly doesn’t want to jump to an emotionally troubling conclusion, but she also refuses to ignore the possibility. She bides her time and decides to wait for a better moment.
Of course, it’s clear that discussion time is over when Mr. Milchick shows up at Devon and Ricken’s house. Devon meets Milchick with the appropriate levels of sarcasm and anger. In a hall of fame moment, she asks how common it is for Lumon employees to commit “lactation fraud” (a reference to Ms. Cobel posing as Mrs. Selvig, Mark’s lactation consultant neighbor in season one). Ultimately, Milchick is able to make a fairly compelling case. As much as viewers know he is lying through his teeth, his attempt to frame this whole violation around the actions of one bad actor (Ms. Cobel) is a very plausible explanation for anyone who would like to pretend that the Innie uprising never happened. Thanks to Devon’s sly maneuver of dropping a towel over the photo of Gemma after Milchick enters, we know that Detective Devon isn’t going to let this bullshit stand.
Next up, we finally get a chance to hang with Dylan’s Outie. It becomes clear early on that Outie Dylan lacks the unflappable confidence of Innie Dylan. One of the first times we meet Innie Dylan in season one, he is bragging about his “delts” and deduces that his Outie must do muscle shows; this week, we learn that he used those same magnificent delts to hold the override switches open for a solid 39 minutes in the season one finale. Not bad, Dylan!
Unfortunately, Dylan’s Outie counterpart is desperate and unsure. He looks panicked and nervous in his car before stepping inside of the “Great Doors” door manufacturer for a job interview. Fortunately for viewers, the scene is a piece of absolute comic genius. Dylan does his best to swap door puns and exhibit proper reverence for the door industry while an endless rotation of doors that put the Monster’s Inc. scare floor to shame continue to circulate out on the production floor.
Despite the fact that the interviewer, Mr. Saliba (Adrian Martinez, Stumptown), is impressed with Dylan’s answer to the question of what type of door he would like to be (a pocket door with semi-gloss finish), Mr. Saliba turns up his nose after learning that Dylan was a severed worker at Lumon. Not only does Mr. Saliba hate Lumon for having the “fucking hubris” to build their doors in-house, but he has a particular distaste for severed workers. He even introduces a new dehumanizing epithet to the lore of the show when he calls Dylan a “Severed.” Once again, we get a peek at the moral outrage over the severance procedure in the broader world of the show. A defeated and frustrated Dylan drives off to buy some baby wipes for his patient and supporting wife at home.
It’s also a rough morning for “Detective” Devon. After taking her brother Mark out for a VIP breakfast at the local diner, Pip’s, she tries to broach the topic of Gemma and the fact that Mark’s Innie might have been attempting to communicate that their deceased loved one might still be alive. In return, Mark rips into his sister with a vicious and selfish tantrum over the fact that she claimed to share some of Mark’s sense of loss and trauma. Not only is he selfishly defensive, but he gets needlessly aggressive and uses the moment to rip into Devon’s husband Ricken; Mark suggests that he wouldn’t be affected if Ricken were killed and burned in a car crash. It’s a very ugly look for Mark, and an awful morning for Devon. To make matters worse, we see that Lumon’s imposing new bruiser, Mr. Drummond, is eavesdropping from another table and showcasing his own devotion to Kier by sporting a rather threatening “frolic” tattoo on his hand.
Later, Mark gets another visit from Mr. Milchick and the signature pineapple fruit basket he’ll later use to ask the original Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team back to Lumon. It turns out that Mark is extremely important to Lumon, at least until he finishes refining a file called “Cold Harbor.” We finally understand why the board was so quick to bend to his demands in the season two premiere.
Milchick successfully recruits Mark by evoking the pain and vulnerability that drove him to a severed position in the first place (he also tacks on a 20% raise and a promise to allow independent regulators to review Lumon’s facilities). We learn that in Mark’s original intake file, he said that he was looking to escape the pain of his wife’s death: “You said, since she died, every day feels like a year…that you felt like you were choking on her ghost.” Milchick then proceeds to appeal to Mark’s emotions with a speech that seems to be modeled after the “wellness checks” from season one. Milchick recounts all of the great things about Mark’s Innie, like, he is funny and he has found love. Most importantly, Milchick suggests that this inner happiness will eventually make its way to Outie Mark. This is conspicuously inconsistent with what Mark’s friend Petey had to say in season one. Petey wanted Mark to know that it was the sadness and isolation of his Outie that was actually trickling down to the Severed Floor.
Clearly, Mark is going to require a journey of emotional growth before he is ready to become the type of guy who can rip Lumon apart from the inside. He acquiesces to Mr. Milchick’s request and reports back to Lumon.
From there, the ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig’ fills in the rest of the timeline from episode one. We even get to see an angry Outie version of Mark W. (Bob Balaban) who has been fired to make way for the original MDR crew. We have to ask ourselves if he has been checking out the local alleway metal scene when he screams, “Fuck you, Lumon!”
The Severance creative team even treats fans to a detailed sequence of the original MDR team returning to the Severed Floor. The creatives behind the show took the time to perfectly synchronize this sequence with the characters’ respective arrivals in the season premiere. It’s pretty phenomenal stuff – and when the elevator doors close on Helena, we can’t help but ask ourselves if she is really going to emerge as Helly R. on the other side.
Speaking of phenomenal stuff, Mark is finally able to confront Ms. Cobel at the end of the ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig.’ She mostly blows off his rage and expresses disappointment: “They convinced you to stay? Was a pineapple involved? You’re so easy to sway.” In fact, Ms. Cobel seems entirely unflappable until Mark asks if she knows something about Gemma. This elicits a scream and some angry pounding on her steering wheel before Ms. Cobel burns rubber down the street and leaves Mark dumbfounded in the middle of the road.
Fans will be just as desperate for answers as Mark until Severance returns next week.
TEMPERING THE EVIDENCE
Severance is so full of lore, iconography, and open questions that we could never explore every possibility. Instead, we will try to make things more manageable by “tempering” the evidence. In other words, we will attempt to shape our theories into a more focused and manageable arrangement. But what is a logical arrangement for such a strange and complicated story?
Fans of the show have become all too familiar with Kier Eagan’s theories about human personality as depicted in a painting, the “Taming of the Four Tempers.” In fact, a top fan theory is that the four members of Macrodata Refinement each represent one of the tempers: Woe (Mark), Frolic (Dylan), Dread (Irv), and Malice (Helly). It is even possible that their unique dispositions must work in harmony (Harmony Cobel?) to complete the department’s hidden function or objective.
Each week, we will check in on five theories. We’ll swap them out if they are resolved, disproven or otherwise lose steam along the way. Each of the first four theories will reflect one of Kier’s “tempers,” and for the last theory, we will “throw a Waffle Party.” In other words, we’ll take a big swing, hold nothing back, and attempt to tame the tempers by exploring our most bonkers prediction.
In order to best keep up with this ongoing segment, consider checking out last week’s installment of Tempering the Evidence.
Woe: Clone Development?
After this theory got a huge boost last week, ‘Goodbye Mrs. Selvig’ didn’t add much more fuel to the fire. Well, at least not the episode itself. ‘Goodbye Mrs. Selvig’ marked the debut of a brand new opening credits sequence that mimics the style of the season one credits while adding several new twists. We find ourselves lost in the moist crevices of a human brain, we encounter a faceless Ms. Cobel who reads or instructs from a text teeming with plant life, and we get lost in a Lumon balloon motif that serves as a device to communicate Mark’s isolation; the balloons even inflate and deflate in a manner that evokes the signature visualization of Innies and Outies swapping consciousness in the Severed Floor elevator. These are all fascinating tidbits, but the addition most relevant to this theory comes in the form of a bunch of very clone-y baby animations surrounding Mark in the title sequence.
If that’s not enough to pique your interest, think back to what Burt G. had to say in season one about the nasty rumors circulating through his department about the MDR team:
I… It’s literally silly. Like, they say you all have pouches….According to some, you each have a larval offspring that will jump out and attack if we get too close…I mean, it’s a joke of course, but I don’t know…The sentiment, you know, somehow holds. People are weird…Though, I’d be remiss not to say…that in this theory, the larva eventually eats and replaces you. -Burt G.
While we don’t anticipate literal attack larvae in season two, the reveal at the end of last week’s episode implies that the MDR refinement missions are tied to individuals. It seems more and more likely that the Severed Floor is in the business of building replacements of some kind, and we have every reason to assume we will learn more about these machinations moving forward.
Frolic: Helena In Disguise?
Last week, we wondered aloud whether or not Helly R. may actually be Helena in disguise. Many other fans and Reddit theorists went so far as to say ‘Goodbye Mrs. Selvig’ all but confirmed this theory. Many folks read Helly’s demeanor and voice as markedly different from the Helly R. performance in season one, and her inability to invent a believable human story about her Outie seemed to indicate the mark of privilege upon our favorite Innie rebel.
This week, the theory only picks up steam. We get to see Outie Helena participating in the damage control for the Innie uprising from the season one finale. While we see her playing the part of the good soldier and shouldering a lot of personal responsibility for the incident, there is an undeniable longing in her face and body language as she examines footage of Mark on the Severed Floor. There is even deeper longing as she examines the footage of her Innie giving Mark a smooch and pontificating about whether or not they might enjoy a normal life together on the outside.
This certainly increases the likelihood that her softness for Mark in the season two premiere was more than simple acting. It could be Helena trying to explore her curiosity about her Innie’s emotions while also serving her powerful family.
Finally, at the end of ‘Goodbye Mrs. Selvig’, our last shot of Helena shows the doors closing over her face. We never see a severance transition once she steps inside, and we never hear the signature elevator beep. We can’t call this theory a lock quite yet, but it is certainly the theory most likely to succeed.
Dread: Reintegration Sickness?
Last week, we speculated whether or not the shadowy figure that appeared over Mark’s shoulder could be a sign of reintegration sickness, or simply Mark’s reintegration beginning to take hold.
This theory took a major hit in ‘Goodbye Mrs. Selvig’. We get a pretty comprehensive timeline of Mark’s return to Lumon following the events of the finale, and he is still driven by self-doubt, denial, and escapism more than anything else. There was no Dr. Regabhi in sight, and absolutely no indication that Mark is in rebel mode.
This theory is all but quashed, so why is it still here?
Well, what if we learn that reintegration can potentially be a process of mind over matter? What if those high-tech switches in the Lumon security room aren’t as all-powerful as the corporate hive-mind would have us believe? What if Lumon’s greatest fear is good old fashioned humanity? Could the doubt and frustration Mark is confronting as an Outie be breaking the hold of his chip? Could we see him reintegrate through the power of his own mind and emotions?
That certainly wouldn’t leave viewers with a sense of dread. In fact, it would be a big ol’ W for humanity. If this theory were to pick up steam, the dread would sit with the sadists over at Lumon. That is a pretty noble goal, so we’ll let this theory sit in its new form for another week.
Malice: Ms. Cobel the Usurper?
Last week, this column wondered if our beloved Outies had been secretly captured and locked away on the Testing Floor. ‘Goodbye Mrs. Selvig’ seems to have given us a pretty honest depiction of the timeline we questioned last week, and it seems our Innies really did report back to Lumon willingly. Now that we’ve debunked that theory, let’s try something new!
‘Goodbye Mrs. Selvig’ marks the return of Ms. Cobel to the show, and we see her go head to head with Helena Eagan in a strained conference room showdown. While Helena attempts to frame the conversation as a thank you, Cobel makes it known that she is sick of being infantilized and manipulated by the board. She sees the offer to build a new department as a pacification technique and demands to return to work on the Severed Floor.
Back in season one, we often saw Cobel work against protocol. She turned a blind eye to employees breaking the rules and often seemed to prompt Mark towards acts of rebellion. She often acted beyond the scope of her position with her incessant spying. She also came across as deeply personally invested in Mark’s wellbeing and the connection between Mark and Gemma. She seemed to constantly push Mark and Gemma together in an attempt to test those boundaries. Of course, we also saw Ms. Cobel’s disturbing shrine to Kier Eagan and her often extreme, uncontrollable outbursts of emotion that contrasted so markedly with her usual cool confidence (She lets out an impressive primordial scream at the end of ‘Goodbye Mrs. Selvig’ as well).
Now, remember, that shrine back in season one wasn’t just a shrine to Kier. It was also a shrine to herself; it even included certificates she received during her years at Myrtle Eagan’s School for Girls. More importantly, it contained breathing tubes and hospital tags that may have belonged to a mother/sister/etc. What if that mother once shared a romantic dalliance with an Eagan CEO? What if Harmony is a secret Eagan who believes her siblings in power have lost their way? Perhaps she sees herself as a savior who must usurp the company and refocus Kier’s mission.
This is a delicious possibility, as it would continue to pinball Ms. Cobel between ally and protagonist to our rebellious Innies.
Waffle Party: Cobel = Gemma?
This week, Devon suggested that they “Occam’s Razor this shit,” when she sat down with Mark and Ricken to unpack Innie Mark’s exclamation of “she’s alive!” Occam’s Razor demands that you explain something with the fewest possible assumptions. Here in the waffle party section, we’ll take the exact opposite approach. It’s all about big swings and assumptions.
Last week, we explored the possibility that Gemma might have ties to Lumon. We largely cited her pragmatism and Mark’s insistence that Gemma “always had a plan B.”
This week, our “Malice” section explored the possibility that Ms. Cobel could be leading her own twisted movement against Lumon.
Let’s combine the two theories…you know, pour some syrup on our waffles.
What if Gemma the intellectual Russian literature professor came from a privileged family? What if her family sent her to the prestigious Myrtle Eagan’s School for Girls and doomed her to a childhood of praising Kier? What if this brought her into the sights of Harmony Cobel?
It’s possible that Gemma and Ms. Cobel have a shared history; it’s even possible that they worked towards a common goal once upon a time. It’s possible that Gemma rejected Kier’s teachings and found solace in her relationship with Mark, Devon, and Ricken; maybe she even suspected that Lumon might force her back into the fold some day. If Gemma did have a history with Kier’s teachings, this might have made her Innie/clone/etc. a particularly strong candidate to serve as a “wellness” expert on the Severed Floor.
Let’s keep going.
What if Cobel and Gemma were both fitted with severance chips once upon a time? Could those chips be utilized to mix n’ match or even exchange severed personas? If so, perhaps we see a piece of Gemma herself alive and well within the twisted halls of Ms. Cobel’s mind. This could even explain Cobel’s investment in the development of reintegration and her special interest in Mark’s interactions with Ms. Casey on the Severed Floor.
If Gemma’s consciousness is even partly alive within Ms. Cobel, it reframes some of Cobel’s strangest behaviors to date. Suddenly, seeing her take a big ol’ whiff of one of Gemma’s handcrafted candles or watching her flirt with Mark takes on a whole new meaning.
In any case, thank you for following us down this particularly wacky rabbit’s hole for ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig.’ While we may not be seeing clearly down here, it sure feels great to watch a series that can spark this sort of obsessive theorizing!
