This article contains spoilers through the seventh episode of Severance, Season 2.
The promise of Severance is a seductive one: The titular procedure separates a person’s work self from the rest of their identity, granting them a literal work-life balance. Lumon, the biotech company that offers severance—which involves implanting a microchip into employees’ brains—markets it as a method to free oneself of difficult feelings or experiences. What those who elect to undergo the process aren’t told is that their severed personalities, “innies” who toil away in Lumon’s offices, seem to be fully formed human beings of their own. But they have no free will, chained to a numbing in-office existence about which their “outies” remain oblivious. That reality has chilling ramifications for everyone directly affected by the procedure, which the show has only just begun to reveal in its second season. Neither severance nor Severance, we come to find out, was meant to offer an escape from anything.
Much of Severance’s success rides on its cryptic, thematically rich world building, which invites viewers to form theories about nearly every aspect of the story it tells. Even some of the most basic elements of the plot remain opaque—such as the purpose of the mundane computer tasks that some of the innies are asked to perform. (The show implies that their seemingly menial jobs at Lumon have an importance that extends outside the company itself; the tension ramps up when an especially productive employee named Mark, played by Adam Scott, begins to investigate the true fruits of his labor.) But beyond specific questions about what Lumon is really up to, Season 2 has inspired deep philosophical debates about what makes a person a person, rendered through the show’s specific lens: Is a severed person home to many unique souls, or just one, fragmented into parts? Can an innie have a different fate from their outie?
The executives in charge of Lumon have given no indication that they’ve ever bothered to consider these questions. Those at the top seem to be preoccupied with the technology’s mechanics, not its repercussions; they appear to be stress-testing the barriers between innies and outies. Season 2’s devastating seventh episode, “Chikhai Bardo,” highlights this dehumanizing experiment with horrific detail. We see that Gemma (played by Dichen Lachman), Mark’s wife, presumed dead in the outside world, has been trapped on an inaccessible floor of Lumon. She is the subject of a cycle of emotionally taxing trials, while her husband’s innie plugs away on a floor above hers.
The evaluations involve repeated severance of Gemma’s brain, producing different personalities that are exposed to various forms of routine pain (such as dental work and tumultuous airplane rides); their responses are measured against the original Gemma’s recollection of them. The end goal isn’t clear, but it appears that Lumon’s scientists wish to ensure that an innie and outie cannot share memories. When one of Gemma’s severed personas, a Lumon wellness counselor known as Ms. Casey, meets Mark’s innie in Season 1, they are strangers to each other—which would seem to confirm that the technology functions as intended.
But even if they don’t share each other’s memories, the innies and outies do have related desires. Mark, who chose to be severed in order to compartmentalize his grief over Gemma’s death, falls for another innie, Helly (Britt Lower). Their colleague Irving (John Turturro), overwhelmed by his loneliness when outside Lumon’s confines, also develops feelings for someone. Dylan (Zach Cherry), whose outie is disillusioned by his suburban doldrums, finds a fanatic sort of motivation within the mysterious computer assignment his team is required to complete. And alongside pursuing a romance with Mark, Helly takes every opportunity to rebel against the company’s bizarre rules and rituals; her outie is similarly headstrong, as she chafes under her despotic father’s authority. (He also happens to be Lumon’s CEO.)
Innies and outies share elements of their foundational selves; as such, they not only have the same basic wants, but also seem to face the same fears and consequences. Mark’s budding relationship with Helly is threatened by his outie’s continued feelings for Gemma. Irving becomes despondent after learning that his innie lover has abruptly retired—and thus disappeared—from Lumon. Dylan, despite the confidence his work has given him, begins to obsessively covet his outie’s family and home life.
For each of the innie workers, the realization that their two halves share some core truths is both a comfort and a torment. They seem doomed to repeat patterns, unable to break free of them. Yet the show obscures whether innies and outies should be considered parts of a single being, making it difficult for viewers to know how to judge their behavior. If they can be considered independently of each other, one persona could be seen as more virtuous than the other. If so, perhaps an innie—who knows nothing of reality outside Lumon’s controlled environment—would be more appreciative of the life that their outie seems to take for granted. Exploring these hypotheticals matters only to a point; their shared body will bear all of the outcomes regardless.
That innies have some level of autonomy is good news for them, and bad news for Lumon, whose project to create powerless mind-serfs is looking more sinister by the episode. But there are limits to that self-determination; an outie’s problems are their innie’s, too. Severance began with a relatively simple prompt—if you could separate yourself from your dissatisfaction and pain, would that be enough to make you a happier person? The show seems to be delivering an uneasy verdict: New discomforts will only take their place.
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