With Severance Season 2 lastly arriving on Apple TV+ later this week after an almost 3-year wait, followers are buzzing with pleasure — and with a great deal of questions. That’s as a result of the primary season of Apple’s mind-bending office thriller left us with extra Q’s than A’s, whilst all of us received caught up in what’s confirmed to be among the best TV exhibits the iPhone maker has launched since launching its streamer again in 2019.
Provided that the primary episode of the brand new season of Severance drops on Jan. 17, it’s time to revisit among the largest mysteries and most burning questions that Season 1 left us with earlier than it’s time to examine again in with the Macrodata Refinement crew at Lumon. For sure, for these of you who haven’t dived into Season 1 but, there might be tons of spoilery reveals beneath. Additionally, the lingering questions might be introduced in no specific order.
Yet another time, *spoilers to observe*.
1. What’s the take care of the goats?
In Episode 5 of Season 1, titled The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design, Helly comes throughout a room that’s nonetheless perplexing Severance followers three years later: The room is crammed with goats, and there’s a person silently tending to them. Clearly, that was an incongruous sight inside a company workplace complicated, and theories as to what the goats imply have abounded on-line.
One of the crucial common: The goats are the silent board members we by no means hear by the loudspeaker each time the Lumon board assembles to talk by Natalie, the board liaison. That’s an fascinating principle, to make certain, however there’s clearly an enormous flaw: Bear in mind when Ms. Cobel will get fired and calls for to talk to the board on to make her case? We hear a single phrase by the speaker, in reply to her request: “Sure.” Which would appear to shoot down that the board members aren’t, the truth is, individuals.
Nonetheless, although, are they some type of avatar for broader experiments taking place inside Lumon? Or have they got some type of Kier-like, cultish significance?
2. What actually occurred to Mark’s spouse, Gemma?
The one motive Mark S., performed by Adam Scott, is at Lumon within the first place is due to his overwhelming grief following the lack of his spouse. One of many issues that made the Season 1 finale so jaw-dropping was Mark’s revelation that his spouse is definitely alive — and that she’s none aside from Ms. Casey, the wellness counselor Mark had visited a number of instances contained in the Lumon workplace.
The large query, clearly, is how she ended up at Lumon. If Gemma actually did die in a automobile crash, as we’d been led to consider, that might imply Lumon’s severance chip type of re-animated her. Provided that the chips merely shut on and shut off entry to reminiscences, I don’t see how the chip can be highly effective sufficient to do this. Which then results in an apparent follow-up: Did Gemma even die in any respect? If she didn’t … what the hell? What’s the purpose of faking that?
One thing is certainly occurring together with her, based mostly on her unusual and unsettling character alone. By the tip of Season 1, she’s been fired as Lumon’s wellness counselor and despatched again to the testing ground, no matter which means.
3. Why, oh why, is Ms. Cobel so darn obsessive about Mark’s outie?
Concord Cobel — who heads the severed ground at Lumon, and who’s identified on the surface as Ms. Selvig — has a fixation on Mark S. each inside and out of doors the corporate that clearly goes past skilled curiosity.
There’s a minimum of one factor occurring whereas she spies on him at house, from the vantage level of her alter ego as his quirky neighbor: She retains probing to see if there’s any spillover between Mark’s innie and outie. Nonetheless, her obsession additionally appears to go deeper than that. Does it in some way tie again to Lumon’s enigmatic founder, Kier Eagan? As a result of Ms. Cobel is certainly a real believer.
My suspicion: Concord is determined to show that reintegration works, regardless of the board insisting that the severance results are everlasting. Presumably, as a result of she needs to un-sever or get up a liked one?
4. What do the Macrodata Refinement numbers imply?
The four-person MDR crew spends hours sorting mysterious numbers on their computer systems that in some way evoke primal feelings. Do the numbers in some way management human habits? Are they a smokescreen for one thing much more sinister?
It is a good time to carry up one thing associated: Any Severance fan who hasn’t but learn The Lexington Letter ought to positively achieve this earlier than Season 2 arrives. It’s a free companion to the present, written by the creators, that’s accessible as an e-book from Apple’s Books app (obtain it right here). It’s introduced as a letter from a former Lumon worker to a newspaper reporter — and it hints, amongst different issues, that there’s positively one thing foreboding tied to the numbers.
5. What’s occurring with Irving’s outie?
Irving, the oldest member of the MDR crew, is deeply loyal to Lumon’s guidelines whereas at work and continuously cites the corporate handbook. His outie, although, is clearly making strikes. As Severance Season 1 drew to an in depth, we met Irving’s outie at house the place he’d been portray, again and again, a darkish hallway at Lumon that appears just like the one resulting in the testing ground. He’s additionally been gathering paperwork about Lumon and has an inventory of workers — together with a map with Burt’s home marked on it.
How does Irving’s outie even know who Burt is? Additionally, how does Irving’s outie know what that Lumon hallway seems to be like?
Certainly one of my favourite fan theories is definitely associated to Irving: Bear in mind how he retains dozing off at work and seeing the black paint oozing over his desk, the paint that he’s clearly utilizing at house? Irving has gotten in bother greater than as soon as about dozing. Maybe Irving’s outie, as a part of his investigation of Lumon, is depriving himself of sleep in order that his innie will go to sleep at his desk — as a result of the sleep state appears to be a spot the place reminiscences can cross the severance barrier.
6. What’s Milchick’s backstory?
With apologies to Ricken, whose ebook title I’m now going to applicable, us Severance followers are dying to get so many character mysteries answered in Season 2 — amongst different issues, in order that we will be taught extra about The They They Are.
That brings me to Seth Milchick, the always smiling and super-creepy supervisor who exudes an unsettling mix of menace and appeal. He’s unwavering in his loyalty to Lumon, and he has an knowledgeable capability to govern severed workers — whereas additionally pushing again, at instances, when he thinks Ms. Cobel goes too far. Is he even absolutely human? I’m fairly positive he’s not severed. Maybe he merely represents the dehumanizing nature of company energy?
So many questions, and so many bewildering mysteries. If I don’t get a minimum of those above answered this season, somebody goes to the break room.
