I loved and hated that episode

This is the best series "on TV" right now. By a ****ing mile.

That was a fun episode. The whole show is so quirky.

Irv brings the passion! Plus deductive smarts.

Season 1 was so good and every episode so far in season 2 has lived up to Season 1.

I like season 2 more than season 1 and I loved season 1

Such a good episode. Rarely does an episode in a show that all but ignores the previous episode’s massive cliffhanger make you forget about it due to how good the episode is.

Irv the stone cold killer just bringing the heat. Wonder how Helly plays out now, and how mark feels about it. Damn such a good show, best I’ve watched in a long time.

I have questions about the whole Keir religion that Lumen is pushing. We have very little contact with non-Lumen characters - the only ones are Mark's sister and Ripken, plus a few of Rikken's fans. Is the outside world aware of the Keir cult? or is that just a company thing - a brain washing tool for controlling innies? Is Keir-ism a thing?

I think it's a company thing. They can easily trick the innies into believing there crazy shit.

I suspect that Lumen is something akin to Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientology.

People on the outside know they exist and just shrug them off as weirdos who believe something out of the mainstream. Internally, though, it is a situation like Bethel (Jehovah's Witnesses) or Sea Org (Scientology) where the cult controls every aspect of their life and questioning the status quo is punished.

The thing is they trick outies with it too with milkshake and cobel although I guess their innies could be the outies now so who knows.

Good discussion. We've earned a 5 minute Music Dance Experience - that's right! an MDE!!

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This is one of the greatest scenes in television history. I was laughing so hard through the entire scene.

The latest episode is a bit calmer than the excitement of the ORTBO, but moves the story forward. Outie Irving is on to something, but what? Helena is a bitch. Milkshake has his middle management performance review - which seems about the same at Lumen as it is in every other corporation. One oh-shit erases a hundred attaboys.

Personally loved the paper clips facing the wrong direction issue.

Sounds like milcheck is going to go scorched earth taking it out on all of them. And seriously WTF is up with Miss Huang? It’s so weird. It’s so hard to get excited about Miss Casey because I want Helly and Mark to be the thing. But damn did milcheck cut mark deep in the elevator.

It has got to be totally weird for the innies- they don't go home to decompress from work like everyone else does. They lose and regain consciousness in the elevator. For them, their entire existence is at work. Eww. And poor Helly, that was her first return since the Overtime Contingency, and days and weeks had passed for the others. They had already moved on from that, but it was still fresh for her.

Speaking of Helly, actor Britt Lower has played her character(s) nicely nuanced. Helly is so much more likable than Helena. Body language, facial tenseness. Nice job. Also playing Helena posing as an innie and sexing up her employee.

They are really taking up Cold Harbor. Really interested to see what we get from that this season.

MONTHLY performance review lmao.

There's no way Milkshake is a human. He acts like someone who landed on Earth an hour ago.

Milkshake seemed particularly incensed that Mark S. conjugated verbs with Helena Eagen, Kier heir apparent. Like it offended him at a core level.

Another loose plot thread: Milkshake, when explaining Cobel's dismissal, said she was obsessed with the Marks and trying to have a throuple. Any truth to that? Did Cobel have something to do with the disappearance of Gemma/Miss Casey, getting her out of the way so she could pursue the Marks? Or was she merely taking advantage of the opportunity.

It’s fri-yay! Severance day. Get to see how Milkshake starts taking it out on the workers. What the hell is Bruce gonna do at dinner? Just remember your outie loves severance, your outie likes the weekend, your outie is good at painting

Love quadrangles?

Ain’t no way that I can wait until Fridays. We throw it on basically as soon as it is available Thursday night.

Finally caught up on this show. It is incredible! Only found it because of this thread, so thank you.

Also - do we really need spoiler tags here? I decided not to click on "Page 2" until I was caught up. I can't imagine somebody who isn't caught up jumping in here to read the latest posts and just hoping that people used spoiler tags.

Definitely doesn’t seem necessary beyond potentially spoiler type theories. Even those are pretty much just guesses based on what’s been shown. I haven’t really seen any actual spoilers out there but I don’t exactly go digging for them. Good chance they don’t even exist as the production has always seemed very tight lipped without huge future plans in place. That said anything already aired seems fine to me given the one episode per week.

Yeah, if true "spoilers" start leaking then those would of course need tags. But just talking about the latest episode surprise ending or cliffhanger should be expected by page 2 of a thread about a series.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SEVERANCE?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SEVERANCE</a> | the office intro <a href="https://t.co/tuABaeqY7b">pic.twitter.com/tuABaeqY7b</a></p>&mdash; clay (@wholebraincryin) <a href="https://twitter.com/wholebraincryin/status/1894103224887488609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Well that was a hell of a thing.

I certainly didn’t have Sandra ****ing Bernhard on my Severance bingo card.

Well...Mark had a different personality besides Mr. Mope and Childlike Coder.
..and poor Gemma.

Some great world building in this one. Of course it just raises even more questions.

Every episode in this show delivers, which is amazing given how varied the episodes have been this season in tone and pacing. They answer as many questions as new ones they raise. It's just a satisfying watch every week.

Man Gemma…. Wooof that’s brutal. I can’t even imagine. And seeing mark pre severance made him look like a bit of an ass. So excited to learn about cold harbour and how the reintegration is going to mess it all up to hell.

This was the first episode I didn’t enjoy. I hope this show doesn’t devolve into a constant swapping from scene-to-scene, memory-to-memory. Don’t like Mark reintegrating at all and that’s a big reason. Not interested in watching Petey part 2.

You didn't like the episode? I thought it was one of the best episodes of anything I've watched in a long long time. I'm not a big "cinematography" guy, but this episode was just on a completely different level than anything else on TV. It gave us all kinds of answers and was flawlessly put together.

No, didn't like it. Dark and depressing and a bunch of flashbacks. I do agree we learned some things, such as confirming Jemma is being held against her will and tortured.

Still unclear if Mark is going to be "okay" or a full-on basketcase going forward. I'm just hoping the show doesn't turn into Mark jumping in and out of his "innie/outie" parts of his brain non-stop like what Petey was doing. It's disruptive and just not a good way to tell a story in my opinion. I like seeing the characters interact in a current timeline and figure shit out together.

This show is the dopest series since the Wire...might be the most dystopian thing ever made.

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this is now my work soundtrack...

I'm 95% sure that Mark is now fully integrated and there is no longer innie/outtie Mark. He's been combined into one Mark.

He may be integrated/reunited, but i don't think he has made sense of it yet.
How will the others - Irving B, Dylan G, and Helly R - react to another outie in their group -fresh from the Helena infiltration?

Oh I think he will be fully integrated meaning he has made sense of it. I don't think he's going to say anything to them about it.

I hope this season ends with him saving Gemma, but I could see them going the other direction. There are a few shows that I've seen that kill off the significant other in this type of situation and I really hope that doesn't happen.

I just think the Helly Mark story is so fascinating that they may just kill off Gemma or he doesn’t save her. I think he really loves Helly, just don’t know which direction they may go.

We also learned you can sever someone multiple times at different levels to be different people which is mind blowing. It all has to do with the frequency of sound they play at the elevator or doors which is trippy.

And Gemma must have met some criteria during the blood drive where she met mark since it was a lumon thing and they essentially kidnapped her.

I don't think integrated Mark, knowing the way severed people are (mis)treated, could reconcile being with Helena.
Besides, a spurned Helena makes for a new story arc.

Right. And since Mark also know who Helly’s outie is it would be impossible for him to still have those feelings. Sure he realizes she is not the same as Helena, but once he’s integrated he’s not going to have much conflict between wanting Helly and Gemma.

Outie Mark is still very clearly in love with Gemma. It's not like Mark has some long work history with Helly. Shit they've really only known each other a couple of months at most, right?

If Mark wants to really burn it all down, good strategies would be to romance Helena, or find a way for Helly to take over full-time as the "on" personality.

Ohhh that'd be interesting.

Some questionable plot elements in season 2...

1.Turturro's "innie" knowing Helena was not only an "outie" but an Eagan...all because she said "night gardner"...so he attempts to drown her? That didn't quite pass the smell test..

This could have been somewhat explained away if they used a 3 minute segue...showing Turturro searching Lumon on the web and Helena's face showed up...when they were breaching the implants. Still doesnt explain trying to actually kill her though...exposing her would have been more believable.

2. Mark's innie knows Gemma is alive...but decides to go ahead and have sex with both versions of Helena? Scumbag....

Maybe Helena will try to off Gemma at some point? That would be an interesting cat-fight twist.


I do like where Walken's outie character is going...there is something dark going on there with long standing ties to Lumon. Both his husband and that doctor are creepy as **** looking...A+ on the casting.

If I had to guess....Lumon is experimenting with severing people as a type of twisted MK-Ultra therapy. Walken looking for redemption for a life of sin, Dylan is meeting with his outie wife...while their marriage is on the rocks. Turturro was an isolated, closeted homosexual ex-military...he's able to act on his nature while at work. Not sure on the Gemma angle yet...and how/why she entered into the fray unless she was connected to Lumon before she met mark.

1. He's smart. He realized she was Helena based on not only the night gardener shit, but also how she acted on the trip. Once you figure out that she's an outie acting like an innie, then he came to the conclusion that she'd have to be pretty ****ing important to the company.

2. Marks innie knows absolutely nothing about Gemma. He's a completely different person than his outie. Doesn't make him a scum bag.

Yeah, he does. His last sentence when his innie was at his sister's house was "She's alive". He saw a picture of her...and is trying to locate her. That's why they were in the pasture room full of sheep.

He may have realized she's important but stating, definitively, she's an "Eagen" is a pretty far leap. That company is enormous with thousands of employees. Trying to kill her off assumptions was not believable to me...and out of character for Irving.

They needed that to happen to advance the story but it was very sloppy writing...especially for THIS show...which has been impeccable.

Garbage episode. One of the worst 40 minutes of television ever.

Have to say i agree. It completely halted all the momentum of the season. And was just a long way to say she created severance. Could have easily been a b-plot of the last few episodes.

And the “twist” isn’t really anything that important. Nobody up to this point has cared who exactly invented the chip. We know Cobel already has a motive for turning on Lumen, she didn’t need more motivation. We already have another character who seems to understand the science of the chip and how it generally works. This just doesn’t change that much in the story. Honestly this entire episode would have been a really effective reveal as a side plot in season 1 where we didn’t really know much about anything and Cobel was in every episode, but now who created severance just isn’t that important given all of the other questions we have.

Her creating it certainly has potential to be relevant especially when combined with her potential relationship with Jame Eagan. But it definitely didn’t need to be the entire episode given a lot of it was pretty dragged out.

Is it perpetually winter? This was the coldest episode yet.

Season 2 is way more sloppy than the first...I'm supposed to believe Cobel is the inventor of severance and keeps the notes in a plaster Eagan head as the only copy? That Lumon would flippantly just fire/replace her with Milchick...she held an expendable middle-management position? There was nothing leading up to this episode that portrayed her as a scientist-type.

A lot of pointless character development in that episode...that seemed forced.

They could have just had her in her house, drinking a bottle of wine and opening a folder with the scientific notes in it...maybe a scrapbook of her accomplishments and an Eagen scholarship award or something....nope, got huffing chemicals on her dead mother's bed and a family cult member.

I was worried when Milchick approached the other black corporate lady about race/paintings...I was like..."here we go...got to meet those woke hollywood quotas." Luckily it stopped there...it was out of character as he's a company man and would never talk about it to that particular lady...she is even more devoted to the company than he is.

I also didnt like Dylan moving the break room picture for no apparent reason...and magically there is a note stuffed behind it. At least make it crooked or something to give him reason to move it..I was like "come on...make this believable".

I didnt like Helena showing up at the diner alone either...that would never happen. She's the heir apparent to the entire company. She's not going to be impromptu interfacing with Mark's outie...ever. I mean asking him if he wants to meet her dad..after talking for 3 minutes? Like Mark's outtie isnt going to extremely suspicious to why the owner's daughter is stalking him?

It's still had some awesome dystopian moments so far...that reminded me of season one but is struggling to make the plot movements appear natural. The first season just worked...

That episode didn’t do it for me, was pretty disappointed in how it drug out. It was nice to see cobel back because she had been gone for so long but it blew some theories I had. I thought the breathing machine was hers and she had died and lumon brought her back to life like Gemma but now I’m thinking Gemma’s accident was just faked because they saw something in her blood they liked. There’s so many questions I want answered and this episode didn’t answer any of them except cobel worked for lumon under the pretense of child labor and was somehow this mastermind which seems crazy.

I think the origin story was pretty deep. That terrible town, created then abandoned by Lumon, kind of like the steel town where my mom grew up in Pennsylvania. In that house, no doorway measurements later than 12 years old, was she sent away to be the child prodigy? and hiding the plans for the severance because I bet Lumon would make her go bye-bye if they were found. It shows she's much more than a Lumon homer, and maybe plant the seed for vengeance, will she help Mark? Or will she turn on him to get back in good graces with the Egans.

I don't think this was as pointless as the 'Fly" episode of Breaking Bad. I liked it though it was depressing and felt like a 15 minute episode.

Before Irv was terminated on the ORTBO, the last thing he said to Dylan was "Hang in there" in a serious way (wink implied) and that's the headline on that poster. Still, he could have removed it or something, not just felt behind it and there is the paper in that spot.