r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus

Why can't an innie write a very important message (tm) on the stairwell window with a sharpie, then run out and their confused outie will turn around and see it on the door window? It will work only once with the alarms going off when the door opens, but if you are fast and the security guy is distracted, you can deliver it? like "Run!" in bloody letters to bring the point home or "we make nukes, call fbi" or "never quit, there are >!goats!<"

for the original post w/ other questions see this link

1. big plot hole - natalie shows up in cobel’s office w/ pics of helly in the elevator during suicide attempt and says helly R tried to kill herself 3 wks ago and you didnt tell us? and the board used that to fire her? come on. they knew already. bc helena. was hospitalized. they knew. it wasnt something she would ever be able to keep from them. 
2. irv’s dad was in the US navy. why is irv doing research on former severed employees?
3. why does ricken suddenly seem so different during the break reading his book - he calls himself a buffoon and says he should never open his mouth - seems like he’s breaking character. maybe its foreshadowing lightly his big swing in season 2 of suddenly being so easily swayed y natalie- he isnt sure of himself? i dont know, seems weak writing to me. 
4. we dont have back story yet about the day helly wore her white t w/ dylan G’s face on it…
5. so confusing season 2, kier is so weird. i dont get it. 
6. does someone sell microchip necklaces’ like cobels?
7. not really sure why ms. casey was fired from wellness and then cobel did another test to see if she remembered mark or vice versa… pretty confusing. 
8. Burt G has GOT to not be severed. he did the comical thing in the video from ‘his outie’ where ever single sentence was litered with reiterations of the fact that he was severed. milchick gave him a sideways glance at one point that was very telling too. 
9. i also wonder what bad stuff burt G was doing as a youngster - the stuff Fields was referring to at dinner. that season 2 dinner convo w/ the three of them was weird as fuck. more bizarre religious themes. 
10. cobel says to helly ‘you’ll be long gone but we will keep them alive, in pain….’ right before helly goes on stage as ‘helena’ … so i really dont think cobel is putting lumon behind. i think mark asking for help in season 2 is suicide.

 

Sorry if this is old news, but I couldn't find any other post or comment about some of it.

I was rewatching the show and noticed some things about the Lumon CEO names. Hard to tell if it's intentional or apophenia, but possibly interesting still?

The Lumon CEOs

Kier, Ambrose, Myrtle, Baird, Gerhardt, Phillip, Leonora, Jame

If you take the second letter of their names, you get the letters: I-M-Y-A-E-H-E-A

If you take the last letter of their names, you get: R-E-E-D-T-P-A-E

These are anagrams for 'YEA, I AM HE' and 'REPEATED.'

It also explains some really weird stuff with the names like why Gerhardt ends with a 'T' or why Jame is missing an 's' at the end (severed? :P).

There's some other stuff, like Imogen is a character in a Shakespeare play Cymbeline where the character disguises herself as a young boy, Fidele. Lenore is a character in a Beethoven opera who disguises herself as a young man named Fidelio in order to infiltrate a prison and save her husband. Which, it's interesting enough that two women in the Eagan family could be references to fictional characters that disguise themselves as men, let alone with approximately the same name, and infiltrating a prison to save your husband is a little on-the-nose for the plot.

And maybe the smallest one but kinda on-the-nose as well, Ambrose and Myrtle. Ambrosia is commonly depicted as conferring immortality, and Myrtle is the greek plant of Venus that is associated with immortality. The episode where you are introduced to these characters is called In Perpetuity.

I know this is a common suspicion amongst fans of the show, but I'd venture a guess that 'revolving' is just Kier Eagan stepping through all his successors.

1. whats mr eagan’s favorite breakfast? (3 raw eggs in milk)
2. if they stagger the entries why are there alot of ppl in the bldg at the beg of the show when mark arrives at work? isnt it also 10 am when he arrives at work? later his start time is 9 
3. why does he have two watches, one for innie one for outie? why does he have two diff pairs of shoes? why two badges? 
4. is he thinner as an innie? seems like he is…. hes definitely happier as his innie in the beginning, he goes from crying as outie to innie mark sniffling ot knowing why… tossing the kleenex not knowing what it was from and smiling on his way to MDR dept. 
5. why is innie coughing? i know he is hungover and was crying but.. coughing?  he says petey was sniffling yesterday too…. we know petey’s sniffling was from reintegration but why is mark coughing if hes only hungover and been crying?
6. why does irv say hi kids whats for dinner? petey does that too dh 
7. holy shit mark’s innie is so obedient in the beginning. a completely different person than by end of s. 2. but petey tells him in the diner that mark s tried filing a complaint too. 
8. why did ms. cobel get a new office? 
9. in first mtg w/ ms cobel she acts like shes getting info from the board but silently. its weird and I don’t know why. 
10. milchick says ‘i just love seeing you all come in like this’ as mark and irv are about to ask helly the input survey… why does he say that. its weird.
11. mark’s first act of disobedience is to try to help helly. he liked her starting then. immediately. 
12. helena eagan and milchick def had a thing - she was leaving work w/ flowers from him after her first day severed.
13. he had a ‘good doctor therapy man w/ a weird little mustache’ was it dr. mauer? 
14. why th is mark’s sister devon w/ a boob like ricken? he’s insufferable and so self involved and they’re so different
15. what is the occasional camera quality that is reminiscent of soap opera camera movements and quality??
16. is the overhead shot of helly on the table the view of the same entity who does overhead shots of oceans and rocks later or its not that deep?  
17. why th does selvig tell mark hes ‘good people’
18. who is carol D
19. what state are they in??
20. why does the WMC person say ‘children’s brain health’ - what else is lumon cooking up? what happened to WMC in season 2?
21. severance compatible attire
22. what is baird other than baird creek where mark lives and 
23. mark is so defensive of the company bc he needs it or thought he needed it to help him get thru life w/out gemma. the drinking too
24. so curious how diff the innies are from the outies. they really are their own ppl. totally different. 
25. im sorry wtf, mrs selvigs late husband said he’d build a guest house for her lover in the hereafter in case she found someone after he died? she keeps the blueprints in her purse??
26. end severance. severance robs the worker of moral self governance. one may spend ones day hacking children to bits and go home to ones own family none the wiser. this is kier language. but on a WMC poster. 
27. why was irv dozing? he got in trouble for it once… is it his hallucinations of the testing floor elevator? 
28. what’s a freshman fluke?
29. why do the files expire?
30. how did petey get the tape of mark in the breakroom doing his atonements
31. why did petey get fired or how did he quit? i know he was reintegrated but still. 
32. in season 3 will o. mark tell i. mark that petey is dead and that he helped him before he died. 
33. mrs selvig said her mother was a catholic. cobel said atheist. i suppose both can be true. 
34. THE BOARD HAS CONCLUDED THE CALL
35. wth is the mumbling voice helly hears in the break room? and dylan hears a baby? 
36. some people might live here? ? 
37. intrepid cartographer of the mind??
38. wth was optics and design workingon? waterin cans?
39. the instruction cards on how to murder someone in o and d?
40. what did they do to marks knuckles in the breakroom

What moment in Severance was the most mind-blowing to you? Maybe something you didn't see coming. Or something that made you question the entire premise of the show.

What moment just blew your mind?

I don't know if this has ever been brought up before, but let's goooo.

Helena, the number 9, and possible symbolisms around her

1 — Helena's name meaning

The name Helena means “light", “torch” or “shining one", which I find interesting because it creates a contrast with Kier, whose name, according to some etymological interpretations, is associated with darkness.

So we have:

Helena = light

Kier = darkness

I wonder if Helena could symbolically represent an opposition to Kier, or at least to what he represents.

2 — Helena and the number 9

In "In Perpetuity", we learn that Jame is the 8th Lumon CEO. So, if Helena becomes the next one, she'll be the 9th.

Lumon also has 9 Core Principles, with the 9th being Wiles, which is a particularly odd principle compared to the others.

In numerology, 9 is commonly associated with completion, the end of a cycle, and the beginning of another. That makes Helena occupying position 9 potentially significant, as if she is the one who arrives at the end of a sequence.

And Wiles is interesting here too. Wiles could potentially connect to Helly's repeated attempts to outsmart Lumon's system rather than simply obeying it.

3 — Helena is positioned between the “two worlds”

One thing I've been thinking about is that outies and innies aren't necessarily fighting for the same thing.

The outies who oppose Lumon are fighting from the perspective that what Lumon does is unethical. They oppose what Lumon has done to their lives and what they believe Lumon is trying to achieve.

But the innies have a completely different stake in the conflict. They're fighting for the right to have a life at all and not simply disappear if Lumon is “shut down.” Their rebellion is about autonomy, personhood, and the right not to be treated as disposable parts of someone else's life.

But who will hear them if they're innies?

Well, thanks Kier, we have Helena, who embodies both sides simultaneously.

Helena is the Eagan heir who belongs to Lumon's world, while Helly is the innie who has experienced firsthand what it means to be trapped inside that world.

This is why I believe a reintegrated Helena could be the key to destroying (or at least fundamentally changing) Lumon from within.

And yes, I believe Helena's arc may ultimately be one of redemption.

I don't think the outies can truly defeat Lumon on their own. They can expose it, fight it, and potentially dismantle it from the outside but it means they could also end up freeing the outies at the expense of the innies.

Helena is the one person who can potentially understand both sides of that conflict.

A reintegrated Helena would be both the Eagan heir who inherited Lumon and the Helly who fought to escape it.

So I wonder if, whatever Lumon's ultimate fate may be, the final victory will ultimately have to come through Helena herself.

The outies may be able to fight Lumon from the outside, but perhaps victory can only come when someone from inside the Eagan legacy chooses to end it.

So... what do you think?

You can run with that down any context you are inclined...

Hi there,

I feel like severance might bring us further down the rabbit hole of the clash between morality (or lack of it) and technology.

So far, there have been many, many signs of Lumens being cultish, with revered, almost divine figures, principles and purification of vices, salvation, literal goat sacrifices…

Feels like the founder may have been interested in making a cult, and some hints also points towards immortality. I wouldn’t be surprised if his mind is in a chip somewhere, waiting to be put back into a body after its original owner got turned off.

I’d be interested to hear from others about this theory

No spoilers pleaaaaase but anybody else think widows bay has a severance feel

Apologies if this has been asked before… but I just finished season 2 and one thing I did not fully understand is why Lumon has Gemma in the role of Ms Casey at all.

We learn that Gemma is effectively a test subject for Lumon… why exactly she was selected isn’t fully known, but she is basically testing whether or not the severance procedure can withhold extreme emotions and traumas. Hence, the test with the crib: Cold Harbor.

If the crib was the “ultimate test” — why risk having her engaging with her husband while at Lumon? Even if they are both severed, wouldn’t seeing and being around your spouse that you were super in love with and went through the fertility traumas with… be a huge trigger for her??

The show paints the Lumon people as very rule oriented and strict so I guess I just struggle to understand how a crib is more emotionally triggering than your living, breathing, talking human spouse.

All of the others have been outside Lumon's headquarters during the overtime contingency or on the retreat but Helly was at a Lumon event during overtime and she wasn't on the retreat. Anyone else notice this? I just think it's sad. She's never even been outside. I guess thats the case for almost every innie outside of MDR but it makes her unique to MDR.

For those who posted in this community about not being able to follow the show……

Don’t get discouraged if you’re having a hard time following the show as some have posted in this community but others have not bothered to read. It’s very difficult to follow for some people, and they tend to jump around filling in different back stories. There is also a lot of hidden content and innuendo that’s easy to miss.

I personally had no trouble following the story.

I was just wondering if Mr Milicheck ever sleeps….