Severance

Mark Scout is an employee of Lumon Industries.

As a term of his employment, Mark has agreed to submit to a surgical procedure known as "Severance.” This is where employees will have a chip inserted into their brains, in order to create a partition between two distinct personas. One is known as the “Outtie,” while the other is known as the "Innie." This is done so that, while he is at home, on his own time, Mark Scout is himself, but when he is at work, he is an entirely new person, a man known as Mark S., and neither one of them knows anything about what the other does.

But on a sublevel deep beneath the Lumon corporate headquarters, the offices where Mark S. spends forty hours a week are located within a twisting warren of white hallways and fluorescent lighting. His work is vague, shrouded in mystery, and dominated by abstruse, seemingly never-ending, but all-important data files, all while immersed in Lumon's cult-like work-culture of quotas, cubicles, and the joy of receiving small rewards and sparing praise for doing a good job. Here, the departments are kept isolated, each one ignorant of the other's true function and purpose, but all of them are dedicated body, mind, and soul to Lumon, guided to complete their tasks by a bibliolatrous employee manual, and a well-deserved fear of the stinging lash of Lumon's disciplinary policies, ever ready to punish the underperforming and the unruly. It is a world ruled over by a tyrannical layer of Middle Management, who wield the dogma of the Eagans, the family of founders and Godhead CEOs of Lumon, in an iron fist.

And so, trapped within this strange and sunless subterranean world of sanctified Corporate Culture, Mark S. and his coworkers start to question the point of their entire existence, and then… they begin to search for a way out.

I recently rewatched Severance Season 1 in preparation for the premiere of Season 2, which begins on January 17th on AppleTV.

If you haven’t watched the first season already, then now’s the time. It’s great. Hands down great. It’s funny. It’s cool. It’s relatable. It’s strange, mysterious, and full of enticing questions and confusion. Yes, it does start off a little slowly, but this is deliberate pacing. It lets you think that you know what kind of show it’s going to be, and then it constantly shocks you, and shows you that you’re wrong. This is a show that rewards your patience with a full and satisfying meal, and yet somehow leaves you hungry for more.

Simply put, it’s just a good show.

Plus, it’s just a good time to jump on, as the first season aired in February 2022, and it ended in a cliffhanger, and now, three years later, all those big questions that the rest of us were left to stew over are finally closer to being answered.

Hopefully.

And I get the struggle to stick with the show at first. The first couple of episodes are bleak, and they’re bleak specifically because they’re set in the ugliest fucking soulless corporate cubicle farm ever, a place a lot of us have been unlucky enough to know, a place those of us who are lucky enough to work 100% remote live in fear of ever having to return to and feel a great swell of pity for the unlucky fuckers who do. So, yeah, I get it. I do. Office life in America is a deeply unsatisfying, ugly-as-fuck hellscape of dead-end and dead-eyed mediocrity. Who'd want to watch that shit, right? It’s bad enough that you have to be at one of those terrible god damn places during your day, why would you want to spend your nights watching a show about that place, right, even if it's a funny one. Because it's not a funny joke when they're just showing you your everyday life, but stipped bare of the pretenses, so the horror shines through... I get that initial reaction.

And, to be fair, it is confusing as shit, especially in the beginning.

I mean, the whole idea of being "severed" is strange and a little hard to get your head around right from the start. It's also confusing, because these offices, and the strange culture that the characters are a part of, it seems so familiar, but also… it’s not. It's clearly not. It’s weird. This is partly due to the sci-fi nature of the show's hook, but still, while some details are a little odd, others are more than odd, they’re strange really, even disconcerting, and a little scary. Plus, a lot of them just plain ol' don’t make any sense at all.

But that’s okay, because the show makes a lot of the strangeness easy to understand, both visually and narratively, and the thing is, the motivations of the characters do make sense, and that's the important part. The struggle with grief. The need for connection. The search for meaning in your life. The feeling of being trapped in the endless trudge of a basic 9 to 5 job. All of those motivations make complete sense. They're completely relatable.

And honestly, the weird details are not supposed to make sense, at least not at first. Like the character of Helly R., you're the new fish in an unfamiliar lake. It's your first day at a new job and the people and their office culture and their little quirks and foibles, all that shit is weird and strange and new. These details are supposed to throw you off balance and muddy the water. But much like a new job, all those weird details will make sense eventually. Probably. At least somewhat. In the context of the show.

I assume.

But even if they don’t, don't worry about it. The weird details are mostly just for fun. They're like fireworks, or window dressing, some are meant to be flashy and distracting during the story, others are meant to reenforce and compliment the theme. They definitely matter, yes, they make up a big part of the aesthetic and tone of the story, sure, but ultimately, it's characters that matter the most. They're the ones who telling you the story, it's their struggles you're following, and they’re just like you and me, really... despite the fact that, technically, some of them are only 120 or so, to maybe 5000 hours old.

But like I said... doesn't matter.

Don’t worry about the weirdness. Just jump in and start swimming. Float with the current a bit, let it pull you along. Soon enough, it'll become clear that Severance is not meant to be a more dramatic sci-fi tinged version of The Office. Okay, maybe it is meant to be that a little bit, but it’s also more than that. It's that, meets Devs. It’s that, meets Fringe. It’s that, meets Westworld. It’s that, meets Black Mirror. It’s that, meets The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

It’s that, meets The Prisoner.

So, yeah, there’s a slow pace at first, and it’s definitely weird, but in my opinion, it’s an engrossing slow and weird pace, and it’s definitely worth your time.

So…

Mark S., and his three coworkers—Irv B., Dylan G., and Helly R, the newest member of their team–all work in the Macrodata Refinement Department. There, they remove numbers from large data files based on how scary those numbers feel when they come across them. What Lumon does with those numbers, what those numbers represent, where those numbers come from, or why they must remove the scary ones, or even why those numbers are "scary" in the first place...

That is a mystery.

Dylan believes they're clearing the ocean of deadly eels and shit like that, all in preparation for a mass human migration to live on the ocean floor, theorizing that the world must be shit, if the very idea of “severed” employees even exists. Irving, meanwhile, thinks they're removing swear words from movies. Mark S. seems to be happy just not having an opinion and doing the work.

In the end, all the employees know for sure is they have a quota of a certain amount of files they must complete 100%, and that, while on the road to doing this, they could receive any number of perks, like erasers, or finger-traps in Lumon blue, or perhaps a caricature portrait of things their Outties enjoy doing, or a glass block that is laser-etched with their portrait, or a five minute Music/Dance Experience. Maybe even a Waffle Party in the Kier Eagan Replica House.

So, y’know… there’s definitely some benefits to working here.

Created by Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller, the whole show hinges on the idea that employees submit to a surgical procedure that separates their work lives from their personal lives. For the company, it’s like the ultimate NDA. Employees can’t spill the corporate beans when they can’t recall anything about their work day. All the Outtie remembers is stepping into the office elevator, on their way to work, and then, in the blink of an eye, the elevator doors open again, and another work day is over. It’s like Missing Time, except you know where it went.

This might seem like an extreme thing for a person to agree to, but in the show, Mark Scout is a recent widower, and so his being severed is a way to give himself eight hours out of the day where he isn’t actively grieving the loss of his wife. It’s not healthy maybe, but at least it’s understandable.

Besides, we live in a world where millions of people have quit their shitty jobs, their shitty bosses, and their shitty companies, walking away because their work-life was deeply unsatisfying, and too full of manufactured emergencies and inane dramas, not to mention, seemingly pointless. In that world, I really don’t think the idea of being severed is all that outlandish of a thing to consider. If you've ever had the kind of shitty corporate office job, where, should you find yourself small-talking at some party, it’s honestly hard to explain what it is you do all day, for forty hours a week, without sounding ridiculously boring, then the idea that you might never have to think about work at all when you’re outside the office… that might not sound like all that bad of a deal, right? If you could be paid, and also never have to think about your job at all outside of work, wouldn't you take it?

That’s the show’s basic hook right there.

But while the show starts out focused on the existential dread that's part and parcel with corporate drudgery, soon enough, it zeroes in on the reality of the idea of being "severed". At what cost would this absolute freedom from the burden of your job come? Because as we soon see, being an employee of Lumen doesn’t mean turning off your brain while you're at work, it means that you turn into a different person, or at least, a different, less worldly, more compartmentalized, more naive version of you, someone who only knows life at the office. See, while the Outtie you only ever sees the elevator doors close on your way to work, only for the doors to then immediately open once again at the end of their day, the Innie version of you only ever sees those elevator doors close as their work day ends, only for it to then immediately open once again as their new work day begins.

That sounds like Hell to me.

No nights in front of the TV. No evenings out with friends. No loved ones. No sleep. No weekends. No holidays. No days off. No meals. They don’t even seem to have a lunch break. Basically, no eight hours for rest, no eight hours for what they will, only a seemingly endless series of eight hours of work, over and over. Nothing but screens of inscrutable numbers, announcements written in corporate speak, the looming weight of meeting quotas, idle chatter over the cubicle walls with your coworkers, and the occasional bit of mandatory office fun. All of this, with no real knowledge of what their actual lives are like either, or even what the world is like beyond Lumen’s walls. It’s just the job, only the job, and no questions. Also, if you step out of line, you get sent to the Break Room. That doesn't mean "take your 15" either, it means that you could be in there for hours before you finally "break" and all while being forced to meaningfully apologize for your transgression.

All that sounds terrible, right?

Well, you can always put in a Resignation Request with your Outtie, if you want to quit, but ultimately, the decision of whether or not to accept that request lies with the Outtie, and why would they do it? Quit? Then what? Get a job they'd have to be present for all the time? Fuck that. What does an Outtie care if their Innie suffers down in some over-lit sysphean Office Space? It's not their problem. Innies aren't even real people, right?

The thing that every Innie will eventually realise is that, every time those doors open, every time your new work day begins, you’re there because your Outtie decided to put you there.

And the two worst parts of this absolute hell?

1. Resignation basically means death for an Innie, because if their Outtie quits this job, then they will never exist again.
2. All those stupid work perks? The office parties? The story of the Eagan family and the founding of Lumon? All those corporate platitudes? The exhultations on the importance of Teamwork? For people who have only ever existed in this environment, who have never known anything else, it truly means something to them. It's their life. It's their religion. They willingly embrace the tenets and teachings of Kier Eagan, and the Cult of Corporate Life, and revere them.

This is something that is absolutely disgusting to consider.

Imagine some smiling and simple-minded version of you, sitting at their desk, every moment eagerly worshipping at the alter of some CEO, sincerely praising their brillance over the top of the cubicle wall to their other coworkers, as they all tip-tap away, sipping company-branded coffee from a company-branded mug.

Yuck.

But in the Innie's defense, they exist in a hamster cage, one that’s all wheel, and they've never known anything different. They’re under constant surveillance too. They're controlled at every moment, blockaded, herded, and manipulated at every turn throughout their day by their management too, none of whom are severed.

While this definitely means the Board of Directors, that invisible and all-powerful entity who only ever appears through their Board Liason, a smugly condescending Mouth of Sauron-like Representative, it more directly means Middle Management, like the domineering, archaically overly-effusive manager, Harmony Cobel, who is definitely more than she appears, as well as her second-in-command, Macrodata Refinement’s menacingly ebullient direct supervisor, Seth Milchick, with his wide and full of teeth smile. And on top of that, there’s also the threat of Doug Graner, the intimidating head of security, a square-jawed and square-shouldered hulk of a man with all the calming presence of a Mafia legbreaker. These representatives of Lumon's will are always ready to mete out any punishments that might be needed in order to meet those quotas, or to occasionally extend a hand to pat the head of the employee who met them, if well-enough earned.

The truly horrible reality here is that these petty, cruel little tyrants actually do wield very real power, and are very large presences in their employees' lives, and not just at the office either, but in the real world too... in shocking ways.

So, what’s going on here?

From the little we see of the outside world, Lumon is a large and powerful corporation, supposedly employing over a hundred thousand people in numerous offices all over the world. From its humble start as a salve company, it still adheres to its original mandate–reflected in its original logo of a flask, a spoon, and a drop of fluid–by focusing on developing advanced technology, especially in the medical and biotechnology field.

But is this all true?

The show takes place at the Lumon company headquarters, which is in a large town, or perhaps a small city, called Kier, PE. But PE doesn’t mean Pennsylvania. That’s PA, and the reason why is because the Postal Abbreviation PE was already assigned to Peru. Is the town of Kier in Peru? It certainly has a cult-like feel, and the way the town is presented on screen gives the feeling of it being isolated in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. So, is Kier the result of a strange religious sect that, much like the Mormons, fled persecution and settled in a remote region, which for Lumon means Peru? Or is PE mean some kind of future state, maybe in a United States that has been changed somehow, or maybe after the United States fell? Is it even in the same world as ours? And if it is, and it's modern times, and this company is some weird cult in some wierd isolated place, is the majority of its population in at least some form of ignorance about their context in the world? Or do some know and some don't? Do only the Severed not know? Is Lumon really a huge multinational corporation, or is it really just the only game in this particular town, a game that everyone who lives in Kier, whether an employee of not, simply has to play in someway? Or is it some combination of both?

Questions, questions, questions... All I can say for sure is that the punk rock kids at the local underground venue specifically hate Lumon in a way usually reserved for cops, or the church, or the President.

Whatever the answer, Kier, PE is a company town.

The culture at Lumon is shaped by the philosophy and writings of its visionary founder, the first CEO from 1865 until his death in 1939, Kier Eagan. Since then, the position of CEO has been held by his descendants.

A man whose favorite breakfast consisted of three raw eggs in milk, Kier Eagan was born an easily bruised child, due to his parents’ unspecified “close biological relationship.” As a child, he worked for an abusive boss as a chair stuffer, and later became a stewman at an ether factory, where he met his wife, Imogene. After that, he went on to become a military doctor during the Civil War. These experiences shaped the man who would one day found Lumon Industries.

Kier Eagan dedicated a large amount of his time to his philosophical writings. These writings continue to unite the employees of Lumon to this very day, and they often quote his teachings to each other. They also revere his nine Core Principles: Vision, Verve, Wit, Cheer, Humility, Benevolence, Nimbleness, Probity, and Wiles, and use them as a guiding light throughotu their day.

Praise Kier.

The legacy of Kier Eagan, as well as that of his entire family, are chronicled in Lumon’s Perpetuity Wing, which houses the Eagan museum, celebrating Lumon’s company mission, as well as the story of the Eagan’s. There are three exhibits: A hall of wax figurines of the current and former CEOs, the Lumon Legacy of Joy, and the Kier Eagan Replica House.

The Wing is accessed directly from the Severed floor, where visitors descend a series of staircases in order to enter the main exhibits. Weirdly, while the Severed Floor is underground, the Perpetuity Wing appears to be lit via skylights, which when then coupled with the exit , which leads outside, to stairs that don't seem to be that far underground, it makes we wonder... is the elevator down to the Severed Floor even moving?

Either way, reality starts to get very tenuous down there...

Anyway, Kier Eagan’s work centers around the idea of the Four Tempers:

“In my life, I have identified four components, which I call tempers, from which are derived every human soul. Woe. Frolic. Dread. Malice. Each man's character is defined by the precise ratio that resides in him. I walked into the cave of my own mind, and there I tamed them. Should you tame the tempers as I did mine, then the world shall become but your appendage. It is this great and consecrated power that I hope to pass on to all of you, my children.” — Kier Eagan

The Four Tempers seem to be represented by four colors in the show: Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green, colors that seem to be repeated everywhere in the Lumon offices, most notably in Macrodata Refinement’s work, which also seem to be coded in a way to represent Woe (green), Frolic (yellow), Dread (red), and Malice (blue).

As to what this means when it comes to the work that Mark S. and the others are doing there every day, well, there’s theories, lots and lots of theories. Although, I don’t know how important exactly any of those answers really are to what we actually see happening.

In addition to the Employee Manual, penned by Kier Eagan himself, as well as his other written materials, the Lumon offices are decorated with many oil paintings—maintained and rotated regularly by the department of Optics and Design—that depict important moments in the life of its esteemed founder.

These paintings include such inspiring works of art as Kier Taming the Four Tempers, The Courtship of Kier and Imogene, The Youthful Convalescence of Kier, and the stunning vistas of Kier Invites You to Drink of his Water, and that’s all without mentioning the numerous portraits of the great man himself.

All of this shit, everything that we glimpse along the endless lengths and around the endless corners of the Severed Floor as Mark S. tries to settle new employee Helly R. into her new position, despite the fact that she desperately wants to quit, all it does is raise questions…

What the fuck is this horrible place?

What does Lumon actually do? How large is Lumon? What exactly do they do in Macrodata Refinement? Why are the Numbers scary? Why does Optics and Design claim to only have two people in their department, when the actual numbers are closer to a half dozen? Why won’t Helly’s Outtie let her quit? What exactly were the movements depicted on the Ideographic Card that Dylan G. swiped from OnD, and why did Mr. Milchik need it returned so badly? What’s the deal with Ms. Casey, the Severed Floor’s Wellness Counselor? What does Ms. Selvig want from Mark? What does Ms. Cobel want from Mark? What is The Myrtle Eagan School for Girls? What happened to Dr. Reghabi? Why is Irvine's Outtie painting the Testing Floor's black door over and over again? Also, why does Irv's Outtie have so much information on the Severed and Lumon itself? How long have these people actually been this way? Have they ever been wiped and reset? Is this why Burt was retired, because he and Irv, despite multiple mind wipes, kept finding each other in the halls and falling in love over and over again? And if so, does this mean that none of the experiences of the Innie's can be trusted to be true or complete?

And maybe most importantly, what the fuck are the baby goats for?

Also, years ago, was there really a bloody massacre on the Severed Floor, perpetrated by one department on another? Or is that just a weird rumor, much like how the Department of Optics and Design believes that Macrodata Refinement are born with pouches in which they carry their slowly gestating clones, organisms that will one day spring forth, kill them, and take their place? More importantly, whether the massacre really happened or not, why does Lumon have a painting depicting this event? Better yet, why are there at least two official Lumon paintings of that event, each one depicting a different department as being responsible?

One of these paintings is entitled The Macrodata Refinement Calamity, and it shows the blue badges (Malice) of Macrodata Refinement killing the green badges (Woe) of Optics and Design. The other is called The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design, and it is the exact same painting, save for one important detail… the ones holding the knives have green badges, and they’re slaughtering people with blue badges. But which one is real? Is either one real?

Was there really a huge bloody massacre when two departments turned on one another in a murderous rage, perhaps driven to do so as an unfortunate side effect of Lumon's early attempts at Severing employees? Or did the departments maybe once try to unionize, something Lumon most likely did not like or want to happen, something that Lumon, far away from any prying eyes in their secret underground world, then violently put down? This would explain why the departments are all so small, and why they're kept so far apart. Are these paintings just the higher-ups at Lumon using the "massacre" as a way to sow distrust between the departments, to keep them from talking to each other, from realizing not only how shitty their lives are, but the power they'd have should they decide to stand together?

Or did nothing ever happen?

Is this all just a fiction, something Lumon made up to make sure the employees stay in their place, scaring them like children afraid of the monster under the bed. Did they plant these ridiculous rumors, and then leave “evidence” behind to lend those rumors some credence?

One of the inevitable consequences of the characters' entire of reality being revealed as potentially unreliable, is that the unreliability spreads, and soon enough, the question becomes... where does that unreliability end?

Is the whole town severed? There's certainly evidence of it being used outside the Severed Floor. Does that mean that Kier, PE is nothing but a larger pen for Lumon to hold these blissfully unaware sheep, all waiting their turn at the slaughterhouse? Is everyone's entire life as an Outtie, as well as everyone that they interact with, all the every day normalcy of their dinner parties, the TGIFriday’s mediocrity of Kier itself, just another level of control by Lumon?

In a normal world, this would be crazy talk, the type of bullshit that Flat Earthers, Q-Anoners, Anti-Vaxxers, and Trumpers all spew in order to avoid acknowledging their own culpability in the failure of their lives, the sky is a dome, birds aren’t real, and Jewish Space Lasers are vaporizing cities in order to hide evidence of nanotech infections, like COVID, which are being controlled by 5G towers and chemtails, so you need to start drinking raw milk every day, blah, blah, blah… nutball bullshit.

But here in Kier, PE, it’s all too frighteningly possible.

Maybe that would explain some of the anomalies and glitches that some fans, the ones who could either be called ”eagle-eyed” or “in need of a hobby,” have noticed? That’s always the question with shows like this… production errors, or intentional clues? Do some of the characters pause unnaturally? Do some reflections not quite match up? Do these things mean that its all some kind of a simulation, hinting at layers and layers of surveillance and control, and that ultimately, everyone is either Severed, or in on the whole con? Or is there not only a ton of Red Herrings here, but also a willingness to see them?

That’s the big question…

Because, with its generalized purpose, its large social media footprint, the strange devotion of its employees, its potentially massive collection of secret data, and its complete and total lack of concern for humanity, Lumon really seems to share a lot of similarities with real-life tech corporations, and that's definitely going to put us all in a place of mistrust right away. But while the question of what's exactly going on deep within this company, a place that is literally and figuratively digging into its employees‘ minds, is a natural one... it doesn't really matter, right? It could literally be anything, and no matter what, the answer is... it's some bad shit.

Still, the question: "to what end?" ...that is the one to consider.

I mean, imagine a world where your employer doesn't just own you from 9 to 5, but at any moment. Imagine a world one where you're only allowed a life of your own depending on your employer's wants and needs, and that decision is up to your employer. Even worse, it's a loss that you only theoretically feel, because it wasn't "you" doing the work. How long could you handle not being "you"? If the days or weeks, or even years, passed in a moment, but the time you were "awake" was still your own, would that be an acceptable real life?

Or...

Maybe the Mark S. and the others aren't actually a part of a huge workforce of "severed" employees at all. What if they're a small test pool, and the work they're doing is nonsense, just busy work, or worse, they're somehow maintaining their own cages, because the Numbers are their own, or from others' brain scans. Maybe the numbers are the output from the Severed Chips, and the "scary" numbers they're tasked with removing are people unconsciously trying to break down the mental blocks that Lumon put up, and by removing the numbers, they're keeping people, maybe even themselves, from breaking free? What if they're simply their own jailers?

Or...

Is that hurriedly scrawled map of the Severed Floor actually, even if perhaps inadvertantly, a map of the brain, because that's what they're doing in Macrodata Refinement... mapping the brain? Is that what the Lumon Cult is about, all that shit that Kier Eagan spouts? Is this all some kind of "Ascension of Humanity" kind of thing? Are the Unsevered people in Kier aware of this? Is that why Mark Scout's brother-in-law, Ricken, a motivational self-help guru, signed Mark's copy of his latest book "To Mark: Intrepid Cartographer Of The Mind"?

Or...

Much like artists who allow their creative work to be farmed by Gen AI, is Mark S. and the others simply ringing the bell on their own doom, as everything they do is actually helping Lumon to perfect the process of creating docile and unquestioning workers? Are they helping to build not just their own prison, but all of humanity's?

Or...

Maybe they're part of a process to perfect cloning people, in order to accomplish that same goal of creating an army of perfect workers, but as replacements for the soon to be obselete People with Free Will? Maybe. There's sheep down there, after all. And also Ms. Casey maybe too...

Or... maybe some combination?

Scary stuff to consider.

Once you start unravelling it, there's a lot of possible options wrapped up within this particularly interesting ball of string, but also, like I said... Production Error, or Intentional Clue? I guess we'll see soon enough.

Hopefully.

Asking us to consider how much of our souls and our values we sacrifice when we surrender ourselves to our jobs, while considering the horrific effects of life under the yoke of capitalism, as well as just how much of an unattainable lie the idea of a "good" work/life balance is, no matter what's actually going in this silly, funny, and ridiculously clever little sci-fi office dramedy, it is most definitely a horror show for modern day society.

Severance not only shows us a world right outside our window, but also one that is way too terrifyingly close to reality for comfort, especially as it's a reality that too many of us have repeatedly shown our willingness to allow to come to pass... at least, as long as they get a few work perks.

"The surest way to tame a prisoner is to let him believe he's free." – Kier Eagan

The new season starts this Friday, January 17th.