‘Severance’ Has Another Game-Changing Twist

The following story contains spoilers for Severance season 2, episode 4, "Woe's Hollow."

IF THERE'S A better show than Severance on TV right now, I'm certainly not watching it. (To be clear, there is not, in fact, a better show than Severance on TV right now. And very few others to have come out in the last 5-10 years are even in the conversation.)

The show has been firing on all cylinders from the moment it returned after nearly three years away for its second season, but things seemed to hit a particular early apex with "Woe's Hollow," as the MDR team was sent out on whatever the bizarre version of a Lumen company retreat is.

Let's backtrack just a bit; things have been in a state of mystery for the Innies ever since their Overtime Contingency endeavour at the end of season 1 came to a conclusion. We don't know what is true and what isn't, and it's clear that Lumen is once again trying to mislead and confuse the Innies, while the Outies for the most part remain oblivious. We say "for the most part" because episode 3, "Who Is Alive," featured Mark (Adam Scott) making a major breakthrough: rogue former Lumon scientist Reghabi told him that Gemma was alive, and so he agreed to immediately undergo the reintegration process.

But "Woe's Hollow" is fully a story for the Innies, and how they continue to reckon with a world where they know nothing, and can only understand and control so much. But Irving (John Turturro) has become a central cynical figure in all of this, and ever since Helly (Britt Lower) told a strange, mundane story about her Outie's life, he's been suspicious.

The episode was chock-full of the kind of surreal imagery we're used to seeing in Severance—but in a location without a ceiling, for once—and we learned some very strange new things about Lumen and the Severance process. First and foremost, they can activate them anywhere, and make them see, seemingly, anything. We knew the first part in the first season, when Dylan's Overtime Contingency was activated by Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) at home (and when Mark's sister, Devon, met the woman who was severed in a cabin to have a baby). But the second part seems kind of new—how did Lumen make it so that MDR would see "twins" of Mark and Dylan?

Irving, having lost Innie Burt (Christopher Walken) to "retirement" and seeing that Outie Burt was with another man, has been clearly in a particularly YOLO mood all season. And in "Woe's Hollow," he finally decided to push on something that he suspected: Helly. Or, we should say, Helena—because Irv didn't believe she was who she says she was. Things hit a point of no return when Helena, after being questioned again by Irv, told the group around a campfire that Irv was only hurt because he knew he could never see Burt again. The group went quiet at this point, and Irv stormed off.

The next morning (after Helena managed to successfully seduce Mark in their tent), Irv and Helena were both missing—and Irv finally brought out the truth. He told her bluntly that he knew she wasn't who she claimed to be, and that he suspected she was an Outie—because the comment about Burt was cruel, and Helly G. was never cruel. A great call.

And so he did all he could, and put it all on the line: Irv started, essentially, waterboarding Helena in the Woe's Hollow water, shouting for Mr. Milchick. He demanded that Helly be returned, shouting to Dylan G., Mark, and Milchick that this was not the Helly they thought it was, and that she was a mole; she was an Eagan.

Milchick was frozen with uncertainty over what to do—knowing who Helena really was. And then Helena addressed him as "Seth," telling him to do what Irv demanded—confirming everything Irving was saying as truth to the Innies.

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What is the Glasgow Block? Was Helena really posing as Helly G.?

After Helena demanded Milchick to bring Helly back, as a result of Irv's gambit, Milchick spoke into a walkie talkie, saying to remove the Glasgow block now. And, immediately, we see Helly return.

Before we get into any more of this, let's quickly acknowledge that this is some of the most tense, well-made, and best-acted TV we've seen in a long, long time; the intensity from Turturro, the cold uncertainty from Tillman, the character pivots from Lower. What we're seeing here is no typical scene in no typical show—this is special.

But as we see Helena become Helly, we're left to think about everything in retrospect. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, and Helly has really been Helena all season long. You have to wonder how much of the Innie world she's been relaying back to Lumon (and to what end), and we also have to consider that in seducing Mark, she's certainly betraying his trust and not the person who he thinks she is.

Using context, it's clear that "Glasgow" is some kind of setting on the Severance chip that allows the procedure to be overridden; by removing the "Glasgow block," Helly the innie once again returned. This isn't the first we've heard of the Glasgow setting, though; back in season 1, Mark and Helly were snooping around and found a screen that showed several settings, Glasgow being one of them. X user @Burritoprophet astutely remembered and shared the image in a post.

In addition to Glasgow, the other settings listed include "Beehive," "Branch Transfer," "Clean Slate," "Elephant," and "Freeze Frame."

Another user pointed out the "Glasgow" could be a reference to the "Glasgow coma scale," which refers to lack of brain function and activity.

Those other settings could also refer to other slang and references. Could "Beehive" be some kind of hive mind, shared consciousness setting? "Branch Transfer" would seem to be pretty straight forward—some kind of way to move one Lumon employee to another location. "Clean Slate" could be what Miss Casey/Gemma was subjected to on the testing floor last season; it could also be what Helena was seemingly threatening Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) with in episode 3, when she made reference to a "reset." Perhaps "Elephant" could be a way to undo all of this, because, as the idiom goes, Elephants never forget. "Freeze Frame" could be a way to look back on all of an Innie's memories and experiences as an archive.

Of course, this is all speculation and guessing based on clues. But it could help us at least think about figuring out the mystery and what, exactly, is going on.

Clearly, there's more possibilities with the Severance procedure, and more than we ever suspected possible at the start of the show.

What happens to Irving at the end of Severance season 2, episode 4?

At the end of the episode, after Irving's gamble to bring Helly back in Helena's place pays off, he's immediately berated and disciplined by Mr. Milchick, who, essentially, fires him. He tells him that he's no longer allowed to talk to anyone there, and that no one else is allowed to talk to him. He tells Irving that his things will be destroyed, his presence erased; it'll be like he was never there.

Irving tells Dylan to "Hang in there," a reference to the sign at their office—the one that resembles Dylan's stretch when he was helping Mark, Helly, and Irv's Innies take the place of their outies.

And then, after Milchick tells Irv "May Kier's mercy follow you into the eternal dark" (Seriously, these people and their devotion to Kier gets stranger and stranger with each passing episode; it's of course some kind of bizarre cult), he seemingly shuts Innie Irv off for good, and the episode cuts to black, and the episode concludes.

Now, Irv is certainly not dead. Milchick tells him that his Outie will be informed about what happened. But his Innie may, essentially, be dead. At least for now. Part of what's so interesting about Outie Irv is that he seems to be a big-time mystery, and there seems to be a case to be made that Irv's Outie and Innie mind may be subconsciously merging all on their own—why else would he be able to paint the Testing Floor hallway over, and over, and over again?

Irv had a vision in his dream—the same one where he saw Burt—that spelled out, quite literally, that Helly was an Eagan. His subconscious told him this, and he saw it in a vision that took the form of the number-bunching task that he did in MDR so often.

But what happens to Irv next? Clearly, Outie Irv already has some semblance of an idea that something is going on, but will he be able to figure out what?

And perhaps even more intriguingly... what did the Innies see when Innie Irv was shut off by Milchick? Did he die? Does he just disappear? Does he revert to Outie Irv right there on the spot?

This show is fantastic in all kinds of ways, but perhaps its greatest feat might be the way to constantly and consistently make its audience want more. We'll be waiting patiently for episode 5.

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