‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 6 Just Reinforced a Major Fan Theory
Spoilers below.
If there were a unifying theme for this week’s episode of Severance, it might be something like 'weird dates'. The love triangles/love hexagons forming between the MDR Innies and their Outies are growing more complicated by the episode, especially as their Outies begin to interact more in the world outside Lumon. Truthfully, I don’t see how these interactions end in anything other than disaster, at least for some couple combos. If, for instance, Innie Burt and Innie Irving somehow get to stroll off into the sunset together, what does that mean for Outie Burt and his husband, Fields (John Noble), a lovely man whom we finally get to know this week?
For now, Severance is still setting the stage for such emotional turmoil. Episode 6, 'Attila', opens with Outie Mark reeling from his reintegration-flash encounter with Ms. Casey/Gemma last episode. He realizes that, even with the horror of the experience, he might be one of the lucky ones. Unlike so many others, he might, someday, have the woman he lost returned to him.
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That’s all fine and dandy for Outie Mark. But what about Innie Mark? He has feelings of his own. In the bathroom on Lumon’s severed floor, he finally works up the courage to tell Helly the truth of what happened at the ORTBO, now that she’s focused on reconfiguring a plan to find Ms. Casey.
'Helly,' he says, 'we shared vessels.' (Sorry, but I absolutely lost it here. Could there be any more uncomfortable way to describe sex than 'we shared vessels'?) At first, Helly mistakes the 'we' to which Mark refers, assuming he means Ms. Casey herself. Who knows what went down during those freaky wellness sessions? Even more embarrassed, Mark clarifies. He had sex with Helena Eagan, the future CEO of Lumon itself. And though Helly understands that Mark didn’t intend to betray her—he thought Helena was her, after all—it doesn’t lessen her hurt. Not only did Helena steal her body; she stole what would have been her first time with Mark.
'It’s probably another tactic,' Helly says, her mind immediately trying to rationalize what happened. (Although, in this case, I don’t think she’s wrong.) 'Something to drive a wedge between us.'
As Helly retreats to a corner of the hallway to weep, Mark tries (and fails) to throw himself back into refining. And here we finally see some PERSONAL GROWTH from poor Mark, who has spent so much of his time running from emotional difficulty. Instead of burying his feelings under a pile of paperwork, he seeks out Helly to apologize once again. Thankfully, she has the same intentions. When they collide outside the MDR office, Helly bats away his shame. 'You thought it was me,' she says. 'Which means you wanted to. With me.' Helly insists she doesn’t want to hear what went down between Mark and Helena; she wants her own memory. And though they inhabit two separate identities, Helly and Helena share the same instinctive relentlessness. What Helly wants, she’ll find a way to get.
As far as first times go, Mark and Helly’s is certainly unorthodox. They nervously but contentedly amble side-by-side to a closed conference room, use a plastic cover to craft a makeshift 'tent' between cubicles (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the tents at the ORTBO), and have sex on the cold tile floor. It sounds heinously unromantic. In practice, it’s the opposite. The scene is perfectly shot: tender, innocent, even a little awkward, the camera close-up on their faces and ranging along their bodies in a way that feels sensual but not gratuitous.
Afterward, Helly asks Mark if his experience with her was different than his one with Helena, and he responds with a very smooth move, pressing her into a kiss against the wall. (For anyone surprised that Adam Scott can sell something this suave, you probably haven’t seen the infamous calzone-party wink.) But before they can go back for round two, Helly notices Mark’s nose is bleeding. In the nurse’s office, a skeptical Miss Huang takes his blood pressure and questions if Mark has experienced any 'auras' or 'hallucinations' recently. (Of course he has, but that’s not something he’s going to tell Little Miss Corporate Overlord!) Whilst she takes his blood pressure, he experiences another reintegration flash, this time flashing forward in time as his Outie deals with a memory lapse. The camera re-centers, now, on Outie Mark, sitting in the basement undergoing a procedure with Reghabi.
He’s tense, impatient, scared. When Reghabi insists they try to flood the chip implanted in his brain, he tears off the electrodes around his face and insists on a snack first. He goes to a Chinese restaurant, where he proceeds to shovel food into his mouth at a truly alarming rate, and encounters an unexpected dinner guest: Helena Eagan, who apologizes for the 'systemic error' that happened during the OTC. He’s initially cautious, but Helena—having spent so much time romancing Innie Mark—knows how to charm him. They proceed to unabashedly flirt; there’s no getting around that fact. Helena tells Mark he should meet her father sometime. 'You wanna take me home to Dad already?' he asks. 'You’d be the first,' she replies, literally biting her lip. They laugh, but Mark makes a face as he realizes what, exactly, is happening. This is weird. Too weird. Helena asks if he wants to share anything about what happened during the OTC, and adds that he must be going through so much, having recently lost his wife, 'Hanna'.
'Gemma,' he corrects, the camaraderie between them—if you’ll excuse the pun—instantly severed. He knows that she knows the truth about his wife. That makes her an enemy. But he realizes, after a beat, that she’s the same woman from his reintegration flashes. Which means she knows him in a deeper and more intimate way than he initially realized. He races home to find Reghabi in the basement, apologizes for being 'a dick,' and agrees to have his severance chip flooded that same night.
In one of Severance’s few forays into borderline body horror (though, from a certain vantage point, the whole show is body horror), Reghabi opens up the hole in the back of Mark’s head and squeezes a syringe of fluid into the chip, promising the reaction will be quick. Indeed, mere seconds later, Mark gives a violent shudder. His eyes roll into the back of his head as he hears Helly’s voice, then sees both her body and Gemma’s beneath him.
Upstairs, Devon knocks at his front door and he goes to answer it, though he’s clearly suffering from intense reintegration sickness: sweating, coughing, his head splintering with pain. She asks why he’s cutting her out of their 'corporate espionage' attempts, and he overreacts, only to realize he can’t get a grasp of his water glass. After seeing flashes of Gemma—this time as herself, with long hair and a purple shirt, not Ms. Casey’s signature bob—on the severed floor at Lumon, he collapses to the floor and begins to seize. Reghabi races up the stairs to join Devon at his side.
Still, Mark’s not the only one going through it when it comes to Innie-Outie boundaries. Dylan is undoubtedly furious at Lumon for Innie Irving’s 'death', but the company has accurately identified his weakness: his Outie’s family. With his visitation privileges on the line, Dylan isn’t eager to rebel. During this week’s session, his Outie’s wife, Gretchen, tells him about his Outie’s preference for Thai food; his expensive scuba lessons; his experiments in woodworking and beer-brewing. As Dylan gives her what Irving would refer to as 'goo-goo eyes', it’s clear Gretchen appreciates and enjoys the attention...but isn’t certain to whom she’s ultimately loyal. Are Outie Dylan and Innie Dylan different people? If she finds herself catching feelings for Innie Dylan, is that a betrayal of her husband? How can it be, when they’re ultimately one and the same?
'I wish we could really be together, like all the time,' Dylan tells her, to which she replies, 'I mean, we are,' then, hesitating, 'aren’t we?' They go in for a hug and then start to make out. Later, at their home in the world outside Lumon, Gretchen grows frustrated with Outie Dylan’s reckless spending habits. She then lies to him, telling him that Lumon canceled the visitation and she didn’t get to see 'him...you'. Hmm. This does not bode well for a happy marriage!
Although it doesn’t fall under the same category of 'weird date', inside Lumon, Milchick and Miss Huang have their own peculiar interaction. When she asks about his performance review last episode, he tells the truth if not the whole of it, and reminds her that she cannot 'graduate from this fellowship until I have deemed you Wintertide material'. (No idea what Wintertide is, but expect plenty of fan theories in the coming days.) To do so, she’ll need to 'eradicate from [her] essence childish folly'. The brilliant Sarah Bock’s face sharpens into an impassive but almost certainly mocking smile at this instruction. 'I understand, sir,' she says.
Milchick then spends the rest of the day training himself to adhere to Lumon’s standards. He puts paperclips on packets until, I would assume, his fingertips are numb. He practices eliminating 'big words' from his vocabulary by repeating phrases to himself in a mirror. As he tells his reflection to 'eradicate from your essence childish folly,' the phrase slowly morphs into an intense, if not outright vicious, 'Grow up,' and finally, simply, 'Grow'. Again and again, he tells himself this: 'Grow.' This scene is so frightening—and so good—not only thanks to Tramell Tillman, who better get one hell of an Emmy campaign after this season, but also thanks to its contextual resonance. Lumon’s executives use 'big words' on a regular basis. Kier’s texts are famously flowery. But the (white) executives have no trouble telling Milchick, a Black man, that he is overstepping his bounds. However much they’re willing to present him with portraits of Kier in blackface to placate him, they are equally eager to remind him he is not an Eagan, nor must he behave like one. As such, he had better fall in line. What’s gut-wrenching is how desperately Milchick seems to believe he must do exactly that.
Finally, we come to Outie Irving, who gets to enjoy his own bizarre encounter with Burt and Fields. (With names like that, they should really think about launching their own skincare or ice-cream brands). The husbands used to call each other 'hon', which eventually became 'Attila', as in Attila the Hun. 'What’s mine is yours,' Fields says to Irving—clearly meaning Burt himself—as they sit down for cumin-glazed ham at dinner.
The scenes that follow are long, dialogue-heavy, and absolutely fascinating. I always love when Severance offers us a peek into the world outside Lumon, and how it might differ from the world viewers are familiar with. We learn that Burt was once the victim of a Whole Mind Collective demonstration—they splattered him with paint that looked like blood—and that he and Fields are longtime Lutherans. In fact, it was their faith that first led them to the severance procedure. Given the 'scoundrel' behavior of his youth (which I interpreted as a significant euphemism), Burt believed he would never go to heaven. Fields, hoping for an eternity spent with the man he loves, was not satisfied with that outcome. When their pastor preached that 'the church’s stance is that Innies are, you know, complete individuals, with souls that can be judged separately from their Outies,' Irving puts two and two together.
'So the Innie can go to heaven,' he begins.
'Whilst the Outie burns,' Burt completes.
I find this deeply intriguing on so many levels, not the least of which is the idea that Outie Burt’s sins are beyond the scope of God’s love and forgiveness. Many Christians would identify this as a falsehood, a misinterpretation of Scripture. But both Fields and Burt seem utterly convinced of it, which leads me to believe Burt’s sins are serious indeed—or, perhaps, that he does not repent them. Either way, Fields’s intentions seem loving, if potentially misguided. 'We’re not zealots, I swear,' he explains. 'But we figured that, if it were true, it may be a way for part of Burt to...oh, you know...'
All Irving can say in response is 'wow', as Burt gives him an interesting, appraising look. I don’t know who Outie Burt is, but I can tell there’s a lot he’s not saying. And I’m convinced none of it is good.
As their conversation continues, Fields shares that he and Burt starting calling each other 'Attila' 20 years ago; they’d been having drinks with Burt’s Lumon partner at the time. Irving, quick on the uptake, makes the observation that the first 'severed office' only opened 12 years ago. Which would mean Burt had worked at Lumon before he was severed. Later, Burt tries to brush this tidbit off as Fields having memory issues. But I think we can safely conclude that Burt has much more significant connections to Lumon than we’d originally thought. Perhaps he once was—or still is—an executive himself. Maybe he helped develop the severance procedure. That could be possible even if the religious reasoning is also true. Might he have aided severance development to address his own fears about the afterlife? That would track with Lumon’s fervent spiritualism. (Side note: It’s such a rich detail that the man named Burt Goodman is concerned about going to hell.)
When Fields cuts in to ask if anyone thinks Irving and Burt’s Innies had sex at the office, Burt is angered by the uncomfortable position in which Fields has put their guest. But Fields ignores him, sharing that he’s been talking to their Lutheran pastor, and those conversations have led him to believe that Innies 'deserve to experience love'. He turns to look between his partner and the man his partner’s Innie fell in love with. 'I hope it was beautiful,' he concludes.
Eventually, Irving leaves for the evening, and Burt watches from the doorway, his gaze suspicious. But all this talk about religion and sex has me thinking they’re connected in a way that will shape the plot moving forward. I’m not the biggest fan of this theory, but Severance fans have shared plenty of evidence that Helena Eagan might be pregnant, following her dalliance with Innie Mark at the ORTBO. Now that Helly has also had (theoretically unprotected) sex with Mark, that likelihood is doubled. And if Mark is the would-be father of a Lumon heir, that imbues both him and his potential child with Lumon’s version of holiness. What a strange and disquieting concept—even if I hope it isn’t true.
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