SPOILERS for Severance Season 2, Episode 2 ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig’
Last week’s episode kicked off the season in the most perfect way – it re-established our innies after season one’s cliffhanger, set up new mysteries about Lumon’s operations and dropped hints about lingering questions we all have. It was great to be ‘reintegrated’ with the show, but one element was missing – we didn’t see any of the outies. As expected, this episode gives us that balance by dedicating its entire runtime to catching us up with what the outies have been up to over the last few days… months… who knows. It was mentioned last week that five months had passed, but the content of this episode doesn’t seem to have lasted for more than a week, so it could be another of Lumon’s lies. In the meantime, let’s get into the contents of the episode.
“The faces of severance reform”
Once again following season one’s cliffhanger, we immediately catch up with our crew’s outies since they’ve regained consciousness. In Mark’s (Adam Scott) case, the people around him are just as strange as before – seemingly not even registering or responding to his erratic behaviour. When it comes to Helena (Britt Lower), she looks to be deeply affected by what just transpired. As we see throughout the episode, her character may be going through some emotional changes given what went down in last season’s climax. Her own father, Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry), looks disgusted with her and calls her a “fetid moppet”. I don’t know what either word means, but his tone alone tells me it’s nothing pleasant. As the only person who wasn’t taken over by his outie, Dylan (Zach Cherry) is seen walking out of Lumon with ice on his head and no clue what’s just happened. Despite all this, we never see the exact aftermath of Irving (John Turturro) regaining consciousness on Burt’s doorstep… this leads me to believe there was some sort of interaction between Irv and Burt.
We’re on a mission from god Helena
Once she’s recovered from her father’s scathing insult, Helena goes on the offensive to help right all the wrongs that occurred under her watch. Her first order of business is sending Mr. Milkshake (Tramell Tillman) to fund out who the innies spoke to while they had infiltrated the real world. While out on his mission he questions Irv, who is not having a bar of the bullshit that Mr. Milkshake is spinning. This is to be expected, as Irv’s outie is definitely mounting some sort of attack on Lumon, and in no rush to provide them with the truth. Following this, he promptly fires both Irv and Dylan, relieving them of their need to come into work and essentially pulling the plug on their innies’ lives.
Back with Helena, we get a mesmerising shot – my favourite of the episode – where we see her walking through a Lumon hallway via a cross-section of the building. It’s so simple, yet so beautiful, and it holds on the shot for a while to let you soak it in. At the end of the hallway is Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), and Helena promptly thanks her for her efforts in thwarting the innies’ plan. As a result she offers Ms. Cobel a promotion to the Severance Advisory Council – honestly it sounds completely made up to try and get Ms. Cobel out of the way. She doesn’t accept the position immediately as she wants her old job back on the Severed Floor. This whole sequence is so eerie and unsettling – the evil corporate undertones are strong, and Helena is chilling in the way she’s filmed. The next thing we see is Helena attempting to save face by recording the equivalent of a YouTuber apology video, in which she explains her outburst as merely a result of being inebriated from a drug and alcohol combo. I doubt many people are going to buy it, but it’s worth a shot.
I loved every moment with Helena in this episode as we finally get to see how much influence she has on the company. Her father might be the head of the snake, but it’s Helena effectively calling the shots. Also this episode reveals that the events of last season’s finale, specifically Helly’s kiss with Mark, might have put her on the path of having a change of heart. She has a few alone moments where she gives a concerned look and is deep in thought, so I’m keen to see where they take her arc.
New intro… not a “clone” of the first
Who knew a brand spanking new intro would be deserving of its own section in the recap, but here we are. The first season’s intro was a strange and alluring delight, with tonnes of trippy imagery and hints at specific plot elements. This new intro ramps up all of those elements – it’s way more weird and chaotic, but also a lot more stunning. I certainly won’t be skipping that intro any time soon – and not just because it’s a work of art. This intro sparked a huge season two theory for me, one which I had an inkling about in the first episode, but now is running rampant in my mind.
This intro gives me the impression that Lumon’s ultimate goal is surrounding the use of clones. All of the imagery of two Marks interacting and bumping into each other, one in classic clothes and one in a red jumpsuit screams out to me as pertaining to clones. There’s even lots of goat- and baby-related imagery in the intro which also can tie into the idea of cloning. I’ll delve deeper into this crackpot theory at the end of the recap.
She’s alive? Who’s alive?
The notion that Ricken (Michael Chernus) would interpret Mark’s “she’s here” as referencing the baby instead of Gemma is as hilarious as it is frustrating. It makes perfect sense for the ignorance of his character, but the idea that it could slow down Mark’s realisition that his wife is (maybe) alive is annoying. Thankfully, Devon (Jen Tullock) isn’t so convinced. Mid-way through their discussion, Mr. Milkshake arrives to question Mark at Helena’s previous instruction. While Mr Milkshake puts the blame on Ms. Cobel for causing his innie so much distress that it made him lash out, it’s good to see Mark and Devon aren’t completely buying it. As a result, they withhold their speculation about Gemma, keeping the hopes of their realisation alive for a little while longer.
What’s interesting about this sequence, as we’ll see more of later, is that Mr. Milkshake was in no rush to fire Mark. In fact, he fully expected and wanted him to come in to work on the following Monday. This adds further fuel to the fire of Mark somehow being more important to Lumon than the rest of the crew… but more on that later. Also one neat tidbit to note is that Mr. Milkshake mentions that the innies were awake for 39 minutes – that’s the duration of last season’s finale almost to the second. Since the finale is presented as one unbroken sequence of events, I liked that little detail.
There’s one more scene following this between Mark and Devon at a diner, where they continue quarrelling over the whole “she’s alive” moment. While Mark makes it clear he’s going to quit Lumon, it’s revealed that Helena’s mysterious goon was listening to their whole conversation.
The Irv and Dylan show
Following his conversation with Mr. Milkshake, we get two scenes with Irv which could be directly connected and hint as his larger involvement in the story. First, he pulls a map out of his pocket from his innie’s escapades in which Burt’s name and location was highlighted. There’s a knowing, thought-provoking look on his face that leads me to believe he understands why his innie would seek Burt out. The next time we see Irv, he walks to a payphone and calls someone – they don’t pick up, but Irv didn’t expect them too. He proceeds to tell them that his innie “got the message”. Does the message have something to do with Burt? And is the person he called someone he’s working for against Lumon? So many questions. The scene ends with Burt having tailed him to the booth – he has a menacing look on his face, so I have no clue what’s happening with that arc.
Meanwhile, Dylan is dealing with his firing from Lumon a little differently. He has a family to support, and so he attends a job interview at perhaps the most dull workplace in existence, a door company simply called “Great Doors”. The interview itself is a neat scene, but the entire time I couldn’t stop thinking about how much they clearly placed actor Adrian Martinez in the role to look eerily similar to Zach Cherry. It could be a fun tongue in cheek moment from the casting director, it could have been done for its thematic implications, or it could tie into Lumon’s scheming. I mean, “Great Doors” does sound like it could be a front for a fake company. Nevertheless, the scene ends on an explosive note that highlights just how despised severed individuals are in the world.
Resigned? No. Re-signed? Yes.
Just when Mark is finally about to get his broken hallway light fixed, he’s interrupted by Mr. Milkshake who arrives to try and convince Mark to come back to work. In their desperation to have Mark come back, they offer him a 20% pay rise – a huge contrast to their handling of Irv and Dylan. He even plays to Mark’s emotions, using his pain over Gemma’s loss and the “happiness” of his innie to goad him into coming back… and it works.
As Mark returns to Lumon for the first time, we join in on a meeting between Helena, Mr. Milkshake, Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander) and the unnamed henchman played by (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson). We get some incredible tidbits of information here. First of all we learn that this is immediately before the beginning of this season, as Mr Milkshake explains that he’s brought together a new crew of severed people to be Mark’s co-workers. But it’s what Helena says that’s most interesting – she mentions there’s no need for chemistry amongst the newbies, they only need Mark to complete his work on Cold Harbour, which is the data he’s sorting that’s in relation to Gemma somehow. This begs the question – is the work that the other members of MDR are completing simply pointless? They seem solely focused on Mark completing his work, and not what anyone else is doing, so are they just there to make MDR feel more like a workplace instead of a slave station? That would certainly explain why they were so quick to fire Irv and Dylan.
After seeing Mark go back and forth to work, flash forward to after the moment in the first episode where Mark speaks to the Board via Mr. Milkshake’s speaker. We see the same crew from before, minus Natasha, listening to the recording and explaining that the Board is going to grant innie Mark’s request of his old crew back purely so he can stay focused on finishing Cold Harbour. From there, Mr. Milkshake offered Irv and Dylan their old jobs back, while Helena certainly enters the severed floor as an imposter. That being said, she does enter through the same elevator as the others, so if the elevator is a forced switch, maybe she is really Helly. Although I still doubt it.
Please ask about Gemma!
In the final moments of the episode, Mark returns home to find Ms. Cobel packing her car… so I guess she didn’t take that Lumon promotion? Or maybe she did. Anyway as Mark confronts her, he fights the urge to ask her about Gemma, and does so in the end. After a long, tense moment of pause, one that’s brilliantly shot and had me firmly on the edge of my seat, Ms. Cobel lets out a chilling war cry and speeds off. Neither we, nor Mark, got any concrete answers there, but at least it seems to have put him on the path of finding his wife.
Lingering thoughts
Let’s talk about clones. With the themes of the new intro, the moment last episode of someone standing behind Mark who looked eerily like Mark’s silhouette, and all of the mystery surrounding Gemma and Cold Harbour, that has to be what’s going on. There’s even a shot of a fish tank with two fish – one regular and one red, just like in the new intro. If they are indeed attempting to perfect the art of cloning, and Gemma is the subject, it makes sense that they’d need Mark to sift through her data or DNA to recreate her as faithfully as possible. Perhaps that was the plan all along – fake Gemma’s death, then leverage Mark’s grief to get him to apply for Lumon’s Severance program. This then leads me to Huang, who could be tied to this too. Maybe she’s another clone that has been worked on, or maybe she’s a younger clone of Gemma. The intro had plenty of baby imagery, with a baby Kier Eagan crawling by at the end, so what if the clones need to grow and this is an in-progress Gemma. I’m just throwing things at a wall at this point and hoping something sticks.
I didn’t really highlight this moment in the first episode, but now we’ve had two identical weird moments. In the first episode, when Mark is sent out of the Severed Floor after contacting the board, he seems to know what Mr. Milkshake is up to and try to escape. In the transition, the screen switched to black like an old tube TV turning off, then it’s followed by an eye awakening and Mark’s innie waking back on the Severed Floor. The same thing happens in this episode, as outie Mark enters and leaves work early (at 9:15am) after the speaker debacle, the same effect happens. This leads me to believe that something happened to Mark here – maybe he didn’t take a direct trip up the escalator, maybe he was switched offline and a new clone was activated. We haven’t seen outie Mark interact with anyone besides Ms. Cobel after this point, so I have no clue what’s happening there.
In the end, this episode pulls back on the pace a little to reacquaint us with our outie characters. Once again it drops tidbits of information that help us piece things together and form new, slightly stronger theories about what’s going on. The new intro is a joy to watch and I certainly won’t be skipping it, especially if it hides further clues about the potential cloning business. Lastly I want to highlight the ensemble of performances, all of which are exceptional in showing how much the events of the finale have affected their characters.
9/10
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