#if we fail to break the world's shell... we will perish without being born. destroy the shell... and revolutionize the world!

[antigonewinchester]

Severance speculation / kinda analysis (abt a very common theory for the 2nd season). spoilers up to 2x02.

rewatching 2x01 and 2x02 I am very very convinced that "Helly" is actually Helena. people are saying its way too obvious of a twist and yes, it is, because the show is well-written and so this idea makes a ton of emotional and metaphorical sense.

it's not just that Lumon doesn't want Helly being rebellious & making trouble on the severed floor, I think it's perhaps even more about a punishment for Helena. she wasn't able to "control" her innie and so it's Helena who has to atone, to pay the price by not just vouching for Lumon on the outside but also working within the severed floor, aka "hell," itself.

I'm not super into the philosophical question of "who are you?" within the show, but I am fascinated with severing & Kier's whole weird thing as a metaphor for the emotional walls people build up within their minds & hearts. I wasn't quite sure what to make of Cobel but on rewatch she of course mirrors the severed workers. she lives 2 different names & personalities whether she's at Lumon or not, and she's incredibly emotionally volatile (going from loving Lumon to smashing up her shrine), unable to control her inner feelings--just as Mark S, Dylan G, Irv B, and Helly R represent, quite literally, the underlying desires, feelings & wants that their outsides selves have suppressed. while Kier & his philosophy is supposedly about Something Great, as we can see with Cobel, her following it shaped her into a splintered, unhappy person, and her obvious parallel is in Helena and Helly R. based on what we've seen of her father & Lumon, Helena grew up in a shitty abusive cult, which she hates but is unable to express those feelings... until she's severed and Helly R is immediatly angry at being controlled & abused.

so, if the show is heading towards re-integration for its characters, then Helena on the severed floor could be a first step for Helena and Helly coming together. she has to literally live the life of that angry, rebellious part of her, and I think (optimistically) that will change her, even if she doesn't want it to. much of the show is about how people are shaped by their environments, both in terms of literally where they are but also their memories, the people around them, all of it. my guess is that Helena is somehow going to help Mark, Dylan, and Irv later on in the season, possibly by switching back to being Helly, aka finally metaphorically acknowledging that part of her as real & human & wanting to see her friends again. [plus, it would also mean Helena symbolically "killing" herself in switching back to Helly as a first part of her rebirth thru re-integration.]