#YOUR MIND CANNOT BE DIVIDED AND COMPARTMENTILISED AND YOU CANNOT UNDO WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO YOURSELF

[magiefish]

Okay so I’ve watched all of Severance up until the most recent episode (harrowing btw) and I would like to say one thing about where I think the Gemma/Mark situation is going. (Spoilers under the cut)

So, when I first found out that Gemma was Ms Casey’s outie, I thought it would be revealed that Gemma was still really dead, and all the time that Ms Casey is ‘switched off’ she’s really just lying in a morgue somewhere waiting to be switched back on. She, of course, would never know this because she wouldn’t remember being there, and Lumon could literally just make up anything they liked about what her outie ‘does while she’s away’ and she would just have to believe them (I kind of thought this would also be the situation with the goat people - they’re not dead when they’re switched off, but I don’t think their outies leave either, but they would never know that and would just have to go off Lumon’s word that their outies stargaze or whatever. I think this could still happen, but it’s less likely than it was before).

Anyway, this episode took that theory and put it in the paper shredder, and I wasn’t even really mad about it other than I felt like it fucked with the shows whole arc of grief. As everyone has been saying, Orpheus and Eurydice, you can never bring back the dead, ya da ya da ya. I just didn’t feel like I’d find it satisfying for Mark and Gemma to be together again, but I also didn’t think I’d find it satisfying if one of them just died, because then it’s like. Well why didn’t you just commit to killing one of them in the first place. We’re back to square one here.

However, I then remembered that Mark’s reintegration is a thing, and I’m having some thoughts about it. Because, see, innies and outies, though quite similar in many regards, are still ultimately kind of different people. They have different memories and different experiences and therefore *slightly* different personalities and perceptions. Thinking back to Peter Kilmer / Petey, it kind of struck me how he didn’t seem exactly like either Kilmer or Petey but a weird mix of the two. Like he said, the relative chronologies are all fucked, so reintegration fucks with your personality and your experiences. In reintegrating, he ceased to be either Kilmer or Petey but became a kind of Petey-Kilmer. The closest comparison I can think of is (lord forgive me for being a horror fan and therefore making a rather unflattering one) is like. Brundlefly from The Fly 1986? Like a fly and a guy get into a gene splicer and then they both become each other while both the originals cease. Or something. Idk.

What I’m trying to say is, with Mark reintegrating (and without Mark S’s consent, which is a death-of-personality horror story all by itself), I think he’s so blinded by his grief and devotion for Gemma that he doesn’t entirely realise that in synching up these two sets of memories he is, effectively, killing himself. But I think he’ll just keep going. And by the time he maybe does get Gemma out and they’re together again, they’ll only look at each other to realise that the person who wanted her back and the man she was waiting for is dead.

And baby. I’d fucking love it.