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thelivingautomaton · 5 months ago

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MANNNNNNNNN ok. not to get my SEVERANCE brainworms all over the place but i literally cannot stop thinking about this show. also i keep reading theories on reddit and some of them are really good and some are unbelievably stupid/media-illiterate. so i am dumping my wild predictions/theorizing/thoughts on season 2 here. Please Enjoy Every Bullet Point Equally(TM)

OKAY let's get the big one out of the way: it seems pretty apparent now that cold harbor (and maybe all of the datasets mdr is given to "refine") is binning memories/experiences/brainwaves into severance chips, likely in order to reformat or rebuild someone's personality from the ground up.

this reddit post sums a lot of the evidence up but tl;dr you see an electron microscopy image of neural axons, as well as an etCO2 statistic, which is typically used to monitor respiration of someone who's in a coma or on ventilation

MOREOVER, the four aspects of mdr's data line up with kier eagan's four tempers (woe, frolic, dread, malice -- i've also seen it pointed out that this aligns with the four mdr workers, and in the original pilot script there's a reference to "needing" four workers, but iirc they all work on separate files??), and apparently one of his Whole Things(TM) was the idea that you can neatly sort a person's entire personality into those four boxes

the numbers provoke an emotional response in the refiner based on their interpretation of the data, which we can surmise is likely neural/electrical signals of some kind, specifically from brains that have been frozen or cryogenically preserved and are slowly being thawed. hence all the stress over "finishing" files on time, before they "expire" (i.e. brain thaws too much)

the opening credits for season 2 places a HUGE emphasis on big swollen misshapen heads, on brains, and also on ice...including a blink-and-you-miss-it glimpse of a crashed car sinking into the ice, which takes us into our next big point:

gemma obviously didn't die in the car crash BUT!!! lumon taking her and (presumably) replacing her body with a double (mark says he identified her but that she was also "burned" so that's obviously questionable) was actually something of a random fluke. for whatever reason the circumstances of her death made it so that she was ideal to use as a guinea pig for "part-time employment"

again, kind of going off the s2 opening credits here and the image of the car sinking into the ice -- obvs mark visited the tree where she crashed, but i feel like i remember he had to drive on a bridge overlooking a body of water to get there? maybe gemma and the car both fell in and were frozen (since everything in SEVERANCE apparently happens in the wintertime, lol)

i mean, it wouldn't surprise me if we learn that the car accident was "arranged" by lumon??? (either purely to harvest bodies or potentially if gemma turns out to have been involved in anti-eagan stuff on the DL) but idk, i don't love the idea cos i don't like it when shows try to tie LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE THING together into the big overarching mystery, y'know? like, some things are really just down to dumb luck and chance

i also don't think miss casey herself is a clone of gemma, so either her body was WAY less fucked up by the car crash physically than we might otherwise think, or lumon has some top-secret super-healing tech on the testing floor. maybe both!

ANYWAY, remember "allentown"? mark s's first-day fluke, where he completed a file in one day? that was him refining gemma into miss casey the first time around. YADDA YADDA LOVE TRANSCENDS SEVERANCE he literally put the splintered icy fragments of his dead wife back together again because she LIVES IN HIS VEINS guys. and now he's doing it AGAIN with cold harbor. this is why lumon was so desperate to keep him around even while they fired irving and dylan at the drop of a hat: they know he can get the job done, ESPECIALLY when it comes to working on gemma/miss casey. (see also: mark w commenting about how his team from the branch that shut down never made quota)

i've seen the idea tossed around that all the refiners are assigned to someone who was emotionally close to their outie (e.g. irving's deceased father) but i really don't think that's the case -- like, dylan says mark's freshman fluke let lumon devise new techniques for refining to cut down on the time it takes to finish a file, and istg i can see it perfectly in my head: cobel asking mark s how the FUCK he managed to do that and him just being like "i don't know, the numbers looked...scary??????" and her just. rolling with it.

(also i feel like that's why dylan's generally a good refiner -- he can read people! his outie knew what to say and how to act to impress the door factory guy in s2e2!)

so lumon really really needs cold harbor to work. if it's not because they care about gemma SPECIFICALLY for some secret reason, it must be that they care about the technique. lumon (i.e. the board and/or the eagan family), like so many corporate overlords before them, are selling immortality.

i'm on the fence about whether they're trying to resurrect/immortalize kier eagan specifically -- like it would make the most thematic sense, and they have a ton of material FROM his life certainly to work with, but he's supposed to have died in 1939 and cryonics tech just wasn't advanced enough at the time. but also the world of SEVERANCE is pretty distinct from our own so i guess it's plausible

i feel much more confident in saying they're trying to get the technique working specifically for the sake of current ceo jame eagan, who is an old decrepit fart. imo the "revolving" he mentions to helly in the s1 finale is key to this -- like, it kind of sounds like eagan-speak for rotating through/swapping into a new body???

this MIGHT be where the idea of cloning becomes involved, which i can see supported by the emphasis in the s2 opening credits on babies (including baby kier at the end ofc), but i also just had the even more fucked up thought that what if the end goal is to upload the eagans' personalities (and those of their chosen cronies) into the bodies of severed workers. hence the continued necessity for a severed working underclass as well as their ruling higher-ups -- it's a body farm, an endless cycle of severed workers toiling away to let the rich live on and then having their bodies/minds/souls co-opted when they've lost their other utility. oh my god helly was right THEY LITERALLY ARE LIVESTOCK

guys holy shit what if the season ends with jame (or KIER) eagan's personality getting uploaded into miss casey's chip and overwriting miss casey (and also gemma?? idk i feel like mark scout/mark s are both going to have to come to terms with the idea that gemma as she was is capital-g Gone, even if her body and brain are still sort of alive). and then season 3 has dichen lachman chewing the scenery as creepy old man eagan. I THINK IT WOULD BE FUN AND ALSO FUCKED UP

okay so what about cobel, right? like, obviously she's been drinking the eagan kool-aid, she is All In on immortalizing kier (or jame or whoever). but there's more to it than that!!! she's the one harping on about reintegration being real and possible, AND she's desperate seeking for any signs of it during mark s and miss casey's wellness sessions. why? cobel wants to revive her mother charlotte (we see her medical tag on cobel's eagan shrine), but she wants HER MOTHER, not a blank slate -- in other words she's rooting for the chips to not function properly in order to truly resurrect someone who's been dead

in particular i think this is why she flipped her lid on mark at the end of s2e2 when he asked what she knew about gemma -- like, idk maybe it's confirmation bias at play but to me her primal scream felt like it was coming from a place of...jealousy? like, "how DARE you ask me that, how are YOU the one who's allowed to get your loved one back and I'M being promoted up the ladder so lumon can get me out of the way even though MY motivations are pure". that kind of thing

cobel's attitude towards lumon and helena in s2e2 is SUUUUUUPER ambiguous -- i think she's going to turn from outright enemy into kind of a weird "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing this season?? especially since i got the feeling that she really did kind of care about mark and devon in her own supremely weird, fucked-up way

oh god you guys. what if her "mrs selvig" persona was cobel imitating her own mother, mid-atlantic accent and corny outdated references to clark gable and all. FUCK

also the fact that she's looking for miss casey and mark s to remember each other implies that reintegration is possible even without outside interference with the chip itself (i.e. however reghabi reintegrated petey). and you know what?

i think she's right.

THE BIG BOY THEORY: MARK SCOUT AND MARK S WILL START TO SPONTANEOUSLY REINTEGRATE THIS SEASON

i will live and die on this hill, ben stiller i swear to FUCK

what's the overriding symbolism in the season 1 opening credits?? the line between innie and outie is porous (or "mushy", if you will). black sludge seeping from the trash cans that's made of all your other selves (also reflecting how irving dreams of his outie's black paint). mark's innie and outie selves constantly chasing circles around one another until at the end they both collapse on the bed...and then collapse together as a single person.

what's the overriding symbolism in the season 2 opening credits???? not just "mark scout, i.e. mark in red pajamas, delving into lumon's mysteries", not just "mushy confusion of innie and outie feelings re: helly and miss casey" -- mark's innie and outie selves working together. innie mark pulling outie mark out of the severance chip. innie mark hoisting up the curtain dividing outer and inner worlds to let outie mark through. innie mark CARRYING OUTIE MARK IN HIS ARMS. do you see the fucking vision.

of course that's also coupled with the final image of the credits: mark bursting through and out of his own head. which i think emphasizes that there's going to be conflict as well as cooperation between mark's disparate selves (especially when it comes to everything involving the helly/mark/casey love triangle)

why did mark look like he was having a goddamn seizure when he was coming down the elevator. why did he glimpse a mysterious figure following him in the hallway. WHY THE FUCK WAS HIS VERY FIRST INSTINCT TO BOLT FOR WELLNESS AND LOOK FOR MISS CASEY!!!!! (okay this could also conceivably be due to him yelling to devon that she was alive literally one second ago but still)

i think mark's "spontaneous reintegration" is also more or less an insane fluke, basically a product of the fact that he's now working on gemma/miss casey's refinement data AGAIN and both his innie and outie selves are starting to blur together regarding their shock and turmoil over the realization that gemma is alive (and probably loads of other stuff too while we're at it).

but idk, maybe spontaneous reintegration also occurs naturally over time? irving is also having some bleed-through and iirc he's been at lumon the longest of all of them

shit dude. what if outie burt ALSO has bleed-through and that's why he followed irving and was crying. honestly what the fuck was even the deal with that, i don't know!!!!

anyway i imagine that "spontaneous reintegration" would really put a kibosh in lumon's plans to permanently rewire and wipe the brains of severed folks in order to pave the way for an immortal ruling class. also i thought the way they did petey's hallucinatory flip-flopping between his lives/selves was awesome and i would like more of that, please. (also: i miss petey, y'all)

i think if they do end up going this route it's gonna be spoonfed to us pretty slowly though -- like, s2 will slowly build up the mystery of "what the fuck's going on with mark reintegrating", then s3 is his two selves coming to terms with...All Of That

those are all of my big idea theories but i also have some smaller bullet points to address:

dylan's gonna visit his family in the """visitation suite""" and it 100% is going to be paid lumon actors. and the giveaway is gonna come at the end of the episode when we cut back to outie dylan's life and his wife (or one of his other kids, who knows) is terminally sick (maybe wheelchair- or bed-bound?), hence outie dylan's desperation to find another job post-firing

that is one million percent helena eagan down on the severed floor (although i can see the argument for it being helly r and she's just not comfortable sharing her real experience on the outside). her shady story aside, i think britt lower is CRUSHING IT as "helena pretending to be helly but it's kind of off-putting and fake because it's helena's idea of how helly would behave". like, it's giving me the same vibes as in FRINGE when fauxlivia pretends to be olivia and then seduces/sleeps with peter. real ones know

RICKEN IS NOT A FUCKING SECRET EAGAN!!!!!! DEVON IS NOT SECRETLY IN ON ANYTHING (besides keeping her brother safe)!!!!!! HIS FRIENDS ARE JUST PRETENTIOUS SHITHEELS!!!!!!!!!!!!

as much as i would literally chew glass (positive) for mark s and miss casey to be A Thing, i feel like narratively and thematically it's not gonna work with the show's overarching themes of like, struggling to process grief and selfhood and figuring out what makes you you (or someone else their own independent self). gemma is Gone and you can't bring her back and you can't cut yourself off from the grief and the pain. mark has to reintegrate (literally and metaphorically/emotionally) in order to resolve his issues and move on

this show is so!!!!!! OOOOOUUUUGGGGHHGHGHH

#severance #severance spoilers #automatonic posting #if anyone actually reads all this: congrats. you are now in as deep as i am

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