#lumon mapped

[zoortg]

This is my attempt at mapping Lumon's severed floor.

[wintersnails]

Severance does a great job of showing the combination of brutal efficiency and absolute brain-dead incompetence you see in big corporations. like yes, companies that are so indifferent and disconnected from their workforce can come up with the most inhumane ways of using people like tools and then simultaneously overlook the most obvious pitfalls for the same exact reason - if you ignore the people at the bottom of the hierarchy, you will end up screwing yourself as well as them because those are the people who actually deal with daily functioning and know how things work

[gumy-shark]

ok so i am 7 episodes in to severance. and obviously there’s a lot i don’t know and a lot i accidentally spoiled myself for. but yeah i gotta say overall the biggest mystery for me is still the watsonian mystery of how the FUCK do they maintain that building

[gothicseverance]

Gothic castles from Udolpho to Gormenghast exist in a world where there are no maps, where halls, corridors and stairways go on forever, where rooms that were there in the night have vanished by morning.

—Spectral Readings

[noctuaathena]

[plum-postmodernprometheus]

had a dream the ending of severance sucked so much shit. pregnacy theory was real and honeslty not thr worst of it.

[fanfoolishness]

thinking about how I hope in the end that Severance is a treatise on grief and how you cannot run from it, you cannot bury it, you cannot hide from it, you can only in the end accept it.

It's been two years since Gemma "died," and Mark has tried everything but accepting her loss.

Alcoholism? Check. Getting severed to avoid choking on her ghost? Check. Moving to a new house and keeping her memories boxed in the basement? Check. Not even bothering to unpack her ashes and put her in an urn or a cemetery? Check. "She's not dead, she's just not here."

He shoves her in a box in the basement surrounded by boxes of her hobbies. He tears up her photo in little pieces and tapes it back together with whiskey on his breath. He cries in the car before work until snot runs down his face. He spits on other people's grief and wields his own like a weapon, pretending that he isn't bleeding.

It's a core part of him. It's always been there. Maybe it goes far back, to Fern Scout who's been dead so long Mark can't remember the color of her eyes. It's there in Mark S too, ripping up Petey's photo and his map with grim denial. "Irving isn't dead, he's just not here."

Mark can't bear grief in any form. So when scraps of puzzle pieces scream that she's alive, he runs into the maelstrom of reintegration without thought, without care, without telling Devon, self-destructive to the core. Because if he could kill the grief, that monster stalking him in the dark or at the bottom of a bottle, then maybe he'd finally be okay.

But I don't think we'll ever get to see the Gemma he once knew. I think she's lost, a ghost stalking Lumon's halls, never to escape. Or maybe she does escape -- but only as Ms. Casey, someone who never loved him, a different person altogether.

And maybe Severance will say, you have to accept this, or you'll die. Grief isn't an enemy. It's a part of you, like your innie, like your outie. It breaks you apart.

And you can put yourself back together again, if you only face it.

[kestrel-of-herran]

the gemma discourse lately...... yes she shouldn't die to further the markhelly agenda. that's idiotic storytelling. no self-respecting writer will assassinate a character like that. that's why i can't understand why some viewers think this is the route the finale will take, given the quality of the writing and the thought put into every choice so far. it would invalidate her autonomy by giving lumon license to dispose of her after torturing her, and would problematize the other relationship in a way that would drive viewers away. it's simply not going to happen.

don't you think it's ridiculously predictable if we're told multiple times that cold harbor is meant to kill her and then she does die??? wouldn't that be an incredible let-down from a plot perspective as well?

what the "gemma dying for markhelly is racist" (won't happen) discourse misses entirely is that markgemma driving off into the sunset after lumon ruined their lives absolves mark of his own actions in severing himself in a way that's narratively deus ex machina. this is the biggest conflict of the finale, not markhelly vs. markgemma but outie mark vs. innie mark.

can you create your own little slave to forget your pain for you and lock him in a torture labyrinth (mark s. and gemma are both held against their will) until he's no longer of service to you, take all the help he can give you and then murder him? i think the show needs to be explicit on this point, but it's obvious that reintegration is a long process that won't be completed until the two marks are completely aligned in terms of goals and emotions, e.g. until either mark s. is in love with gemma and wants to leave with her too, or mark scout is in love with hellyna and want to help her take lumon down. either of these options needs more development to be realized, which is what we have more seasons for, but in the finale the first step towards that synchronization will likely be taken. there will be a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of perspective for one of the marks that will be instrumental in deciding the next direction of the plot.

the marks aren't one yet -- there's the alcoholic widower desperate to rescue his wife, and the newborn prisoner trying to grasp happiness despite his limited existance. we haven't been told what memories they share, we haven't seen how they feel about them, so it's premature to declare gemma the obvious choice because we don't know how innie mark feels about that.

but it's also incredibly frustrating that so many people see this as a binary in which gemma either lives/leaves with mark or dies in lumon. i'm convinced mark and helly will get gemma out of lumon, no matter which version of the marks is active, because neither mark nor helly would perpetuate her suffering. hell, helly's memorizing the map to the elevator as we speak.

but whether either of the marks will choose to leave helly alone in lumon is the real dilemma here. there's really no choice to be made about gemma surviving -- she has to live through this or the writers risk upsetting the morality of the narrative in a way that would invalidate the human rights angle of the story.

but it is that same human rights angle that applies to the markhelly problem as well. can you create a person to give yourself "emotional convenience", then have him fall in love with another person's "pr stunt solution", and kill him after using him? can you meet helly -- with all her fire, all her fearless fight for life -- and say she's better off killing herself so you can go and live your full existance, an existance she's barely been granted a taste of? is that ethical?

[combustable-head]

To me the significance of Petey's disappearance from Lumon isn't just that it's an inciting incident for Helly to show up, it's that it disrupted Mark's whole world up until this point. Like people around him don't go "such a shame Petey left" they go "I'm sorry, Mark". And Mark tries to soldier on but he's frustrated that things can't just go back to how they were, because Petey brought balance, they could "have fun and work" and he didn't have to confront the reality of being a prisoner there. It seems like, even though Petey was obviously more aware of the things Lumon did, he kind of sheltered Mark to make life bareable for him, even Dylan was surprised that Petey would do something as sacrilegious as map the floor. So when Helly is asking Mark why he puts up with all this, the real answer is "Petey" only he's not there anymore to distract from how meaningless it all feels

[sageshouldknowbetter]

So… what are those weird “twin” beings?

In my opinion, one of the terrifying parts of Severance S2E4 was when those Mandela Catalog analog horror-type… things showed up to point the way for the refiners. (This whole episode seems to be pretty inspired by analog horror. I was half-convinced that at the beginning, Mr. Milchick was going to turn into a distorted police sketch captioned “The Milker 😈😱” or something.)

So… what’s their deal? I’m going to explain why I believe they’re not clones, actors, or robots… but something else altogether.

First, they don’t have coats. The twins are outside in an extremely cold climate, standing there for who knows how long, and they don’t. Have. Coats.

If they were really clones (or even hired actors), wouldn’t they need to be warm too? Why would Lumon risk damaging what they undoubtedly worked so hard on (or popsicle-ifying an employee) by dropping them in a freezing climate with no protection?

Some clone truthers would argue that maybe the clones can’t feel pain or sensations yet. They’re not finished: maybe fixing their brains is what MDR is working on. But I find the idea that they are somehow super-resistant to weather a bit harder to swallow. And while the innies are at least smart enough to avoid danger and seek safety, a clone unable to feel pain and with a half-formed brain would have no self-preservation instinct. They might be curious about what happens when they insert a stick between their ribs or go cheerfully gallivanting off a cliff like some kind of suicidal Roomba. Boom. Millions of dollars down the drain.

And there’s another thing they don’t have: footprints. Lumon-hired actors have footprints. Robots have footprints. Clones would have footprints. But the doppelgängers… don’t.

For the clear shots of shadow Helly and shadow Mark, we just see them appear with no tracks to show how they got there. We don’t even hear boots crunching in snow. The only explanations are a) Lumon somehow shot them up to the surface on a Hunger Games-style platform (implying that the ORTBO wasn’t actually outside), b) they got some poor guy (probably Milchick) to hurriedly cover up the footprints as they made them for Maximum Creepy Effect, or c) whatever these things are, they’re not corporeal.

I’d vouch for the latter. Because no matter how dramatic Lumon is, I really don’t think they’d spend THAT egregious an amount of money for a bit of extra goosebumps.

So, then… what are they? I’d say some kind of hologram or Lumon-approved hallucination.

I don’t think the ORTBO actually took place outside. There are many reasons for this. The TV at the beginning and the theremin needed to be plugged into something, there was a large room on Petey’s map called “team-building,” Milchick’s walkie-talkie range would be too small, it’s too risky for Lumon to ask outies to shut off their brains for multiple days in the middle of nowhere… and Lumon wouldn’t actually let the innies outside. Not because it would be dangerous for them, necessarily — but because it would be dangerous for the company.

Lumon doesn’t actually need to take them outside. They don’t want to cause a potential PR scandal from the outies talking about the “work retreat” or risk one of them running away. All they need to do — the whole purpose of the ORTBO — is to make them think the outside world is a terrible place and never want to go there again. The cold is real. The hunger is real. The danger is real (to an extent). But the environment… is not real.

So they can project holograms. They can power the TV and theremin. Milchick can remove the Glasgow BLOCK (the term “block” implies Helly WOULD have usually appeared but was blocked from doing so, and the only place that could happen is the severed floor). They make some basic holograms clearly based on the MDR group picture and boot them up. They don’t need to be realistic. All that matters is the message gets across.

Now all that’s left to wonder is: if Mark and the team were surprised at this team-building, that implies that they’ve never done it before. So how did Petey find it and map it? And why was one of the twins behind Mark in S2E1? We might never know.

[ghostdrinkssoup]

Severance S2 spoilers, but I think innie!Mark running back to Helly is deeper than just him realising he doesn’t have feelings for Gemma. As we know, outie!Mark gets severed because he doesn’t know how to cope with Gemma’s passing, meaning he’s someone who struggles to accept death (and by extension change). We see this characterisation extend to innie!Mark when Petey’s disappearance forces him to re-experience grief. Notably, innie!Mark’s gut reaction is to hide the group photo of Petey so he won't be reminded of him, similar to how outie!Mark hides Gemma’s things in his basement because it’s “easier pretending she never existed”. Innie!Mark later shreds the map on the back of that same group photo when Helly presses him to question Petey’s death, again, very similar to how outie!Mark tears up the picture of Gemma. Despite differing contexts, both versions of Mark try to prove they don’t “give a shit” about someone they are very clearly mourning.

Innie!Mark isn’t just mourning his best friend, but also how things used to be. His attachment to Petey doubles as an attachment to the culture created by his coworkers, again, not so dissimilar to outie!Mark mourning his old life with Gemma. In both cases, he doesn’t want things to change. The idea that work culture is created “by the people” is established in the first episode, during a meeting between innie!Mark and Cobel:

Here, Cobel explicitly associates hell and heaven with the work environment, noting that hell is not reality but our perception of reality, influenced by our environment. Essentially, the people at work determine whether the workplace is worth being attached to. Although this philosophy isn’t universal (not everyone loves their coworkers), it aligns with innie!Mark’s values, as demonstrated in the shredding scene: 

Here, innie!Mark confirms that he isn’t loyal to Lumon, but to his colleagues. We also learn that in the face of uncertainty, he would rather lean on the support of his immediate community (his “family”) than become isolated, reframing the workplace as an intimate (and domestic) space. Considering that severance is meant to separate people’s work lives from their personal lives, this scene is particularly fascinating. Especially since Helly resists conflating the professional sphere with domesticity (“I could not, with a razor to my throat, be less interested in being your family”), viewing work as a prison that restricts her freedom (which, ironically, is likely the reality of Helena’s personal life). Interestingly, innie!Mark resents Helly’s constant disobedience until she tries to commit suicide. Again, when he’s confronted by death.

The show continuously reminds us that loss of intimate attachment, whether at work or home, is what both versions of Mark fear most. For example, innie!Mark is the only worker who hasn’t tried to quit. Helly repeatedly tries to quit in season one, even though she knows it’ll end her life; Irving is more than ready to quit after he learns Burt is married, and is ready to accept his death after outing Helena as a mole; Dylan also tries to quit when he’s separated from Gretchen and realises she won’t be coming back. Innie!Mark is the only severed worker (of the main cast) who can't accept death. Walking out that door terrifies him, and Lumon nurtures that fear. As Milchick says in season one, death isn’t something that happens at Lumon. The workers don’t even know what death looks like, as shown when MDR find the animal corpse in Woe’s Hollow:

Suddenly, the external world of the natural environment overwhelms the workplace, bringing death in its wake. Yet, the internal world of domesticity also brought loss in the form of Petey, Burt, and Irving’s “retirements”. Clearly, neither private nor public spaces are appropriate labels for the workplace, because the workplace is unnatural, monitored, and sealed off from reality. Lumon literally advertises this state of being, yet woe resulting from the loss or death of a loved one keeps threatening to invade this sequestered paradise. The personification of woe being a ghostly bride (AKA someone’s dead wife) also feels pretty pointed.

But let’s return to that point from earlier about work culture. As we have already established, innie!Mark is more than willing to work at Lumon if he becomes accustomed to the culture created by his colleagues. Helly contrasts him in this sense, as she is both independent and capable of rallying people to action without group support or approval (as we see during her speech to Choreography and Merriment). Innie!Mark, meanwhile, quelled his rebellious behaviour the moment he made friends with Petey. Under ordinary circumstances, innie!Mark is unlikely to be the kind of person to just up and leave his job because it’s exploitative. His decisions are not guided by morality, they’re guided by emotional attachment. We see this with outie!Mark in season one: his views on Lumon only begin to shift after he attends Petey’s funeral, and goes to his (Petey’s) daughter’s concert. Before this moment, outie!Mark is mostly apathetic about the inner workings of Lumon because severance is a convenient coping mechanism. It’s only when the peace is disturbed, and someone he’s grown to care for dies, that he changes gear. 

Innie!Mark behaves similarly when he demands to have his team back in the first episode of season two. It’s the most rebellious we’ve ever seen him. He doesn’t want his friends to disappear, and once they’re back, he doesn’t quit despite being given the option to leave. He wants to find Ms. Casey (who he knows is his outie’s wife), sure, but he’s also attached to Helly and his other colleagues. They’re his family, and he is very unlikely to abandon his family.

Outie!Mark is also very unlikely to abandon his family. The moment he learns Gemma is alive, he’s willing to risk everything (including his safety) to get her out. His stubbornness and loyalty are only rivalled by his innie’s, who is effectively himself. The problem isn’t that innie and outie Mark are different people; it’s that they’re the same person. If the roles were reversed, outie!Mark would never leave Lumon for Helly, not if it meant leaving Gemma behind. He would do the exact same thing innie!Mark does because neither version of him can accept loss, which is why he can’t leave. It’s not just Helly: it’s Dylan and all the other innies he would be abandoning. Not to mention that leaving would mean his certain death and Mark has never been able to deal with death, something Lumon promises to shield its workers from.

Why don’t people quit their jobs, even when they know it’s corrupt? Because people become complacent, conditioned, and attached to the status quo. Innie!Mark was always going to run back into the tender arms of hell. For a moment, it probably seemed a lot more like heaven to him.

This has been Mark’s consistent characterisation throughout the show. Do I view innie!Mark and outie!Mark as separate entities? Yes and no. I do think that innie!Mark is just as much a person as outie!Mark, and that they are different versions of the same person. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t the same person. If innie!Mark was different from his outie, he probably would’ve gone with Gemma. But outie!Mark has never learned how to accept grief, and innie!Mark is a version of himself that hasn’t evolved past this worldview either. What we see at the end of Cold Harbour, then, is a very literal representation of self-sabotage. Because the type of person who would’ve gone with Gemma wouldn’t have severed himself to avoid grief in the first place. For Orpheus not to turn around, he would've had to be someone else.

[shades-of-severance]

Purple

A Movement Color. Blue ⇾ Red.

Purple is often used in Severance to symbolize a movement from Lumon-controlled blue to passionate red — usually for love.

Music Dance Experience: Before the room turns distinctly red at the end of the MDE, when Dylan bites Milchick, we see purple lighting as Dylan's priorities actively change in front of us—from earning Lumon perks to wanting to know his family.

The Purple Room: Seen several times throughout Seasons 1 and 2. First, when Helly is being taken from the conference room to the stairwell. Then again in Season 1, when Mark asks Helly to join him in mapping the severed floor — a significant act of rebellion from Mark, done for Helly. In Season 2, we see the room twice: first when Mark runs by it as he searches for Ms. Casey, and once again when Mark and Helly return to the room to make love for the first time.

Irving Turns on Kier: During the egg bar scene in Season 1 (coveted as fuck), Irving stares at a painting of Kier before he smashes an egg inside one of the handbooks—once one of the most valued things in his life — until Burt.

Purple Breakroom Chairs: Unsure if they will return to their jobs at Lumon after the OTC, MDR sits on purple chairs, symbolizing their move from good Lumon employees to rebels.

Gretchen: Dylan’s outtie spouse is dressed in purple as he continues to find new passion outside of MDR with her.

“Hang in There”: Irving’s last message to MDR—helping his found family rebel, hidden behind a poster of their first act of defiance.

Gemma on the Severed Floor: As Mark undergoes reintegration so he can literally break Gemma out of Lumon because he loves her, she appears to him in purple.

[sevrd-belle]

Isn’t it interesting how Helena Eagan was supposed to get Irving Bailiff killed / assassinated in Season 2 but she called Burt who dropped him at the train station? :)

- She then lied to her dad about it.

- She never told anyone Mark S was looking for Gemma.

- She seems to intentionally say stuff to make Helly hate her. It fuels the rebellion.

- She got severed right after Petey accomplished his mission of mapping Lumon. Irving was also in the process of mapping Lumon.

- She only says nasty stuff about Innies when Drummond is staring at her.

- Jame Eagan hates her and even thought it was Helena on stage at the gala.

- The door was magically unlocked to get Gemma through, but it was locked in Season 1.

- She laughed at Kier Eagan propaganda.

Surely not because she’s the shadow leader of an anti-Lumon organization. No, no, no.

I guess her worst crime was falling in love with the severed version of a (kinda) married guy.

But he fell for her, too.

IMO, the “Hannah” thing was checking for reintegration because she has feelings for him but also because reintegrated Innies are the best people for taking down Lumon. Helena, Irving, Petey and Reghabi worked together.

She knows Reghabi is helping Mark.

[kendrysaneela]

I’ve been thinking about Helena and Helly’s rebellious streak a lot. Helly’s rebellion comes from Helena’s subconscious. Helly is rebellious from the moment she wakes up. She will not calm down. She runs through that door hundreds of times, she is relentless in her desperate need for escape. But when she learns she can’t simply escape by thinking inside the box of sending notes or sending a resignation or running out the door or even doing what she did with the extension cord. So she decides to start forming a plan with the other innies to take the company down instead from the inside. And she does little bits of rebellion while she does it. Mapping the facility, walking the halls, opening doors she’s not supposed to, going to O&D. Maybe she can’t escape but she can do little spots of rebellion while she tries to figure out how to escape. Her desperate need to escape cannot be quashed. It’s such a deep desperate need for freedom and autonomy. Now this seems opposite from Helena. Helena seems to be the perfect little Lumon soldier. Perfect at keeping up the Eagan image. When we see her speak outside the severed floor she speaks very calmly,very leveled, and softly. She recites Keir’s principles to Cobelvig when talking about her job. . She says she took a severed job because it sounds “Freaking awesome” She seems to have fully drunk the Eagan kool aid and she is helping best as she can to spread it. But then. I was thinking. Helly wears colors. Helly wears Yellow,she wears bright blue, she wears green,she wears orange. The dress code of Lumon is white and black, gray, navy or pastels. But Helena? Helena wakes up every morning and she chooses a color that goes against the dress code. I don’t think there’s even one outfit Helly’s worn that fits the dress code. Every day. On her first day? She’s wearing a bright blue skirt and a bright blue top. Against the dress code from the jump. And I was thinking. When you see Helena on the outside she’s always got someone surrounding her. At the party it’s Natalie. She’s telling Helena not to drink too much, in the bathroom, Helena’s father comes in, when she’s talking to Cobelvig in the parking lot? There’s a man behind her. When she’s in the meeting about asking for Helly R and the rest of the team back? she’s not participating in the meeting she’s being told they’re going to give Helly back to him. They’re not asking they’re telling. When she’s apologizing for Helly taking over her body she’s reading off a script and she looks anxious afterwards and releases a ton of tension from her body and slumps down. When she’s watching the kiss over and over she looks around making sure she’s not being watched. I don’t think Helena gets to make her own decisions. I think they’re made for her. So Helena pretends to be that loyal Eagan soldier. But she still wears colors. She makes fun of her family’s lore and laughs about it as soon as she’s in a place where she’s not being watched constantly. I think it'll be really illuminating to see if Helly still comes in after their little outdoor excursion where she was literally drowned and forced to become Helly again, if Helena will still be dressed in colors. Cause that's her little rebellion. Helena is just as rebellious as Helly. The difference is, Helena figured out that doing small bits of rebellion while figuring out how to finally escape is what her answer is, long before Helly ever existed. Helly's rebellion is Helena's without the fear, social conditioning and control Helena faces every day. And as an added bonus? Helly has a group of loved ones to help her who would do anything for her. While Helena is alone in her rebellion. So she wears colors every day.

[aingeal98]

One thing I love about this season of severance is how Irving and Mark and Dylan have all gone through such dramatic changes like Irving is fired and fleeing the state, Mark had a lobotomy in his basement, Dylan doesn't want to exist anymore because his wife rejected him for the other him. And meanwhile Helly is staying so firm with that season 1 mindset like no matter what they throw at her (and it has been. A whole fucking lot tbh) she's still like OK guys let's lock the fuck in. Time to explore time to use the secret map Irving left time to rescue Ms Casey who's actually outie Mark's wife.

The personal stuff hits her hard but even if it slows her down she keeps on going. Even her rejection of the gang being the same people as their outies, while everyone else is discovering that it might be personally more complicated than that for them. They've all moved on to chapter 2 of their self discovery but she's clinging to that fire and rebellion because unlike Mark and Dylan there's nothing on the outside for her. She missed half the season thanks to Helena and yeah she wants to destroy Lumon but also. She wants her friends back.

[nooby-banana]

i better not see anyone cinnamon-rolling mark scout. okay? i’ve already seen a few posts about how differently his innie is already acting since the start of reintegration, how he’s more of an asshole and they’re so sad about it etc.

just because lumon molded his innie into a mild-mannered little people pleaser, doesn’t mean he’s any better at grieving or emotional regulation than his outie is. hiding the group photos after petey left. brushing off any attempts to ask how he’s doing. shredding petey’s map??? at least his outie had the excuse of being drunk when he tore up his wife’s photo.

every time a difficult emotion comes to the surface mark’s signature technique is detached avoidance. and then you throw this whole THING with helly/helena at him? that is such a batshit problem to give anyone, much less someone with dogshit coping techniques! of course he’s gonna spiral and disengage and refocus on the one thing he can control: his work.