Is any macro-data getting refined at Lumon these days? Photo: Apple TV+
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Seven Severance Questions is a weekly attempt to digest the events of one of television’s twistiest shows by highlighting the weirdest, most confusing, and most important unresolved issues after each episode. There will be theories. Many will be unhinged.
Welcome to Romance Week on Severance. Love is in the air. Maybe it’s not love, actually. What do you call it when a group of people who’ve had experimental brain procedures start dealing with the ramifications of that by having intercourse at work and dining awkwardly with their secret-work-boyfriend’s partner and sharing hugs with the wife they only just recently met? Because that’s in the air, whatever it is.
Also in the air: mysteries, as always. We have new ones about Burt’s past and Helena’s intentions and Miss Huang’s skill set as a practitioner of emergency medicine. We also don’t know what Cobel has been up to or why Milchick appears to be having a full-on breakdown over his performance review. There are only a few episodes left in the season to start providing answers to all of these, or at least some of them.
But while we wait for those answers, as always, we have some questions that need to be asked …
Here’s what we knew about Burt before this episode: He was the head of optics and design at Lumon until he either retired of his own volition or was fired for smooching Innie Irv. He’s been following Outie Irv and snooping on him at pay phones. He might invite you over for a dinner of ham and wine.
Here’s what we know about Burt after this episode: Burt is Lutheran and has secrets. Burt also has a partner named Fields who gets chatty after a few glasses of wine and is my new favorite character. Fields raises some very awkward but fair questions at dinner, like whether Burt and Irving ever had sex at work and whether Innies go to heaven even if their Outies were, to use Burt’s word, “scoundrels.” He says something about Burt working with someone at Lumon 20 years ago, despite the severance procedure only existing for 12 years, which makes Burt get squirrelly in a way that implies there was something else going on there. He put some cumin on the ham. Fields is a good man. Probably. Maybe. We could find out next week that he’s the head of a paramilitary organization that murders dogs for fun. You never know with this show.
The dinner is just about as awkward as I expected going into the episode, as these things will be when your partner had a tryst he doesn’t remember with a man who showed up at your door shouting his name. Where it gets really interesting is at the very end, when Irv is leaving and Burt gives him that long and terrifying stare before slowly closing the front door. That’s a villain move! One of the best villain moves, honestly, right up there with having a shark in an aquarium and delivering a long monologue to another character about how the two of you are not so different.
So this all changes a lot of things. It means we now have a timetable mystery on our hands regarding what Fields said about Burt being there for 20 years. It means we need to think long and hard about whether Burt retired or was fired or neither, and maybe that pay-phone snooping he was doing was less “curiosity about the strange man yelling at his door” than it was “snooping on Irv on behalf of a giant evil corporation as he made mysterious calls from an isolated pay phone.” Most important, it means we might be on the verge of getting a full-on villain turn from Christopher Walken. That part is pretty thrilling. I don’t think any of you can imagine how much I want to see him give that “not so different” speech. Maybe in front of that aquarium with the shark in it. Maybe to Ricken.
It sure does not look like it! Mark and Helly are off sneaking around and having sex in empty offices under makeshift tents to sort of re-create the tent fling Mark and Helena had at the ORTBO. Dylan is having top-secret tender moments with his Outie’s wife and storming off whenever anyone asks what he’s up to. Irv is gone. Milchick is kind of compulsively practicing his paper clipping and repeating phrases at himself in a mirror in a way that implies there are layers to this onion that get pretty funky the deeper you peel. Miss Huang is providing first aid, apparently.
There was a shot in this episode of the desk in the MDR office just sitting there empty. I imagine it made Natalie furious.
Ranking from least to most ready to explode:
3. Burt-Irv-Fields: Technically, I suppose this is an all-Outie thing now that Burt and Irv aren’t stealing smooches at work. And it’s less of a smoldering affair now that Burt might be evil. It’s still worth keeping an eye on, though. Fields has access to wine and kitchen knives. He’s the wild card here.
2. Dylan-Gretchen-Dylan: So, Gretchen is definitely falling in love with her real-life husband’s severed Innie, yes? Kind of a “this is everything my husband could be, the man I love without all the loser baggage, a man who is an adorable blank slate who never takes scuba lessons or tries to brew beer in the garage or has to be talked out of impulse-buying a new car we can’t afford” situation? Because that is fascinating. The show has focused so much on the Innies’ curiosity about the Outies that I’ve never really pondered the question of whether the Innies were, like, better people. Gretchen is pondering that now, though. A lot. Quite possibly every waking moment of every day. She probably has at least one “how to make severance permanent” in her search history.
1. Mark-Helly-Mark-Helena: I suppose this is less of a love triangle than a love square, now that Helena is also making eyes at Mark’s Outie over restaurant tables. Either way, if Mark’s reintegration continues to progress and he puts a few of these pieces together, things are going to get wild real quick.
Love Squares would be a great name for a 1970s-style game show hosted by a man with a very skinny microphone. Another thing to ponder.
I guess it depends on whether you think whatever she’s doing is evil or sad.
If you’re leaning toward evil, then maybe this is part of a plan to manipulate Mark’s Outie and surveil him, kind of like Cobel was doing when she was Mrs. Selvig. There is a history here with Lumon intertwining itself with his outside life. This could be another part of that.
If you’re leaning toward sad, then maybe this is just a lonely rich lady who is making reckless decisions because she saw her Innie kiss Mark’s Innie and can’t let it go, to the degree she seduced his Innie in that tent and, when that plan ended up almost getting her drowned in a creek, pivoted to tracking down his Outie to look for the spark there.
It could also be evil and sad. That’s on the table too. Helena Eagan is a messed-up lady.
She’s got to be so bored. What is she even doing with herself all day? Mark is in the office. She can’t be running around the house flipping on lights and watching television. She sure as hell can’t leave. I bet she’s going crazy down there in that lab. Part of me wonders if that’s why she’s pushing for a more aggressive schedule with their experiments. “Screw it, let’s flood the chip” does feel like an idea that stems from boredom, like two college juniors seeing if they can make a zip line across their apartment so they don’t have to get up to pass the bong to each other.
She has plenty to do now, though. A patient collapsing on the floor in front of his sister after your secret science experiment was interrupted will fill up your schedule pretty quickly.
It has now been three episodes since we’ve seen her. I … miss her? That feels like a weird thing to say. She’s terrifying and devious, and everything she did in the first season was creepy on a very deep level, especially once she involved a baby. But still. Let me see what she’s doing. Just a quick check-in. I hope she’s ice fishing. That seems like something she would do.
Is it weird that this is the thing that’s stuck in my head after the episode, how Miss Huang — a child, whose entire deal has yet to be explained and a lot of us are starting to just accept as normal because we’re so wrapped up in all the other things that are happening on the show right now — is also the nurse of the severed floor? It might be weird. I accept that. But I do need to know.
