What Did We Learn From Severance Season 2?

I'll give you a hint... it wasn't anything about cloning.

Click here to watch on TikTok

Full spoilers for the show up through its Season 2 finale!

Now that we’ve got two full seasons of Severance to consider, it’s fun to see how different theories came true, and others didn’t. The best theories are always the ones that actually tie back into the themes of the story being told so…

What is Severance trying to say?

In the goat scene of the finale, Drummond mentions that Kier has a dream to create a “pain free” world.

And of course, in theory that sounds nice. At first thought, I think most of us would be glad to avoid our painful experiences, be it emotional or physical pain. In fact, I think most of us would be enticed by the idea of not having to endure any unpleasant experiences, even basic things like work.

And that’s exactly what Severance creator Dan Erickson thought when he was working corporate office jobs and coming up with the idea for Severance.

But once you apply a specific process to that idea — which in Severance involves putting a chip in someone’s brain to essentially create two separate identities — it raises all kinds of philosophical questions. Perhaps one of the biggest being:

Who Are You?

Who would you be if you detached yourself from all of your painful experiences? All of your traumas, anxieties, fears, heartaches?

Who would you be if your existence was limited to JUST a painful experience?

Are either of these full lives, or lives half-lived?

Back in season one, the first time we saw Mark go down the elevator to the Severance floor, we were treated to a stark contrast. Suffering through the loss of his wife, Mark is sobbing in his car, a completely broken person.

As he descends, the pain vanishes. Innie Mark is unburdened by that loss. He’s content, cheerful even. It’s hard to debate that this seems like a more pleasant experience.

But it didn’t take long for us as the audience to view innie Mark’s situation as something negative. The very first episode of Season 1 is titled, "Good News About Hell” and I think most of us would agree that if our 9-5 work life was the only life we had, “hell” might be a proper term for that existence.

But why? Why do we reach that conclusion after we so visibly saw the difference in Mark’s state of mind between his outie in pain, and his innie who is relatively content?

I think some element of it would have to be that we know what Mark and the other innies are missing by not being able to live a full life. And whether or not we realize it, by extension, that must include the painful experiences as well.

And yet, that doesn’t make us any less resistant to pain. The technology of Severance doesn’t exist at this point, but we constantly have things that are sold to us on the basis of removing pain and inconvenience from our lives.

As just one example, think of how much has been invested in social media algorithms with the sole purpose of developing a platform that can expertly serve up an endless stream of content specifically catered to your interests and your interests alone.

Who doesn’t love a stock photo now and again?

Or how the world is marching to a future filled with artificial intelligence replacing all kinds of processes, marketed as a way to make our lives easier.

In both of these situations there has been and will continue to be a high price for society to pay, but if there’s money to be made, then people will only be concerned with whether or not they can, rather than whether or not they should.

Which of course brings us back to Lumon and its founder, Kier. At the beginning of the show, Lumon seemed like a fairly standard sci-fi representation of a corporate entity, even if a little on the dystopian side.

But the more we experienced Lumon from the perspective of those within its walls, the more it felt like a pseudo-religious cult. The employee manuals read like scripture, the founder of the company is a prophetic figure, there are secret rituals and ceremonies, etc.

For season one, my interpretation of this element was that the show was critiquing our current societal relationship with corporations. That our adherence to the system, as employees or customers, is like that of religious worship. And I think that still applies, but over the course of season two, I think that got even more complex.

As I understand it, the outside world essentially views Lumon as a typical massive corporation and only those on the inside experience the more cult-like aspects. And it makes it all the more insidious when you realize that Lumon may very well have developed this cult of belief, specifically to control its people. Rather than employees you can have loyal disciples.

And Lumon absolutely understands the power of propaganda in cementing that belief system, which is why they have a whole department creating extravagant paintings that canonize events at the company, or special rituals that portray the main tenants of the belief system, etc.

But no matter how weird and deep this gets, it would seem the ultimate goal is STILL, to capitalize and profit on people’s desperate desire to escape pain.

A Pain Free World

Which brings us Gemma. By the end of season two we understand that Lumon, through Mark’s help, was able to create 25 different identities within Gemma, each one dedicated to different painful experiences. Some of them were as mundane as going to the dentist. Others were seemingly mundane but perhaps had emotional pain mixed in, like having to write an endless amount of thank you letters on Christmas. And of course Cold Harbor was revealed to be the extreme anguish of losing a child.

I think Lumon’s goal is to create a world in which people could literally sever themselves from any painful experience they might encounter, aka a pain free world. We already know they’re testing this to some degree because of the birthing cabin which we saw in season one and two.

But of course, for this to work, they have to completely dehumanize the innies who are forced to experience the pain on their outies’ behalf. And they do this regularly. Which even in Season One, we as the audience knew was wrong, but season two truly drives this home.

No matter what kind of existence it is, this life is the only one the innies have and despite the pain, they absolutely want to go on living.

I imagine a lot of people were frustrated or devastated when Mark didn’t exit the door with Gemma in those last moments, but it’s obviously about so much more than which woman he loves.

Exiting the door represents nonexistence for innie Mark. It would be a life without pain, but without joy. It would be without anything. If he turns around and goes to Helly, he knows he’s staying in “hell” and that pain probably awaits him. But with that pain is also joy, evidenced by Helly standing right in front of him.

Who could blame him for making that choice?

But there is also one last element that may help shed light on that and many other moments. Dan Erickson said this in an interview:

“In season one, the Innies are basically children. They’re adults in some ways, but experientially they’re children, having your first crush and finding out things about yourselves. Season two, it’s a little bit more of an adolescence story. There’s more of a sense of finding your own autonomy and deciding who you are going to be, as opposed to who you’ve been told you are.”

When we know this, it’s a little bit easier to see how Mark and Helly could hold hands, running into an uncertain future. Fueled by an adolescent mentality, not only do they not have much forethought for the future, but they’re willing to take risks, choosing to live despite the threat of pain because frankly, they haven’t experienced that pain.

And of course, there are so many questions still to be answered.

Regardless of whatever questions the show decides to answer in Season 3, or what new questions it raises, don’t be surprised if they continue to revolve around primary questions:

1. How far will we go to escape pain?

2. How does the lack of pain change our very identity?

3. And how will people seek to profit off of our attempts to escape?