Severance is set in a world where people can repress memories of their lives when they go to work by inserting an implant into their brains. This creates a split in the individual. They start to identify as an “innie” in the workplace and an “outie” who exists outside of work. This procedure is called severance. It is the brainchild of Lumon Industries.
At the start of the series, severed employees Mark, Dylan, and Irving work in Lumon’s Macrodata Refinement Department, and they struggle with the replacement of their former colleague Petey with the rebellious new hire, Helly. Throughout the first season, Mark struggles with his inner and outer worlds. He navigates the consequences of his actions as he and his coworkers uncover Lumon’s secrets.
HR is Short for Horror
Trusting your employer with your life is one of the stupidest things someone can do. What would stop your employer from keeping you trapped in their building for the rest of your natural life if you allowed them to perform severance on you?
However, the people who undergo severance have their reasons. Some are emotionally charged, and others are a means to an end. While the outies believe that they’re doing what’s best for them, they fail to consider how their innies will behave.
The innies, like any person, are curious about the world. They latch onto any and all pieces of information about the person they are in the real world. The temptation to see the real world lingers over their heads like an apple in the garden.
In the garden, the innies also create their reality as they find their purposes through the department’s collective effort to figure out what is going on at Lumon. Relationships bloom unbeknownst to the outies who all have lives, families, and beliefs that go against the innies’ realties. The two worlds clash, creating moral grey areas where the innies and outies face the problems one has caused the other.
Horrors Beyond the Cubicle
What the quartet discovers is nothing compared to what the audience learns. The second season of the series expands on Lumon’s unethical nature. We watch Lumon use exploited people to test the parameters of severance.
Participants go through psychological torture described as “medical trials” with the promises of freedom if they complete the trial. Lumon’s researchers treat the participants as dolls. They dress them up and play house with them while they are in a severed state. While the researchers have their unethical fun with the compromised participants, the participants cling to the promises of freedom if they power through.
What the participants don’t know is that Lumon doesn’t plan on letting them leave alive.
Cultic Horror
Cult fanaticism is sprinkled throughout the show. Right from the start, we learn of Kier Eagan, the founder of Lumon. The leadership roles at Lumon quote Kier like Scripture and cling to his ideals. Lumon’s leadership is ready to lay their lives on the line for the world, Kier Eagan and his offspring want.
Like any other cult, Kier’s vision for the world causes irreparable damage to communities and families. Normally, it’d stop there but a conglomerate like Lumon also affects the world. In season one, we learn about Lumon’s inner workings and see a brief glimpse into the world that Lumon wants to create through severance. In season two, we catch a glimpse of Lumon’s past, and the horrors they’ve caused to the people in their clutches.
Love Transcends Severance
Oddly enough, the center of this show is love.
Many people go through severance for a reason. While outies may be running from their problems, the innies manifest those fears in how they act throughout the series. The innies create bonds that also bleed into the lives of the outies. Sometimes, these relationships help lighten the outies troubles. We see multiple interactions with the outies where they have instant chemistry with other outies despite not knowing each other in the real world, but have a relationship as innies.
In the case with the medical trial participants, we learn that one of them is undergoing the trials just to see her husband again. This particular participant is targeted by a researcher who tries to convince her that she is in love with him in her severed state. No matter how hard this researcher tries to convince her she’s in love with him, she rejects him constantly as her love for her husband transcends her severed state.
Despite the horrors, the people just want to persevere in a world full of love. Severance is now streaming on AppleTV.
