Severance has all the time been a horror story, albeit one set in a largely generic workplace. That blandness is a big a part of what makes it so scary: beneath the company communicate, drab decor, and unflattering fluorescent lighting is one thing very sinister. And within the present’s newest episode, it makes use of that vitality to faucet into a brand new, much more terrifying form of concern.
Spoilers forward for Severance, as much as season 2, episode 7.
The episode, referred to as “Chikhai Bardo,” picks up with Mark (Adam Scott) recovering from a course of referred to as reintegration that’s designed to reunite the 2 halves of his thoughts: the outie who lives a traditional life, and the innie who’s confined to the unyielding hell of the basement of tech big Lumon Industries. Due to this, it has an nearly Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts vibe to it. As Mark is handed out on his sofa post-surgery, and his mind is seemingly stitching itself again collectively, we get flashbacks of how he met his spouse Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and the way their relationship grew to become strained after they struggled to conceive.
Gemma is healthier identified to Severance viewers as Miss Casey, the disturbingly calm wellness director at Lumon. Within the exterior world, she is believed to be useless following a automobile accident. Her demise is the primary cause Mark grew to become severed within the first place, as an try and keep away from the grief, no less than somewhat bit. However one of many present’s greatest mysteries has been not solely simply how it’s that she’s nonetheless alive but in addition how she ended up dwelling this mysterious life in Lumon’s basement.
“Chikhai Bardo” gives somewhat perception into this. Along with Mark’s flashbacks, we additionally get to see how Gemma was reworked into Miss Casey. The method includes all types of disturbing assessments, which largely contain sending her innie into unusual rooms — in a single, she’s experiencing a airplane crashing; in one other she undergoes hours of painful dental work — after which seeing how her outie reacts afterward. Lumon tracks all the things about her bodily and psychological state and, it appears, makes use of that data to excellent the severance process and make her the perfect wellness teacher, a job that entails serving to different innies keep calm and productive. The objective is to topic the innie to brutal circumstances and for it to affect the outie as little as attainable. The torture is each psychological and bodily.
However this additionally factors to an extremely disturbing revelation. Up till now, the severed characters within the present have seemingly all been there by alternative. For their very own private causes, characters like Mark, Helly (Britt Decrease), and Dylan (Zach Cherry) all made the choice to separate themselves in half. That doesn’t erase the hellscape that their innies should dwell by means of, however it does clarify how we acquired to that time. Miss Casey is completely different. Whereas it’s not fully clear how or why she acquired concerned with Lumon, it certain looks as if the corporate was concerned in faking Gemma’s demise — and used that as cowl to do all of those experiments in secret beneath the idea that nobody would ever discover out about it since she’ll by no means have the ability to go away.
Picture: Apple
We already knew that Lumon was a terrifying megacorporation that will do unseemly issues within the title of effectivity and secrecy. And we knew there was some messed-up stuff occurring in that basement — the goat farm and the break / torture room are simply two examples. However Gemma’s transition into Miss Casey reveals simply how far this company will go to make severance work, and the way a lot management it has to tug it off.
The severance process is spatially dictated, which means that individuals swap from innie to outie based mostly on the place they’re. Thus far, that has been fairly easy: outies exist out within the large world, and as soon as they go right down to the basement in an elevator, they develop into their innies, who can solely exist elsewhere with particular Lumon permission (like when everybody went on a retreat in episode 4). However issues are way more complicated for Miss Casey and Gemma; they swap forwards and backwards consistently as they enter new rooms, in a means that permits Lumon full management over the place they’ll go and when. There really is not any escape for both of them. And the truth that Lumon can get away with faking a demise to create a human lab rat, properly, that’s fairly a bit scarier than some goat farmers who appear like Midsommar extras.
What’s been nice concerning the second season of Severance is how every revelation results in a brand new, even darker thriller. Discovering extra about Miss Casey has solely made me need to know much more about her, significantly how she connects to Mark’s huge mission, which we all know is “mysterious and necessary” — and the extra mysteries are uncovered, the extra necessary all of it appears.
