It has been two years, 248 days, and a handful of painful hours since we’ve been waiting to find out what happens to Mark S. after that wild season finale for Severance. So far what happens in season 2 has been kept under lock and key, but with the new eps finally OTW, it’s time we go back and remember just what the fuck went down on Lumon HQ oh so long ago. If Dorothy Gale from Kansas could sum up the story she’d probs say “I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice (like Ms. Cobel psychologically torturing the innies). But most of it was beautiful (like Irving falling in love with Burt). And Mr. Milchik was there, and Gemma was there, and a few goats too!” In case that wasn’t enough of a refresher, let’s dive into the official Severance season 1 recap to get you ready for the January 17 premiere.
Severance Season 1 Recap
What does it mean to be severed?
Lumon employees choose to have a chip put into their head, which completely separates their outer personal life from their inner work life. Once they step into the elevator at work, the chip activates a separate identity, one with no memory of the outside world that solely exists to work for Lumon.
What does Lumon do?
Lumon is a biotechnology company started by Kier Eagan. They make medical-related technology and have grown into a massive powerful corporation with their “hands in many pies.”
What data is the MDR department mining?
The MacroData Refinery department looks at a set of numbers and picks out the “bad data” from the rest of the batch. The bad numbers will start to jump off the page in a low-key terrifying way. What do the numbers represent and what is Lumon doing with this data? That remains the show’s biggest mystery.
What is reintegration in Severance?
Reintegration is the secret act of getting your severed chip taken out to merge your two identities back into one. Lumon does not approve of this practice, so it’s a black-market medical procedure.
How does Petey die in Severance?
Petey collapsed on the ground outside of a gas station and died. He had been super sick, bleeding, and disoriented from his reintegration. Reghabi, a former Lumon scientist turned rebel in the anti-severance movement, tells Mark that Petey was ignoring her instructions about how to heal after the surgery.
What is the overtime contingency?
As Mr. Milchik explains, the overtime contingency is when a severed employee’s innie is activated when they are not at the office. Milchik first does this to Dylan (who wakes up in his outie’s closet) because Milchik wanted to grill him after innie Dylan stole Lumon’s property that Milchik suspected was snuck into Dylan’s home.
What did Dylan find out about his outie?
When Dylan’s innie was awoken in outie Dylan’s home he accidentally found out he has a son and a wife. Oopsie!
What did the scary paintings mean in Severance?
Lumon uses freaky paintings to make the employees of different apartments afraid of each other so that they won’t get close. The O&D department sees paintings of a violent revolutionary uprising that depicts MDR as killers. The MDR team sees the same painting but with O&D as the vicious mob. The art pieces the employees see at Lumon are all recreations of classics from the real world that are remade with Kier as the hero so that Severed employees believe he is the center of the universe.
Why does Harmony Cobel get in trouble with Lumon?
The board eventually finds out that Harmony has been losing control of her employees as shown by Helly R.’s suicide attempt and all the dramz since with the innies running rogue around the office. They also discover Harmony has deeply inserted herself into Mark’s life as Mrs. Selving, made even worse when she offered to be his sister Devon’s lactation nurse apparently without company permission.
How is Helly R.’s outie related to Lumon?
Helly R.’s outie is Helena Eagan, descendent of Kier Eagan and nepo baby daughter of the current Lumon CEO, Jame Eagan.
What happened in the Severance Season 1 Finale?
In the finale, our fave innies Mark, Dylan, Irving, and Helly hatch a plan to awaken themselves in the outside world to tell people about fucked up shit doing down at Lumon. Dylan stays behind because he won a waffle party, and breaks into the security office where Helly R. told him the way to initiate the overtime contingency. Irving awakens at his home where he finds disturbing paintings done by his outie as well as info on how to find Burt, who speeds off to find ASAP. Mark S. is awakened at book reading for his BIL Ricken. He meets his sister Devon, her baby, and is shocked to see Harmony Cobel there. He accidentally calls her Ms. Cobel (instead of Mrs. Selving, the name Mark’s outie knows her by) which informs Harmony that the innies are in the real world.
Helly R. is awakened at a fancy banquet where she is disgusted to discover her family is running the company she hates so much. Right before Helly goes on stage, Harmony Cobel arrives and warns her that if she exposes Lumon, she’ll only be hurting her friends and lovah Mark (who she kissed in episode 8). Cobel also put in a call to Mr. Milchik, to tell him what Dylan was up to. Milchik eventually breaks into the room, tackles Dylan and all the innies go dormant again. But not before Irving bangs on Burt’s door, Helly R. announces to the entire world that Lumon is torturing its innies, and Mark S. screams “SHE’S ALIVE” to everyone at the party.
What did Mark S. yell at the end of the Severance season 1 finale?
Clutching a picture of himself and his outie self’s dead wife Gemma, Mark S. yelled “SHE’S ALIVE” right as Mr. Milchik presumably cut off the overtime contingency.
Did Mark find out Gemma was alive?
The screen cuts to black before we can find out if anyone, including Mark, figured out what his innie meant by yelling an unnamed she was alive. Tune into season 2, kiddos!
Did Mrs. Cobel steal Devon’s baby?
No, at the very end of the season finale, Devon’s brand new baby temporarily goes missing at the same time Harmony Cobel/Mrs. Selving slipped out of Ricken’s book reading. But, after the party turns into a search party, Mark S. (the innie) finds the baby in a room, though he gets distracted by a picture of Mark (his outie) and his deceased wife Gemma. Except Mark’s innie realizes that Gemma is also Ms. Casey, from the Wellness department at Lumon.
Who else was severed outside Lumon?
When Devon is at her pregnancy retreat, she suspects a rich woman staying in the cabin next door is severed. Devon clocks this because the woman had a conversation with Devon before giving birth, but later didn’t recognize Devon at all when their babies were born. Devon thinks Lumon could be experimentally severing people to take away painful experiences, and tells this to Mrs. Selving who shuts down the theory. But during the Lumon gallery scene in the family, this woman is revealed to be the wife of a Lumon exec, so Devon’s theory is right.
Severance Fan Theories
There are many bonkers (and possibly accurate) theories about Severance. One is that Harmony Cobel is so into her life as Mrs. Selving because she has implanted memories from her deceased mom. While most people agree that the random goats have to do with cloning, another wild fan guess is that the goats are actual human babies. The severed chip in the innies’ minds makes the babies look like goats so that the employees can’t get upset about unethical experiments on children. The best not-so-theory that is more than likely true? The innies in the MDR aren’t pulling information from spreadsheets. They are the information themselves AKA they’re being experimented on every day they’re at Lumon doing what they think is menial work. The chip is altering their brain and Lumon is monitoring the results by having them select the bad numbers.
