Headscratchers / Severance (2022)

• Why does Petey's phone keep ringing long after he is known to be dead? Seems like a waste of time for the caller, who certainly has more important work to do than constantly call a dead guy's phone hoping someone picks up.
• Mark continuing to go into work makes sense – it takes his outie weeks if not months to decide he does not want to be part of Lumon anymore. But why does Irving continue to go to work every day? The reveal that his outie is compiling information on Lumon and severance implies that he's already not a believer on the outside. But it ultimately takes your outie's will to bring you back into work every day. So why does Irving keep going in? Is he convinced one of his sides can bleed through and he can get some information? Is he that poor that he simply needs this job? Or is there something forcing his hand, which undermines Mark's belief that "every time you find yourself here, it's because you chose to come back"?
  • Season one offers only a small amount of cryptic information about Irving's outtie life. We will presumably get more info on his goals and motivation in season two.
  • The corridor he is painting does suggest something that happened to his innie, is bleeding through.
• Jame Eagan reveals in his conversation with Helena that she was aware of her innie's suicide attempt. So why did she continue to go back? Sure, Helena could be just-plain contemptuous toward her innie, but even from a pragmatic standpoint, there's a good chance that this woman could kill her and she wouldn't be able to fight back. At the very least, you'd think the family would put a stop to it or try to find a slightly better than than simply having Ms. Casey watch her all day.
  • Presumably the same stubbornness that makes her innie insist on rebelling makes her outtie insist on continuing with her plan. That, or it's family pressure. They clearly see their business as an enlightened calling that's more important than anything.
  • As Mark S. points out after Helena's hostpital stay, dangerous items such as extension cords have been locked away. So management thinks (or at least claims) that Helena is safe now.
• The Board fires Ms Cobel from the company but allows her to keep her invitation to the Eagan gala?
  • Well, she wasn't at the gala that night, she was at Ricken's reading party, so maybe the invitation whas withdrawn and just went anyway to prevent the ruin of it due to innie's plans? Or maybe the Eagans just forgot to withdraw it: we saw they aren't the best at management (no clear backup for Graner), so maybe the un-invitation got lost?
  • She distracts the doorkeepers at the gala by letting her car roll driverless past the entrance. The doorkeepers run after the car, while she runs inside.
• One wonders why Lumon actively cultivates the impression that "innies" and "outties" are different people, both to severed employees and the public. What do they gain? Doing so only seems to encourage the perception that one "person" is being exploited. In public, they're mired in bad press about the practice, while inside the company, they're obviously having problems with innies realizing that they're slaves who will "die" once their outtie retires.
  • Severed employees would need to know at least some of what was happening since they do experience something (even if it's just their consciousness shutting off like we saw with Helly). Also, they want to encourage people to do it, so it needs to be simple, marketable, and something that's theoretically appealing, even if to only a minority of people at first.
    • I don't see how encouraging people think of their "innies" as different people is more simple or marketable than just telling them that they won't remember the work they do on-site.
    • One of the main argument of the anti-severance people is "you don't know if you're killing people at work!". If the innie is, indeed, another person, some people might consider it far enough from their to wash their hands of the ethical dilemma?
  • Also, we don't know exactly what outies understand about their innie lives. If Helly is representative (which she might not be), she seems to straight-up think Severed are born slaves or not real people.
    • Helly doesn't view her innie as a person, but Mark seems to view his innie as him - they're one person, just with different memories.
  • Cultivates that impression how? The lack of connection between innies and outies seems quite straightforward to deduce from the fact that the purpose of severance is to separate their memories. Overstating their connection would be quite Blatant Lies.
• Do severed workers not have lunch? It seems like they're given tokens to have two snacks per day, but they don't bring lunches and are never seen actually eating a full meal during a regular work day.
  • We might not see them eating it, but it seems like they're provided: We get a brief view in one episode of a fridge filled with what look like brown-bagged lunches sealed with Lumon stickers.
    • One of the points on the Senior Refiner Morning Checklist is "Review employee lunches."
• Why does Helly obey any instructions at all? The only method that Lumon uses to motivate her to fall in line is the Break Room, which requires her to willingly follow someone inside and then follow their instructions. Milchick doesn't use any threats or coercion to make her obey him. Wouldn't she attempt to just cross her arms and sit there all day, hoping that the company would eventually give up and fire her for wasting their time and resources?
  • They probably do have ways of making her go to the break room, but I think this is also a use of Go Mad from the Isolation. As boring and inexplicable as Helly's job is, it's also all innie-Helly knows of her life. Her life would literally involve doing nothing for hours all day, every day before her innie was shut off/died, and she wouldn't necessarily know when that would happen.
    • She seems extremely committed to terminating her employment, so it seems pretty far-fetched that she wouldn't make the sacrifice of being bored for a while to see if that worked. And before getting the hang of it, she sees her job as worse than boredom, since she complains about how the first numbers she finds were scary. She could also decide to wander around and entertain herself if she's so worried about being bored.
  • Also, I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure. Helly bonded pretty quickly with the rest of the team, which makes sense, because they're the only people she ever sees, and Mark took the rap for her and went to the Break Room for her. Even if Helly doesn't care about being shut off, demoted, or losing their privileges, everyone else does.
    • Her relationship with the others waxes and wanes. She really hates Mark for a while. If the only reason she's following orders is to prevent them from suffering, I don't think that's conveyed.
  • More realistic (psychological) torture would be quite a Gut Punch, and hence is not shown. Maybe she gets electrocuted. Note that we don't see how others fare in the break room, and that Mark returns from it with bruised knuckles.
• The outies make a very, very good effort for their workplace appearances for a place they don't even comprehend working in.
  • Presumably there's a dress code. Getting to work on time and dressing appropriately seem to be the only responsibilities that outties have, so it's no small wonder that they carry them out.
• Why would Lumen give Helly's innie the same general treatment the other employees get? Why not put her in charge of the goats or something that wouldn't create PR issues?
  • cos they don't see her as a person. Helena herself is just a marketing tool anyway.
  • They needed pictures for the announcement event in the final episode of the season, photos taken by Milchick and his vintage camera earlier in the season.
  • Apparently, Word of God says that Helena actually wanted to go to Macrodata Refinement, that she thought it was the most interesting of the jobs on the severed floor. And since iHelly doesn't have any experience at all in any domain (her mind is blank), they cannot put her directly in the management position of the MDR team: the nepotism would be too obvious, and innies would be too disturbed by this. Also, maybe they really think innies are not treated that badly down there (I mean, the Board kind of knows only what Ms. Cobel tells them), so they did not gave specific instructions about her treatment?
• Why are all the cars we see on the road so old? The computers on the severed floor makes sense, as a technology that old can't easily be accessed or have data copied. But everyone also seems to drive cars of about the same vintage as the MDR computers.
  • A mild case of Schizo Tech.
• People might demand to see interviews of innies (not about confidential details of their work, but about their emotions). So why does Lumon disclose that Helena (whose innie is not likely to speak favorably about severance/Lumon) is severed, instead of centering their gala around someone whose innie and outie seem happy, for example Burt (whose innie considers the work important, and whose outie's video message was positive)? Lumon could have recorded an interview with Burt's innie just in case (or they could say that bringing back a retired innie for an interview is immoral or impossible) and invited his outie to speak at the gala. Why didn't Helena's outie warn the PR department about her innie's attitude?
  • While it would be a good idea to interview a severed employee who seems comfortable with his work, Helena's value as an Eagan is irreplaceable, giving them the ability to say, "If there were anything wrong with severance, why would we do it to ourselves?" That's got much more pizzazz than just "Look, we found one random guy who says he's cool with it." And they get around her innie's hatred of being severed by snapping pictures of her when she's smiling, making her look like she's happy. So they get the best of both worlds: a (seemingly) happy innie who's a member of the ruling family.
  • The media and general public assume that the point of severance (regardless of what Lumon is actually doing on the severed floor) is because the Innie is privy to extremely sensitive information that the company doesn't want to get out. So much so that they would literally perform brain surgery on their employees rather than risk secrets slipping out. It would be incredibly easy and not raise much suspicion for Lumon to simply say they can't interview Innies because of the risk that they reveal proprietary company info, either intentionally or accidentally.
• Did Helena not tell anyone about Helly R's suicide attempt? Helena was back in control at the top of the elevator and had to know what happened but Cobel continued to have a job until Natalie apparently uncovered it to the board. Jame Eagan talking about it at the gala sounded as though he only just became aware of it as well. How did word of the incident not spread immediately?
  • No, it doesn't seem like she did. Mark repeatedly notes that exits are staggered so that none of the outies ever meet (at least, in theory), and to back this up, everything we see outside of the Severed floor shows the building to be pretty deserted at the best of times. Likely answer is that Helena obviously knew, but shares Helly R's determination and stubbornness, and refused to risk the experiment getting called off, so didn't tell anyone and lied about why she was in the hospital until it got exposed by Natalie. What little we see of Helena suggests she was determined to play this off as "see, it's fine now! Problem solved!" Probably to increase her standing inside the family.
• The Waffle Party raises lots of questions. Do the employees (aside from Helly, who clearly doesn't) know what happens during it, or is it a secret? Are the dancers other employees or outside sex workers? How much do they know about the company? Do the dancers change based on the recipient's sexuality and preferences? Word of God has stated that this is supposed to be a company-sanctioned sex ritual but still leaves a lot unanswered.
• How would you seek another job after severance? You've got no record of the skills you used!
  • Since the Eagans plan to bring severance worldwide, that's the plan. With no skills other than the ones they remember, the outie can only apply for a limited set of jobs; leaving them no choice but to seek positions specifically looking for severed employees. The innie, meanwhile, would only be able to choose from a list of positions that the company provides them since they know nothing but their singular workplace.
• Did Mark get a raise with his promotion after Pete left? Was his outie informed of it to explain the higher wages?
• What about when Irving was docked pay for "sleeping at work"? Was his outie informed of the docked pay, and why?
• How is it that that scanning system on the elevator which can detect writing on the body and swallowed notes can't detect that Mark was carrying someone else's keycard?
  • Maybe a technical oversight? The events that result in Mark ending up with Graner's keycard are so unprecedented that it's possible they just didn't design their scanners for it. Lumon seems to be more concerned with messages/confidential material getting out than company property coming in.

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