Lies, lies, and more lies. They say if you want to change public perception and control their emotions, then tell them a story. Those cold facts can be tweaked, sugarcoated, and bent to suit the narrative, and in the end, one can only wonder, how much of it is really real? Those who question its credibility are crushed by the powerful, and what we are left with is history. To me, the fourth episode of Severance season 2 looked quite familiar. It all looked like a big lie, or a story spun by a powerful man who wanted to control the narrative to fulfill some ulterior motive that viewers have been trying to speculate about since the beginning of the series: What does Lumon really want?
Speaking of the episode, everything here was as cold as MDR blue. The TV appearing magically on a cliff and operating despite not being plugged in to anything only questions one’s sanity. You see, everyone is lying to each other to their face. Everyone is hiding behind a mask. There’s a scissor cave, which only depicts how two hands, or two personalities (in this case), emerge from one head. Just like Dieter and Kier emerging at the same time from the same womb. Like the Innies and Outies living inside the same body. So, once again, is any of it real or just mere fiction to instill fear in the minds of those who are not considered equals, but laborers?
I am quite sure the creators of Severance had a good laugh when they read all those “clone” theories online, and to give “fans” some validation, they introduced those “NPC” looking clones credited as shadows of the four MDR employees. In my opinion, they were as unreal as Dieter himself, created not to lead but to mislead those who are not always satisfied with the truth. Much like the four adventurers in the episode, I too believed much of those dramatic tales until Milchick brought up the second chapter and told his listeners about “Kier and the Thieving Nanny.” They say art imitates life, but there’s no way that Kier, on his deathbed, while scribbling the Fourth Appendix, wrote something very similar that might take place decades into the future. In the show, we too know of one person who pretended to be a nanny and was accused of stealing Devon’s baby. That person was none other than Mrs. Harmony Cobel, and the second chapter of the book sounded like someone was taking a dig at her character. It is these small details that make you wonder if any of those stories about Kier the savior are really true. And one of the important giveaways was Milchick’s sudden appearance and disappearance. For some reason, he didn’t sleep with the rest of the folks in the tent and disappeared in the still of the night as if he had some chair in the backroom to fill. It wouldn’t surprise me if everything we saw in episode 4 was just our characters in a simulation or on a lower floor inside the Lumon Industries that recreates the natural environment, Dieter Eagan National Forest, for ORTBO or Outdoors Retreat Team Building Occurrence. There’s no fauna in the entirety of the location except for a dead mammal, a seal, which seemed displaced from its natural habitat. The thing is, everything about this place is suspicious, implying this might not be a real place at all. It could be an artificial environment created solely for ORTBO so that Lumon could get into the good books of their employees and claim that they have nothing but the best interest in mind for their extended family.
One of the running themes of this episode was deception and falsehood, and that’s what Lumon and the Eagans specialize in. Helena had been feeding white lies to her MDR colleagues only because she was too afraid to unleash her “rebellious self” and create another embarrassing situation for her prestigious family. Just like her forefather, Helena too fabricated a flimsy tale about a night gardener, though her story wasn’t as believable as Dieter Eagan’s, which was why the explorer of truth, Irving Bailiff, finally saw through her lies and forced “Seth” to remove the Glasgow block (named after a real city in Scotland). It’s quite ironic that Helena laughed at Milchick’s words when he uttered “every word is truth.” She, of all people, knew for certain that no one like Dieter Eagan existed in the real world. There were no night gardeners here, just hoarders of truth who, through selective release of information, wanted to enslave society and force them to live in the dark. But people like Irving see the “light” at the end of the dark tunnel.
In the episode’s ending, Milchick, a branded minion of the fabled megalomaniac, promised to purge the very existence of the truth-seeker because that’s the price you pay when you are focused on unraveling the truth and doing the right thing. I am quite sure this is not the end of Irving, and we are going to see him again in the upcoming episodes, as his friends are still “hanging in there” and will eventually convince the board to make some exceptions for their friend. But before that, it could be possible that Helly, who had tried to be the whistleblower in the previous season, might reveal some unsettling truths to her colleagues, compelling them to look more into the true motives and real identity of the Lumon Industries and the man who created it all. Mark’s reintegration, which symbolizes a flimsy bridge between the real world and Lumon’s closed quarters, is going to play an important role in the events to come, and maybe it would eventually become the new “overtime contingency,” an irreversible Glasgow block. However, when you are fitted with an electronic chip in your head, a sort of ticking bomb that could explode with the push of a button, one cannot go against their masters’ wishes for long. Well, that’s a pretty no-point-of-return situation for the severed employees. So, what do you think of this episode, especially its location, and what do you think is going to happen to Irving after he has been purged? Do share your theories and your thoughts about where all this is really headed.
