The ending of Severance Season 2 episode 7 was all about Gemma’s attempt to escape from Lumon’s basement. I don’t know if the place Gemma is being kept in is supposed to be the Exports department, but that’s where the elevator at the end of the Exports hallway goes. So, I’m going to assume that the Exports department is in the basement of the Lumon building. Anyway, we got a lot of vague information about what’s going on down there. It’s clearly filled with severed rooms whose doors are labeled with names of locations that have been featured before in the show on the computers of MDR. And Gemma was taking turns going into each of these rooms and playing out various scenarios with a doctor. Apparently, the activities of Gemma’s Innie, Ms. Casey, and MDR were being monitored by Drummond and a team of four who sort of looked like Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving. In addition to all that, we got to see what went down between Gemma and Mark prior to her “death” through the memories in both Gemma and Mark’s fractured minds. So, what was the meaning of all this? Well, I’ll try my best to unpack it until I’m proven wrong in next week’s episode.
Spoiler Alert
Severance Outside Lumon
Mark’s job at MDR, Gemma’s work in the Exports department, and Cold Harbor—what could all this mean? Are all these things connected? Or is it just some twisted science experiment that’s being conducted by a bunch of freaks with way too much money and time on their hands? Well, I think it’s an extension of the severance procedure. You see, so far, we’ve seen that Lumon’s chip helps a person divide themselves into an Innie and Outie and do “mysterious and important” tasks for the company without leaking secrets to Lumon’s rivals, if there are any. But in one case, we’ve allegedly seen the severance program being used on a couple, i.e., Senator Angelo Arteta and his wife, Gabby.
Yes, I’m talking about the Damona Birthing Retreat, because it’s something that’s mentioned in this episode by Devon and Reghabi while coming up with ways to help Mark with finding Gemma. As per Devon, in this cabin, people can become their Innies, probably to avoid dealing with the pain of childbirth. I can imagine why someone would opt for that, but isn’t that process a part of becoming a mother? Anyway, my point is that if the severance procedure can be utilized by couples so that their Outies can have all the good memories of being in a marriage while their Innies can tackle the bad stuff, can’t it be used to help a couple move on if the love between them has died? As in, can severance be used for divorce?
Gemma’s Miscarriage
If we are supposed to take Mark and Gemma’s memories of their relationship at face value, and not something that has been manipulated by Lumon, it’s clear that their marriage came apart, or was about to come apart, at the seams because Gemma was infertile. I don’t like this subplot at all because of obvious reasons, but if that’s what the showrunners are going with to give Mark and Gemma’s past some “emotional weight,” I suppose we have to just roll with it. Anyway, it’s obvious that both Mark and Gemma were suffering in their own ways because of the situation.
They weren’t able to accept the notion that it was perfectly okay to not have a baby in the traditional way and opt for something like adoption; instead, they kept punishing themselves and each other silently. They also never brought up the topic of divorce. I’m not saying that not being able to have a baby is grounds for divorce; I’m just saying that it’s what people do because apparently being able to produce or not produce a child is a dealbreaker in marriage. That said, while Mark drowned himself solely in his work (I guess he was a teacher), Gemma supposedly took time off work (she was also a teacher, probably of literature) to talk to Lumon about their alternative to divorce, which hilariously involved faking one’s death and then compartmentalizing one’s feelings until both parties, the husband and the wife, moved on.
Gemma Wanted Rebirth
Since we saw the doctor, who resides in the basement of Lumon and conducts experiments on Gemma, in the fertility clinic that the couple went to, it’s obvious that he put Gemma on Lumon’s mailing list when Mark wasn’t looking. Then they ran a bunch of psychological tests on Gemma with the “Chikhai bardo” stuff and then put her into their program. In case you haven’t looked it up already, “Chikhai bardo” or the Bardo of Dying is one of the six stages between death and rebirth, as mentioned in the doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism. Gemma said something about “Chikhai bardo” being about “killing one’s ego.” Also, the cards that were sent to Gemma, as a part of her preliminary psychological test, had two men who looked alike (their appearance was similar to that of Mark) fighting each other. Additionally, Gemma brought up the duck-rabbit illusion, a statue of which sits on the table in Milchick’s office. So, maybe all this was foreshadowing for the severance procedure.
Either way, Gemma had signed up, knowingly or unknowingly, for a process that’d kill everything that was synonymous with Gemma, a big part of that being her love for Mark, and “rebirth” her as Ms. Casey. Those experiments that the doctor was conducting on Gemma by taking her to those rooms were to check which stimuli affected her positively and what turned her off. The Christmas stuff was about having a dominating husband, the plain one was probably about being adventurous, and the dentist stuff… I have no clue what that was. The doctor even asked Gemma if she liked what she saw in one of those rooms, right after lying to her that Mark had “moved on,” remarried, and was about to have a daughter, thereby not-so-subtly reminding her why her relationship with him didn’t “work” and why she chose this kind of severance in the first place.
Severance As Divorce
Of course, there are huge gaps in the story, and we don’t know anything about how Gemma’s death was faked, what happened after she faked her death, and why Mark joined Lumon. So, I’m going to make some grand assumptions again. I guess the people over at Lumon thought that simply putting Gemma into the severance program would help her get over Mark, but that didn’t work out because Gemma loved Mark too much. Hence, they had to come up with a method that’d allow both parties to cut each other out of their lives whilst being severed. Mark probably lost his job as a teacher after Gemma’s “death” because he was devastated, and Lumon swooped in like a knight in shining armor and gave him a job, a job where he’d discard his Outie’s feelings for Gemma and vice versa.
It looked like Mark was deleting groups of numbers on his computer, but given how the erasure of those clusters was associated with “emotions,” it’s safe to assume that he was killing his love for his “dead” wife (I am throwing the clone theory out of the window for now). Every time Mark made some progress with the folders on his computer, Gemma was sent to the severed room that corresponded with that folder, where her love for Mark was destroyed. If that’s truly the case, Cold Harbor is likely the final stage of this head-spinning divorce process, and its completion will confirm that Mark and Gemma have severed each other from their respective hearts. Mark will be free to become Helly’s husband and usher in the new prince of Kier’s empire, while Gemma will get to do, well, whatever she wants to do next in life.
Gemma’s Escape Plan
With all that said, there’s a big question mark over whether or not Lumon’s methods are working. It’s almost impossible to ascertain how much time Mark and Gemma spent as a married couple and how long they’ve been in Lumon. So, I’m guessing it’s around 3 years. If I am correct, or close to being correct, Lumon’s severance-divorce process isn’t turning out to be a massive success. Despite being severed, Mark’s Innie had feelings for Gemma’s Innie and vice versa. Maybe that’s why Lumon had to send Gemma permanently to the Exports department while promoting Mark’s office romance with Helly. Even then, Mark’s Innie as well as his Outie have Gemma on their minds. And after getting reintegrated, it’ll be impossible to convince him to simply move on and leave Gemma in the past. Given how Gemma tried to escape from the Exports department and expressed her desire to meet Mark, even though she had turned into Ms. Casey after traveling through the elevator to the Exports hallway, which was blocked by Milchick, it’s clear that she has feelings for him as well.
Gemma’s mind is more fractured than Mark’s because she is Gemma in the Exports department, Ms. Casey on the severed floor, and every time she enters a new room down there, she becomes a new person. Yet, she has Mark on her mind. Now, even though she wants to stop the severance process, she can’t. Maybe she has signed away her freedom to Lumon, and they won’t let her go until her rebirth procedure is complete. We know that Lumon doesn’t have the best security protocols. So, if Mark manages to get a hold of himself and spring Gemma from her self-imposed imprisonment, maybe they’ll be able to talk it out, which is something that they didn’t do before this whole debacle, and come to the realization that not having a baby shouldn’t make or break a marriage. Anyway, those are my scattered thoughts on the ending of Severance Season 2 episode 7. What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments.
