Episode 7 of the 2nd season of AppleTV+’s science fiction psychological thriller drama series, Severance, unfolds in front of our eyes as a sublime but overwhelming visual experience, with the plot development being equally powerful. Beautifully shot with a grainy filter to differentiate between the past and present timelines, the episode focuses a lot on Outie Mark’s past with his beloved wife Gemma, while he is also seen in the current timeline, suffering from the effects of the reintegration program. In an unexpected twist, though, we follow Gemma in the present timeline for most of the episode, as she goes through a series of harrowing experiences inside the Lumon office.
Spoiler Alert
How had Mark’s and Gemma’s lives been in the past?
Severance season 2 episode 7 begins in the past timeline, where a younger Gemma is seen walking through a university campus before she heads into the library where a blood donation drive is being held. Gemma is clearly a professor at the university, and as she sits down to donate blood, the man on the chair next to hers takes an interest in her and strikes up a conversation. Since both of them are clearly going through assignments submitted by their respective students, they have quite an interesting chat and even get introduced to one another. This very man happens to be Mark Scout, a professor at the same university, and this is how the two characters originally met, following which they eventually went out on a couple of dates. They only grew closer with time, and a supposed mistake, in which Mark misheard Gemma’s interest in plants as her affinity towards ants instead, made them even more interested in each other.
Mark and Gemma felt like they were almost made for one another, and they eventually got married and moved into a house of their own. Mark soon started showing an active interest in starting a family of their own as well, which would really take their love to the next level. One day, he came home with a baby cot, apparently only because it was a steal, and he felt that they might need it sometime in the distant future, but this was definitely a clear message meant for his wife. Gemma got the hint, and eventually the couple started trying to conceive as well, which Devon found out during one lunch together, when Gemma refused to take any drinks. Devon was obviously as happy as always, since she had a very close bond with her brother, just like at present, and so she supported the couple all throughout in every matter.
Although Mark and Gemma were a very loving couple, it was not like things were always smooth sailing in their relationship. Tensions did arise in the middle, due to some personal matters, but they always found their way back to one another and acted as anchors in each other’s lives. There was even a moment once when they wondered why they were even continuing with the marriage, but the moment passed like a dark cloud pulling back to reveal sunny skies once again. The toughest situation that they had to face sometime later, though, was when Gemma eventually lost the baby through a miscarriage, and she tremendously struggled to bear the emotional duress that it caused. Although Mark was as supportive as he could be during that phase, the couple still needed some time to return to their normal lives, but they did eventually get back to their loving selves.
While a beautiful tale of love and understanding is told in the process of revealing Mark and Gemma’s life together in the past, the credibility of it can also be questioned to a certain degree. After all, we also see present-day Gemma inside the Lumon office in between the presentation of the past timeline and are constantly reminded that she is a subject in an elaborate experiment of the corporation. Whether Gemma actually volunteered to be in such an experiment is still unclear, and in this case, it could very well be that she was planted in Mark’s life to set in motion a certain chain of events, which has eventually brought us to the present timeline, when Innie Mark is about to complete the Cold Harbor project.
Does Mark manage to survive the effects of the reintegration procedure?
At the end of season 2 episode 6, Outie Mark had finally seemed to have been fully reintegrated with his Innie self before losing consciousness and collapsing inside his house. As this happened in front of Devon, who had just visited to check up on her brother, she immediately tried to help him out and was instead instructed by Reghabi to stay away from Mark’s body. At present, Devon continues to panic about her brother’s situation, and she is still shocked about Reghabi’s presence at his house. Although the scientist tells her that Mark had eventually agreed to being reintegrated, Devon has a hard time believing it, since her brother did not really keep such major secrets from her. But she stops protesting against Reghabi, at least temporarily, when the scientist assures her that Gemma is actually not dead but is still alive somewhere in the Lumon offices.
At some point during their conversation, Devon refuses to trust Reghabi anymore, and she instead wants to seek help from Harmony Cobel, whose number she still has saved on her phone as Mrs. Selvig. Although it is new information to Reghabi that Harmony is no longer the floor manager at Lumon and has been fired from her job, she still feels that the woman would only do harm to her and her reintegration efforts. She speaks of the existence of an Innie cabin at some undisclosed location, where the severed employees of Lumon apparently become their Innie selves, and so Devon thinks that going to this cabin would somehow help her brother recover.
The nature, or even the purpose, of this Innie cabin remains a mystery, but it could be some space where Innies can be contacted in case of an emergency. Or, it might very well be just a false claim made by the company to the families of severed individuals, just to make them feel that the severance program is not an entirely permanent matter, and there can be certain exit points in cases of emergency. Devon wants to call Harmony Cobel and ask for her help in locating the cabin, but Reghabi makes it clear that she will no longer be a part of the situation if this happens, which would put Mark at even more risk. Thus, Devon ultimately gives up on her plan of acting on her whims and instead chooses to trust Reghabi, which does pay dividends, as Mark wakes up the next morning. Although he is still disoriented and is seemingly still having visions, or maybe flashbacks, of his time with his beloved wife, he is at least alive and out of any mortal danger.
Why is Gemma being held captive at Lumon Industries?
For the first time in Severance season 2, we get to see things from the perspective of Gemma, who happens to be alive but trapped inside Lumon Industries, either completely by force or by the clever binds of corporate jargon that she might have agreed to in some contract or the other. It is left unclear how Gemma had gotten in touch with Lumon, and whether it was Mark who got the two sides acquainted with each other or if it was the other way around. Mark had apparently become an employee at Lumon and had agreed to get severed only after he lost his wife and needed some significant external help in getting over his grief and misery, and so the second case seems to be more likely. Perhaps Gemma had already made a deal with Lumon to be a part of their research, for she genuinely seems to be a test subject for a series of experiments being carried out at the corporation.
The experiments are seemingly being run by a man referred to as Dr. Mauer, and this is the same doctor who was seen earlier this season, carrying surgical instruments from the Optics and Design department to the Exports Hall. Gemma is kept in a solitary room and is given ample food, resources, and time for leisure, while her job basically entails dressing up in the attire given to her every day and walking out of her room. She is then escorted by a nurse through a passage which has numerous doors, each with different titles attached on them, and interestingly, ‘Cold Harbor’ happens to be a new door that has shown up at the place. Gemma is made to walk through multiple doors on a single day, one after another, and all these doors work like the elevator to the severed floor in the Lumon office we have been seeing. Meaning, Gemma’s real self is left outside the door, and her Innie self wakes up every time she walks through the door, as the severance chip in her head kicks in.
What is even more strange is that it seems like Gemma has different Innies in each of the different rooms, and what situation plays out inside these rooms is probably controlled by the Lumon team. For the first time ever, we actually see four workers, almost resembling the employees at MDR, putting numbers inside files on their computers, just like Innie Mark and his team. This operation seems to control what situation pans out in front of the various Innie Gemmas, and so it seems like the MDR employees are basically being made to create hyper-real scenarios at some different level of reality, where someone else is being made to go through these situations, just like Gemma. Although it seems like Gemma is made to experience these situations only for the company to observe and monitor her reactions, there is also an oddity with regards to the lead scientist, Dr. Mauer, in this regard. It almost seems like Mauer is in love with Gemma, or is deeply attracted to her, and so he keeps going through various experiences with her, sometimes as her dentist, sometimes as a flight attendant on a crashing plane with Gemma as a passenger, and sometimes even as her husband.
At one point when Gemma keeps asking about her husband, Mark, Dr. Mauer tells her that her husband has moved on and has a new family now, and sort of suggests that she too settle with a new partner in one of the many simulations. While it could be that a key piece of the puzzle is still being kept from us, and Gemma’s husband is not the Mark Scout we have been following, this suggestion made by Mauer is perhaps an indication of his desire to be with Gemma and make her his wife. But in response to this suggestion, Gemma musters all her courage and knocks out Dr. Mauer with a chair before she runs into the elevator and attempts to escape the place. However, Seth Milchick is informed about this situation on the upper floor, and he intervenes in her escape plan, forcing her to return to her original floor. While the entire mystery about the experiments being conducted on Gemma still remains to be solved, it is confirmed that the floor where she is kept is directly below the severed floor, and the only way to reach it (or leave) is the elevator at the end of the Exports Hall.
Is Gemma really alive or dead?
Another significant mystery that episode 7 leaves us with is whether Gemma is actually alive or not, since the scenes with her inside the Lumon office at present and the flashbacks of Mark and her life together are quite conflicting. At the end of the flashbacks, Mark is seen answering the door one night when a couple of unexpected visitors come to his house. These visitors happen to be two policemen, and although we do not hear them speak, it is quite evident from Mark’s reaction that they’re informing him of the death of Gemma in a car accident. But if this is true, then Gemma cannot be alive inside the Lumon office, and there can possibly be two major theories regarding this matter.
The first and most obvious theory is that Lumon had lied to Mark about the death of Gemma in a car crash while she was brought to their office instead in order to be experimented on. Perhaps the heartless corporates were trying to study the impact of loss and grief on human beings, and for this they separated the couple to have them both severed and working for them.
The second theory might be that Gemma had been severed before her accident, and although her real self had died in the crash, her Innie is still alive inside the Lumon office, from where she is not allowed to leave. In this case, the Gemma that we see is actually her Innie version, but there are multiple levels to her severance, meaning that there are different Innie versions to her original Innie version.
If this is indeed true, then how exactly Mark can reunite with Gemma in the real world would be an important question, since it seems quite impossible, although the Innie cabin that Devon mentions (where Innies can be accessed, and maybe even brought out to the real world) might come into play here. The very title of this week’s episode, “Chikhai Bardo,” refers to the concept in Buddhist philosophy in which a soul is believed to be in a state of transition between life and death after the signs of impending death are made clear. Therefore, Gemma might actually be in a state of transformation, or limbo, between life and death, and where exactly Severance season 2 goes from here would be extremely interesting to watch.
