All the open-ended mysteries of Severance
(Ed. remark: This post contains spoilers through episode 1 of Disconnection season 2. Only read on if you’re okay with one of your cut-off personalities knowing that.)
On the way to season 2, Disconnection is on a hot streak. We pick up where the season 1 finale left off – give or take a few months of outie time; Mark (Adam Scott) is told it’s been about five months since the finale — Disconnection season 2 starts almost immediately. We know that equipment for the show: methodical and full of instructions.
Season 2 Episode 1, “Hello Mrs. Cobel,” doesn’t give anything away a lot ofbut it certainly gets everyone back to work, bringing us closer to finding answers to the many lingering questions. That is why we have put together a working document of all remaining questions Disconnection is refurbishing. We’ll update it as the series progresses, covering everything from evidence presented on the show to wild conjectures. In the spirit of Dylan (Zach Cherry), let’s wonder a little.
To this end: What is Lumon working on?
Lumon is a very mysterious organization. When Helly (Britt Lower) asks how many departments there are in season 1, the MDR team’s guesses vary wildly – ’probably 30′, ‘about five’, ‘nobody’s quite sure’ are the answers given – and the group doesn’t even know what it is they are working. Other departments don’t know what the others are doing and seem to harbor strange superstitions about the humanity of their apparent colleagues.
From our glimpse of the outside, it is clear that Lumon is a lot influence in the wider world. And as Cobel (Patricia Arquette) puts it when someone asks about what Lumon does: “Whatever people can imagine, they can usually create.” Plus, there’s the strange corporate legacy they’ve all been indoctrinated into: owned by the Egan Company and founded by Kier Egan, who still looms over the company like a cult leader. Its core principles and employee handbook are compact. They have a lot of pots on their hands, as their underground (or possibly just windowless, liminal) office involves goats, ‘optics and design’, art conservation, MDR and more.
So what are they planning to do, and what does the aborted procedure actually gain them? The answer, on paper, lies in its use: people no longer have to be ‘aware’ that they are working, or undergo painful experiences such as childbirth. It’s not hard to see how this could have applications for soldiers (or even something more nefarious). But the bigger goal… tbd. Are they doing some form of Go away thing where the discharge procedure is just a way to transfer consciousness, prolong life, and maybe even bring Kier Egan back to life? Maybe! Why else leave a man’s house perfectly preserved in the office? And why else would Helena’s father, CEO of Egan, say she would ‘sit’ with him during his ‘turning process’?
But these questions do bring us to…
What is the Macrodata Refinement department working on?
Technically we don’t know this either! (Although we’re pretty clear that they don’t, as the rumors have suggested, “each have a larval offspring that will jump off and attack if we get too close.”)
To us it looks like numbers are moving across the screen. But for Mark and his colleagues, it’s work — some of which are numbers that trigger a strange fear response (or even visions like the one Mark gets from Mrs. Casey/his wife at the end of the Season 2 premiere). And for the heads of Lumon, it seems quite necessary, considering how they’re willing to bow to Mark’s demands in Season 2’s opening.
There is a popular fan theory that MDR is sensitive and high-level work that has something to do with refining/perfecting the discharge procedure (or even perfecting one consciousness taking over another), and the numbers represent memories and personality that are swept away. .
One thing seems important to note: there is a technique behind it. “If you see us, we’re really refining numbers,” says Adam Scott, who plays Mark, told The Verge. “There’s actually a way to do it.”
What do they do with Mark’s wife?
When we are introduced to Outie-Mark, he is living a barren, divorced life due to losing his wife a few years prior to the series. In the season 1 finale, Innie-Mark discovers (and screams) that she is still alive. So… where did she go? Episode 1 doesn’t provide many details: We know she’s taking the elevator that Outie-Irv (John Turturro) keeps painting, and we don’t know where that goes, or why she was taken.
In an interview around the season 1 finale, creator Dan Erickson only vaguely hinted at what might be going on:
There are many questions. Most of these we had already answered in our minds when we wrote it, but some we didn’t. We discussed some of these later. But hey, is she divorced? Does she know – is she involved? Is she a victim? Was she kidnapped? How did she go from a loving marriage to Mark to Mrs. Casey from the seventh floor? And that is a big question mark at the moment. (…) We saw some kind of experiment or something happening with (Mark) and his wife, and observed them a little bit.
What did Harmonie Cobel want with Mark?
There’s a lot of weird stuff going on Disconnectionbut one of the strangest (or at least the coldest) of them is Harmony Cobel infiltrating Mark’s life, both on and off work hours. As much as Milchick (Tramell Tillman) might write this off as a bizarre psychosexual ‘throuple’, her performance seemed much more thoughtful than that.
It’s possible she’s (in her own way) overseeing a larger project surrounding the severed workers. Cobel was more concerned than the board about Petey’s severed memories being penetrable; she later asked Mark’s sister if he ever “thought he saw his wife.” She seemed to get a little glee in introducing Mrs. Casey to the MDR room to watch Helly R., and when she discovered that Mrs. Casey was getting too intimate with Mark, she sent her “back to the testing floor.” .
What is the test floor?
Oh, good question; no idea actually. But it’s scary and foreboding – poor Mrs. Casey has to walk down a long, dark corridor that leads to an elevator with only an imposing red arrow pointing down – and for some reason Irv’s outing has had visions of it and painted it , while we see in the season finale. Petey alluded to a certain floor of the Lumon building as “a place you can’t leave,” which certainly seems like it could be the testing floor.
There are some theories that this has to do with Lumon’s deeper nature, and that cloning may be involved (hence the goats). At the very least, the fact that Irv and Ms. Casey seem to have a bond with the floor could indicate that they may have both undergone the same type of tests. Especially since Innie-Irv keeps having strange visions of black, shadowy ooze.
Why is Mrs. Huang a child?
Is it a paid internship? Does Lumon ignore child labor laws? Is she also part of the test floor/Ms. Casey strangeness? So far, Ms. Huang – not a friend, it must be said – has been clear: it’s because of when she was born. I hope that helps!
What is the connection between Lumon and water?
Lumon’s logo is a water drop. There’s a water tower in the parking lot (and it gets its own character in the Claymation introductory video that the Innies see in the season 2 premiere). There are many names that refer to a type of water body – MDR fileshousing projects that the characters live in, even technically names of the refineries. Mrs. Casey tells Innie-Irv that his outing “appreciates water.” There is a painting by Egan lakes that are shaped like the Great Lakes.
What does it all mean? Not clear yet, although some think it refers to the alternate universe of Disconnection existing at a time when there is a war over water, and it is considered a more valuable (or endangered) resource.
Seriously, what’s going on with the goats?
Among the stranger things we saw in season 1: a herd of goats that was just… raised? in the halls of Lumon Industries. The only thing Mark and Helly really know is that the caregiver didn’t think they were ‘ready’ yet.
As is often the case in life in Lumon, the goats are both at a loss and are openly bewildered about what they are doing possible use could be. The good news? It seems like it we’ll have an answer by the end of season 2.