Severance is finally back after a nearly three-year wait, and with it, three years of a pent-up desire for feverish theorizing.
The Apple TV+ sci-fi thriller follows a group of employees who’ve surgically separated their professional selves from their personal ones—the concept of work-life balance taken to the extreme—only to discover that nothing good can come from not knowing what they’ve been up to all day at the shady corporation that’s hired them.
For a show that’s mostly set inside a dull office space, Severance is anything but boring; each suspense-driven episode features suspicious workers increasingly hellbent on having their questions answered. These range from the obvious and more pressing: What does our company even do? to the more existential: Who even are we?
Of course there are some answers this season. It would be cruel for there to not be, especially after that stunner of a Season 1 cliffhanger. But, as always, there’s also a whole lot more secrecy and speculation. Here’s every Severance Season 2 theory we have, updated with each new episode:
It’s Helena Eagan, not Helly R. on the severed floor
“A night gardener?”
Three words are all it takes to plant a seed out of doubt in macrodata refiner Irving B.’s (John Turturro) mind and, by extension, ours. Helly R.’s (Britt Lower) feeble fable of what she saw out there in the real world doesn’t hold up under scrutiny at all, prompting the first of this season’s major conspiracy theories: It’s not Helly who’s returned to the Macrodata Refinement department like the rest of her severed counterparts, but her outie, Helena Eagan.
Lumon Industries still doesn’t know who Irving and Mark S. (Adam Scott) managed to contact when they were topside, or what they were able to spill about the company. What better way to find out than sending Helena in to spy on the rest of the team?
The evidence: ‘Helly’ points out the absence of workplace security cameras and microphones to her colleagues twice, possibly as a ploy to get them to let their guard down and let her in on their secrets. It also makes sense why Lumon wouldn’t need these cameras and mics anymore—Helly’s their mole now.
When Irving walks off later in Episode 1, too overwhelmed by what he’s seen to talk about it, Helly does seem awfully keen on keeping the group together, and possibly finding out. On the other hand, it’s equally plausible that she’s just too horrified to admit that she’s the daughter of Lumon’s current CEO Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry).
On discovering her outie’s true identity in the Season 1 finale, Helly’s spontaneous recitation of the Lumon Compunction Statement, forcibly drilled into her over and over at work, was finally genuine. Her “forgive me for the harm I have caused this world” plea was a tragic admission; she was pained by all the pain she’d inadvertently put her work friends through. Being honest about who she really is now could cause her to lose them. And then what does she have?
When the others ask her what she saw on the outside, however, ‘Helly’ speaks of a “really f---ing boring apartment,” a description an heiress accustomed to wealth might employ. Even her remark about owning a “Save the Gorillas” t-shirt suggests the derision of a rich person—look at these plebes and their bleeding-heart causes! But for Helly, so desperate to escape her prison all throughout Season 1, even a lame apartment would feel like a luxury. A nature documentary wouldn’t be boring, as she puts it; it would fascinate someone who, until now, had never even seen the sun.
She’s also angered when Mark suggests that innies and outies are essentially the same person. “Speaking for myself, I don’t think we owe them s---,” she says. This could be Helly defiantly distancing herself from the outie version of her, her own worst enemy, but these could also be the words of Helena, someone who once told her innie that she wasn’t a person at all.
‘Helly’ is also oddly subdued when Mark tells her of his plan to stay at Lumon and find its missing Wellness Director Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), an unexpected reaction from the Season 1 spitfire who would’ve leapt at any chance of corporate rebellion. This, though, can be explained away by her having feelings for Mark, and being anxious about him potentially developing feelings for Ms. Casey.
Towards the end of Episode 1, however, there’s a closeup of her hand fumbling for her computer’s power button. Surely after having been subject to the fixed routines of this corporate hellscape day after day, Helly’s muscle memory should’ve kicked in? She should’ve got it on the first try.
The clincher: The file on Helly’s monitor in one of Episode 1’s final shots is called Santa Maria. That’s the fictional town where Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is set—you know, the movie in which aliens replace people with emotionless doppelgangers? Case closed.
Theory status: Confirmed!
Irving’s suspicions continue into Episode 4, when he first attempts to share them with Mark. He’s brushed off, of course—Mark’s too blinkered by his feelings for Helly to entertain the idea that she might not be who she says she is.
Then, Irving picks apart Helly’s story twice, both times fixated on the detail of the night gardener. It’s the one thing that just won’t cohere for him. First, he broaches the topic when they’re alone together in his tent. His tone is gentle—if Helly comes clean, it won’t change how she sees her. Her only response is denial, and a disapproving glare.
Later, as the four macrodata refiners sit around a campfire, he brings up the question again. His tone is still even, but a single nagging doubt abruptly begins cascading into several: Did this night gardener have a flashlight? What was he wearing? What color was his shirt? This time, Helly is better prepared, responding with cold cruelty. She suggests that Irving’s loneliness over losing Burt (Christopher Walken) is causing him to lash out at her, the implication being that he can’t stand to see her find happiness with a Lumon colleague after losing the one he was in love with.
And that’s what clinches it. “What you said to me was cruel,” Irving tells her towards the end of the episode. “And Helly was never cruel.” The pieces click into place—if this isn’t Helly, who else would have the authority to remain an outie on the severed floor? Only an Eagan.
Having been on edge the whole time, Irving finally cracks. If Milchick doesn’t switch Helena back into Helly, he’ll drown her, he threatens, shoving her head into a freezing lake as the others watch on in horror from afar. “Turn her back,” he screams. After two rounds of this, Helena cracks too. “Goddamn it, Seth, do it!” she yells, before being held underwater again. Seth? An unusually intimate way for an innie to address their supposed superior, and Irving clocks it immediately.
Milchick can’t let the Eagan heiress die on his watch. He orders that the ‘Glasgow Block’ be removed. Helena is Helly once again.
The macrodata refiners are eliminating human emotion
Since the beginning, the big question looming over the Macrodata Refinement department has been: What exactly are they refining? On the face of it, they’re just sorting digital sets of numbers into five boxes. But this must mean something, right? It must be important, or else it wouldn’t mandate a level of secrecy that requires employees to undergo the severance procedure.
In Season 1, Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) has his own theory: The Earth has become uninhabitable and so they’re cleaning up the oceans for human resettlement. The end of Season 2, Episode 1, however, makes it clear that their task is far less altruistic.
As Mark begins sorting his numbers, the episode cuts to another screen depicting Ms. Casey, who was revealed last season to be Mark’s wife Gemma, or at least a dead ringer for her. The catch: Gemma died in a car accident years ago, Mark’s grief at her loss compelling him to join Lumon in the first place. Are the macrodata refiners refining people? Rather, are they refining severance chips to reduce and eventually eliminate human emotion? It’s plausible—what would appeal to corporate instincts more than soulless corporate drones?
The evidence: One of Lumon founder Kier Eagan’s cult-like teachings is that the “Four Tempers”—the emotions of Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice—must be tamed.
Ms. Casey, initially stiff and robotic in Season 1, is immediately sent down to Lumon’s “testing floor” when she begins displaying signs of emotion. Her file says ‘ITNO: 25.0 (BUILD)’, which could mean that this is the 25th time she’s been refined. Each of the five corresponding boxes in her file display amounts of ‘WO’ (woe), ‘DR’ (dread), ‘FC’ (frolic’ and ‘MA’ (malice).
Is Mark now going through her brain and cataloguing her feelings so that they can be erased? Are all the refiners working on other people, or even their loved ones? This would explain why seemingly random clusters of numbers elicit real emotion in them. It would also explain the Season 1 reveal that Mark had finished his first-ever file at record speed: he’s breezing through feelings he’s intimately familiar with. There are five boxes though, and four tempers, and one possibility is that the fifth box is for ‘neutral’ feelings that can be retained.
This theory only prompts more questions: Did Gemma really die in the accident? Is Ms. Casey her clone? Is Gemma in a coma, with her consciousness uploaded to a new body?
Theory status: In Season 2 Episode 7, we find out the Gemma being held prisoner in the Lumon sub-basement is really Gemma. We still don’t know Lumon staged the crash that ‘killed’ her, but she’s retained all her memories of Mark and their life together, and is desperate to escape. As another lab rat, she’s routinely sent into various testing room floors, in which her innies are subjected to pain, fear or anxiety-inducing situations, such as a dentist’s visit or plane turbulence. Yes, innies. Plural.
Though one scientist tells her Lumon’s aim is to eventually eliminate pain, their experiments are obvious failures — severed, Gemma might not mentally recall what she went through, but she definitely feels the physical aftereffects of each test. Far from blocking out pain, Lumon’s experiments compound it with fear and confusion — what must it be like to wake up with a sore mouth or throbbing hand, with absolutely no memory of what caused it?
In service of Lumon’s goals, innie Mark hasn’t been eliminating the original Gemma’s emotions as previously theorized, but refining the building blocks of her mind to create new Gemma consciousnesses, or new innies, without realizing it. Each file he refines is a new innie, subjected to a new experiment. It’s devastating to discover that Mark, so shattered by Gemma’s death that he split himself into a whole new person, is now such an integral part of Gemma’s pain, inadvertently caused by the person he split himself into.
Cold Harbor, innie Mark’s last refined file, is tested by having Gemma’s 25th innie instructed to take apart a child’s crib. It doesn’t trigger a memory of the original Gemma’s miscarriage, her most traumatic experience. The severance barrier holds.
Lumon is trying to bring people back to life, or at least preserve their consciousness
This theory is admittedly thin on evidence (so far!), but it’s one that’s incredibly compelling.
One of the additions to Lumon’s crew this season is Deputy Manager Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock). Only she’s a child. What is a child doing on the firm’s severed floor? Why is Lumon employing children in the first place?
Ms. Huang mentions that she used to be a crossing guard, prompting speculation that she was hit by a car, fell into a coma, and was then revived as a full-time innie, much like Ms. Casey. And much like Ms. Casey, she has no way of ever leaving. No one would put it past a predatory firm like Lumon to exploit child labor, and this feels like the nifty loophole they’ve found. If Lumon has developed the tech to bring back two people already, what’s to say they aren’t trying to fine-tune it to eventually resurrect Kier, worshipped with fanatical devotion?
The evidence: Jame telling Helena, “One day, you’ll sit with me at my revolving,” in Season 1. What is a revolving? Sounds a lot like he plans to have his mind uploaded into a new body. Ah, the rich and their obsession with trying to live forever.
The Season 2 opening credits also feature a baby with an adult Kier’s head crawling at Mark’s feet — a pointed reference to old consciousness being transferred into a new body?
Theory status: So far unconfirmed
Sometimes the simplest explanation really is the right one, though, and it turns out Ms. Huang really is a child. Unsevered, she’s been working at Lumon as part of its ‘Wintertide Fellowship’, a program Cobel had once been part of in her youth. Ms. Huang’s arc is one of the saddest this season, underlining Lumon’s callous destruction of childish innocence, of breaking people down without ever having to put a chip in their brain first.
Every ‘perk’ is actually a punishment
The “bounteous reforms” Lumon promises its macrodata refiners in an Episode 1 claymation video are revealed to be superficial incentives, meaningless corporate attempts to placate them: new vending machine snacks, a hall pass, pineapple bobbing, a “mirror room.” In true Severance form, there’s something very off about this video. The implications of a hall pass are that the team’s hallway privileges have been revoked; they’re no longer physically locked inside their section, but still effectively confined to it.
Dylan’s character is depicted as having a weird bodily reaction to the Christmas Mints. Does Lumon food induce allergies or seizures? Irving’s claymation character is visibly agitated by the funhouse-style mirrors, which possibly means there are parts of him on display that are terrifying to see.
The weirdest of all is the firm’s take on the more traditional game of apple bobbing. Pineapple bobbing just looks like it would hurt—imagine having to grab a spiky fruit with just your mouth. Ouch. While apple bobbing is usually played with the participants keeping their hands behind their backs, the claymation versions of Helly and Mark are depicted as having their hands tied. This is not voluntary. Discovering that ‘pineapple bobbing’ is Lumon’s cutesy codeword for ‘waterboarding’ would surprise exactly zero people.
Later that episode, Milchick shows Dylan the blueprints to an ‘Outie Family Visitation Suite’ that Lumon plans to build—a special perk, not meant to be disclosed to any of the other employees. When Dylan asks if this means he can finally see his family there, the manager responds, “...if you take the name of the room at face value, I’d say yes.” Ominous.
Is Lumon planning to pass off strangers as Dylan’s real family? Or even hire Lumon employees to play the part, given how secretive and insular the firm is, and how it can’t risk the outside world finding out what severed workers really do? Will his ‘family members’ be represented as creepy statues, like those of the Eagan family in the company’s Perpetuity Wing?
The evidence: Lumon is a master of the bait-and-switch. The cruelly-named Break Room isn’t where employees go to relax, it’s where they’re sent to have their spirits broken and their fight extinguished. Plus, the Season 2 trailer features a shot of Helly with her face underwater. Whatever these reforms are, they’re not fun.
Theory status: TBD. Following Episode 4, we now know that the scene of Helly being held underwater isn’t linked to ‘pineapple bobbing’ after all, but Irving figuring out that Helena is a spy and attempting to kill her so Lumon will bring Helly back.
The shot of a claymation Irving’s head on fire is a smart visual foreshadowing of his innie being fired.
Plus, Dylan does get to see his real wife, Gretchen (Merritt Wever), in the Outie Family Visitation Suite—after they meet for the first time, the show deliberately gives us a glimpse of outie Dylan’s home life later that episode so viewers can confirm that Gretchen really is who she claims to be, and is not a hired imposter. So far, so good. Or is it?
Innie Dylan gradually begins falling for Gretchen, and she in turn with a man who appears to be far more sensitive and empathetic than the one she’s married to. What was initially a gift becomes a trap as Milchick subtly references Dylan’s ‘perks’ being rescinded should he defy corporate authority once more. Gretchen, and her feelings, might be real, but they’re just another way for Lumon to keep Dylan on a leash.
Is it successful? To an extent. The dangling reward of familial visits means that Dylan rebels less this season, such as turning down Irving’s requests for help finding the elevator to the testing room floor. On the other hand, Lumon’s plan backfires when Dylan proposes to Gretchen, is turned down, and immediately quits out of heartache. By the end, however, he’s patched things up with his outie, decided to stay and gets in one more defiant season finale, “F--k you, Mr. Milchick.” Never change, Dylan.
Mark reintegrates
Reintegration truthers, unite! Two episodes into Season 2, there were already plenty of hints that Mark would eventually opt for the same procedure his former colleague Petey Kilmer (Yul Vazquez) underwent in Season 1, bridging his innie and outie lives. Some suspected that he was already integrated when Season 2 began—one shot of Mark in Episode 1 features a suited figure lurking in the background, which was assumed to be him, a visual parallel to a reintegrated Petey also being haunted by his double.
The evidence: More hints appear in the new Season 2 opening credits, which depict two Marks working together.
Another shot features the testing floor elevator, its occupant briefly alternating between being Gemma and Helly, one of whom is the great love of outie Mark’s life, the other someone who innie Mark has fallen for. This overlapping of the two of them seemed to suggest the merging of Mark’s two halves. Finally, the sequence includes a shot of Mark fighting his way out of Mark’s head. Make of that what you will.
Theory status: Confirmed.
In one of the saddest moments in Episode 3 (and this is an episode full of them), Mark agrees to the risky procedure in the hope that it will allow him to see his late wife again. During it, outie Mark gradually begins to forget his place of birth, his first memory, then refers to months as “quarters,” a sure sign that innie Mark is beginning to bleed over. Innie and outie collide in a frantic montage that flips between suited and onesie Mark waking up at Lumon, the episode ending with a question that’s long loomed over severed workers’ heads, but now takes on devastatingly new dimensions: Who are you?
Throughout the season, innie and outie Mark begin experiencing flashes of the other’s life, but by the end however, they still haven’t merged into one.
Burt is a Lumon spy
Burt’s been following Irving around in his car in Season 2, a suspicious move in a show primed to spark suspicion, but one he explains away smoothly in Episode 5. Burt’s innie was fired after being told that he had an “unsanctioned erotic entanglement” with a Lumon colleague, and when innie Irving shows up banging on his door in the Season 1 Finale, he puts two and two together. It’s a reasonable explanation, except Severance is a show about how appearances can often be deceptive, and there’s something about Burt’s usual mild-mannered charm that rings false in Episode 6.
The evidence: Burt invites Irving over for dinner so they can talk through their “entanglement”—which outie Irving has no memory of, of course—and clear the air with Burt’s husband, Fields (John Noble). While at dinner, Lumon manager Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) breaks into Irving’s apartment, finding all the stashed research he’s meticulously collated on the company over the years. It’s too well-timed to be a coincidence—how did Mr. Drummond know the apartment would be empty? Did Burt deliberately lure Irving away so that he could investigate?
During dinner, Fields also lets it slip that Burt has worked at Lumon for 20 years. It’s a weird story, to say the least: Burt was convinced that his misdeeds would prevent him from ever seeing heaven, and only joined the firm on discovering the loophole that maybe, through severance, he could still save his innie’s soul. But wait, didn’t the first severed office open only 12 years ago? Burt explains this timeline discrepancy away as Fields getting “fuzzy,” but it’s still iffy. Did Burt join as an unsevered worker and then opt for severance? Is he lying to his husband?
Wait, is Burt even severed at all? Fields mentions them having had drinks with Burt’s “Lumon partner,” which would be impossible—severed employees wouldn’t recognize their colleagues once they’ve left the building. Episode 6 ends with Burt watching Irving as he leaves, a look that suggests deep contemplation, or calculation. Was Dylan right about Burt all along? Is he, as per Dylan’s iconic descriptor, a “f--k”?
Theory status: Confirmed-ish? Episode 9 reveals that Burt was a Lumon employee even before he took a job on the severed floor. What he isn’t, however, is “a f–k.” And though his outie is now keeping tabs on Irving, his innie never did.
Breaking into his house and convincing Irving to go on a drive with him in Episode 9,, Burt explains that he worked as Lumon’s ‘driver’, ferrying passengers for the firm but never knowing what would happen to them once they got there — though the implication that they were killed is pretty obvious. He’s here to “take care” of Irving on Lumon’s orders, but he drops him off at a train station instead, buying him a ticket and telling him never to return. He can’t bring himself to cause the death of someone his innie once fell in love with.
Irving is safe, but the emotional aftermath of having to leave Burt cuts deep enough to wound anyway. Hopefully this isn’t the last we see of Burving.
