Severance - Blog Posts

anyone done this yet

but of course mark s feels nothing for gemma that’s what he was born to do

adam scott proves once again there is nothing more appealing than a man disheveled and covered in blood

she just watched him eat fried rice with his fingers

do not ask mark scout "well what are you going to do about it" because he's going to get experimental brain surgery about it. he is actually going to get so much brain surgery about it and then also hit his head on the floor

mark S the type of guy to get sold to one direction

congratulations to mark scout for somehow getting every employee at lumon to completely obsess over him. they are stalking him at restaurants they are living in his basement they are baking him cookies they are seducing him on work retreats they are doing experimental brain surgery on him they are lying about being lactation experts just to get close to his sister. and he’s truly just a guy. what can’t he do

severance continues to get wilder. gretchen cheats on her husband with her husband; don't let her husband find out! ham-based throuple gets significantly more ominous. helena convinced mentioning local depressed alcoholic widower's dead wife by the wrong name is a surefire way to get him to need her carnally. somewhere markhelly is wasting company time getting freaky under a table. milchick beefs with child and paperclips.

what if we fell in love forever under the plastic desk tarps

I’ve think I’ve figured it out

I think I know what MDR is doing and what lumon is doing and where this story is going to go

It’s Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice dies and goes to hell, Orpheus descends down there and gets the chance to bring her back, but loses her forever because he turns round to look at her.

If mark is Orpheus, and Gemma is Euridyce, and the severed floor is hell, that means that by going down there as a severed employee Mark got a chance to bring Gemma back, but he’s going to lose it by looking back to find her. By reintegrating.

Gemma died. Like actually died. She wasn’t brain dead and intercepted by lumon. She died, mark identified the body. Somewhere between that and the cremation lumon took her.

Lumon is trying to raise the dead, presumably to bring back Kier (who’s body im sure is being preserved in some horrid cult place of worship somewhere in the depths of lumon) and has been pretty successful so far. At getting the body back. The mind is trickier, and that’s what MDR is doing. They’re tidying up brain waves, trying to bring a persons memory and conciousness back.

That’s why the files expire. The person gets too dead, their brain gets too damaged, and there’s no point trying anymore.

Gemma has been the most successful so far. She’s not just physically alive, but her brain is functioning too. Her position as wellness counsellor was an experiment to see how she interacts with other people, to see how well her consciousness is recovering

Coldharbour is her last file. When it’s done, she’ll be completely back and lumon will have successfully brought a dead person fully back to life, a major milestone for them. If it expires, she’ll be gone forever

Mark reintegrated. He’s going to be suspicious of lumon, suspicious of the work, and so caught up in looking for Gemma he won’t finish cold harbour

He looked back. So he’s going to lose her forever

my favourite thing about mark s. is that he's just a little bit unrenderable. like adam scott is soooo stunning but i feel like nobody can quite draw him. can't quite get the essence of his features. it's the zendaya phenomenon all over again. mark serves face but took the "render not my creation in miniature" too seriously 😭 render not at all apparently

coping by drawing them being fun and awesome and normal and silly

Is it bad that I think oMark could really help oHelena become a better person because he has experienced what healthy relationships feel like? Like, I'm saying all this with the owed respect to Gemma ofc, but I think she would've wanted him to be happy and it sounds like she was the kind of woman who just understands broken people IRL (her job was teaching and we don't really know what but we do know that the best teachers are those who understand their students). I think Gemma's spirit would see through Helena and she would sympathize with how lost and lonely she is.

waittt oh my gosh hi you're my first ever ask ilysm -- AND its about severance???? amazing. see, im kinda torn on the matter! on one hand, i think it would be so great if outtie mark and helena found some sort of happiness with one another, i sympathize so much with how the environment helena was raised in affected her and how we see there was a chance for her to have grown up better (helly) and ofc o!mark deserves to be happy again and the potential for their relationship and the conflict and emotions they'd get to work out is so compelling 😭 but within the parameters of the show and what we've seen, i think it's just ....doomed 😔 like markhelly low-key my ultimate otp right now and i want them to succeed so bad because mark s and helly deserve so many good things but also, i fully acknowledge that mark s EXISTS cause of mark scout's love for gemma and is reintegrating out of that same love and now there's doubt and betrayal and fear after woe's hollow and -- I'm getting distracted. while i don't think gemmark is going to have a happy ending, i think that mark's love for gemma and the still mysterious circumstances of her death and helena pretending to be helly means any goodwill for helena negates that possibility. BUT i think it's tragic because there is such a possibility that mark could make her better sighhhh. i got a little ramble-y but i absolutely love your ask and your take. gorgeous

severance really said they were gonna take the love square/triangle trope and make it so insane. NOBODY is doing it like them. gretchen has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever. burt out here ominously setting up a ham-based throuple. helena wants that widower cookie sooo bad.

"Why is Mark S acting like a dick omg he's so mean" I don't know how to tell you Deadwife McRepression doesn't have the best trauma responses

nah actually who is doing it like the markhellyna love square. they’re work crushes. they’re prey and predator. they’re best friends. they’re an ex-history professor and a nepo baby billionaire. they have the same sense of humor. theyre protector and protected. they’re in love. theyre stalker and stalkee. and mark scout has NO IDEA about any of this. like who has the range.

SEVERANCE 2.05

the severance experience really is just switching between two states of ben stiller. mr. zoolander you are going to hear from me and by that i mean you are going to feel from me because you're catching these hands and either its a handshake or a grief-ridden punch

how it must feel to be my mutual rn

i love this show so goddamn much you have no idea

Some may be apprehensive that Severance won’t portray Mark’s interaction with Helena in the tent as the sexual assault it was. But not only will they — they already are.

Mark’s behavior toward Helly has completely changed. He doesn’t sit next to her at Irving’s funeral. He shuts down attempts at conversation with offhand, vague snarky comments and a defiantly blank facial expression. When Helly knocks on the door to the bathroom, his eyes dart around like an animal cornered. Where he once would have slowed down for her in the hallway so they could talk, he walks much faster ahead. He’s trying as hard as possible to avoid her. To ignore her. To run away.

Now contrast this with his treatment of “Helly” when she first walked out of the elevator in season two. He waited for her to arrive! He was so relieved she’d come back! And when they were walking down that hallway and he was explaining the situation with Ms. Casey, he stopped mid-stride, turned to her with a smile on his face, and said “Look, Helly—“

He never got to finish that sentence. But some say he was going to confess that though his outie had a wife, his affections lay with her. And I think they’re right.

So why is he acting so differently now? The answer is obvious: “Because they are smarter than us, okay? They know everything.”

After the assault, Mark likely feels like a complete idiot. He spent so much of season one deconstructing his beliefs and breaking free from Lumon’s propaganda. And the minute he believes he’s immune to their lies and no longer a corporate slave, he is taken advantage of and hoodwinked by the very figurehead of said company, masking as someone he loves.

A symbol of Lumon convinced him he was safe. Tricked him. Invaded him in the most intimate way possible, with him completely oblivious, “like an idiot.” Right when he thought everything might be okay.

So maybe Lumon’s right. Maybe there’s no point in fighting. Because if he was stupid enough to not realize his own friend was being possessed by her billionaire doppelgänger, then maybe Lumon is correct about innies being nothing more than pawns. Maybe they are people, and he really is… not. (That’s how Helena treated him, anyway.)

And if that’s the case, of course he wants to give up looking for Ms. Casey and lose himself in work! For a moment he thought he was a human being, deserving of autonomy over his own body and capable of something more than sitting behind a desk — but his assault sends that all crashing down. He is an extension of his outie, made for work and nothing more. Going beyond that gets dangerous. That’s what got Irving killed… and him in Helena’s tent. And Helly? He cannot trust Helly. As far as he knows, his only confirmed moment with Helly since the OTC was when he was holding her in his arms, his jacket wrapped around her shoulders. Why should it be Helly coming back to the severed floor? If Helena could trick him before, who says she can’t learn from her past mistakes and trick him again over and over? Mark refuses to be humiliated and hurt after last time, so he avoids her (and Dylan!) and puts up a barrier of cool, snarky indifference — just like how he deals with grief.

But we know that indifference is a mask. When Milchick walked out of the elevator after revealing he knew about him and Helena Eagan, Mark had no one to pretend for — and he went completely stiff, blankly wide-eyed in an expression extremely reminiscent of his usual innie self. Whatever the reasons for this, one thing’s for sure: Mark does deeply care about what happened in the tent. And at least for now, he will lose himself in Cold Harbor to cope with it.

Lumon certainly got their productive worker back. But good Lord… at what cost?

it's 2021. future me shows up and says that Zoolander is going to make the most peak tv show in the history of the world. i laugh. it is 2025. i am vomiting my guts out and digging my fingers into my eyes after woe's hollow and trojan horse. the hallucination of ben stiller that smiles down at me every time i break out into tears over markhelly and markgemma and irving and dylan and milchick demurely waves away my snotty, miserable gratitude for creating severance. i feverishly count the seconds till friday.

had to take a break from my mark s./mark scout bootlicking to goggle at all of the cake mr. milthick has going on back there

ugh the way mark s desperately wants to believe that innies and outies are the same person to reconcile what he did with helena, but at the same time he wants to believe theyre different because ms casey isnt *his* wife, shes his outies. oh mark babygirl u are so conflicted <3

mark scout, im sorry. i was unfamiliar with your game until you rizzed me w/ it. i was such a champion of pathetic malewife boss mark s. i didn't realize how bad mark scout sucked (huge positive). i love your petty, prickly, angry everything, mr. scout. kiss me in the lumon elevator as you lose all your memories

"hi there, you on the table" --um NO, mark s. YOU on the table rn. lock the doors

Severance takes place in a dystopian alternate universe where everyone is carnally attracted to Adam Scott