Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for Severance Season 2.
The latest episode ofSeveranceis definitely among the series' best, expanding on the mystery of what Lumon is truly trying to accomplish. In “Woe’s Hollow,” the Macrodata Refinement team goes on anORTBO(Outdoor Retreat and Team-Building Occurrence) to the snowy wilderness of Dieter Eagan National Forest, and they have to find their way to Woe’s Hollow, where Lumon founderKier Eagan(Marc Geller) supposedly tamed the first of the Four Tempers. On their hike, the MDR foursome meets creepy doppelgängers of themselves, who point them in the right direction. More than just unsettling,these clones may be connected to Lumon’s true goal, and we have a theory about how.
‘Severance’s MDR “Twins” Replicate the Team’s Original Personalities
In the Season 2 premiere ofSeverance, “Hello, Ms. Cobel,” Mark S. (Adam Scott) famously runs around the severed floor corridors trying to make sense of what is happening. When he reaches what used to be the wellness center,we see a creepy figure who seems to look just like Mark stalking him in the background, but it disappears into the corridors before Mark can spot it. “Woe’s Hollow” may have finally started to explain what in Kier’s name that was all about, as the Refiners meet their own doppelgängers — or, as they are called in the episode, “twins.”
The twins are deeply unsettling and almost unnatural.They each replicate their Refiners’ original personalities in creepy, almost robotic ways. Mark S.’s twin is always sporting the cheery smile he had in early Season 1; Helly R.’s (Britt Lower) has the same distrustful look, with her head dropping to the side as if she can’t take what’s happening seriously; Dylan G.’s (Zach Cherry) looks angry, reflecting his outburst against Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) in Season 1 and his competitive nature at work; and Irving B.’s (John Turturro) seems mild-mannered like he was before meeting Burt G. (Christopher Walken) and becoming more rebellious.
The Refiners don’t understand at first what seeing their twins is all about, but Mr. Milchick explains that it’s a reference toKier’s own twin brother, Dieter. In Appendix IV of the Lumon Compliance Manual, Kier documents the story of Dieter’s passing at Woe’s Hollow for being disrespectful. After Dieter’s gruesome death (although it certainly feels like it was Kier who really killed him), Kier met Woe, the first of theFour Tempershe famously identified and tamed. As the Refiners all grow more unstable and rebellious, meeting their seemingly “perfect” twins seems like a clear enough message:Lumon can replace whomever it considers disrespectful, too.
‘Severance’s Clones May Be the Creation of the Optics & Design Department
The twins look identical to their original MDR counterparts, but there is something odd about them, including their facial expressions, their posture, and the way they move. They have this unsettling and uncanny look, as if they have been 3D printed or made by artificial intelligence. At this point, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there is a department at Lumon whose responsibilities involve dealing with the visual and physical elements that make up Lumon’s identity — Optics & Design — andthey may be behind the production of these duplicates.
The acronym ORTBO immediately seems like an anagram for “robot,” and that may have something to do with what the doppelgängers really are. The word “robot” comes from a1921 Czech playcalledR.U.R.(or “Rossum’s Universal Robots”), about a man who wanted to create artificial humans, with the Czech word “robota” then meaning “forced labor.” Technically, that’s exactly what innies are for Lumon, but they still have rebellious impulses.Optics & Design may play a role in taking it a step further by actually printing new workers. InSeason 1, Episode 6, “Hide and Seek,” the Refiners go to O&D and see that the department is filled with 3D printers, which the employees claim are used to build things like water bottles and even machetes.
As a pharmaceutical company,3D printing organic tissuefits right in with Lumon’s work. The problem with this is that, despite being able to produce a fully functional body,inserting a personality in them is something else entirely, and this is where it ties in with MDR’s work, especially Mark S. andCold Harbor. In the Season 2 premiere, he is refining a file that is revealed to be connected to Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), who is actually his outie’s dead wife, Gemma. Mark’s outie mentions tohis sister Devon(Jen Tullock) that he had to identify Gemma’s body when she died, so it may be that she really is dead, and Ms. Casey is an entirely new human printed by O&D, with the Cold Harbor file involving the refinement of Gemma’s personality by someone familiar with her — in this case, Mark.
“It Was a True Adventure”: ‘Severance’s Adam Scott and Ben Stiller Detail the Rigorous Process for Bringing Lumon’s Team-Building Retreat to Life
“We were up there for maybe six weeks…”
These ‘Severance’ Doppelgängers Could Connect to Another Rumor About MDR
As Mark S. says, MDR’s work is “mysterious and important,” but, in the long term, the employees themselves may not be as important. One of the weirdest things we have learned inSeveranceso far is that there is a rumor around the severed Ffoor thatMDR employees have “pouches"where they keep their “larval offspring,” and, in time, these larvae grow up, kill them, and take their place as the new Refiners. If that’s the intention behind the twins seen in “Woe’s Hollow,” then this rumor isn’t that far from being true — minus the larval part, of course. Among O&D’s other creations are the ideographic cardsthat Dylan stealswith self-defense instructions.If the doppelgängers are supposed to replace the original refiners, they should be able to defend themselves, possibly using machetes to attack.
What Lumon wants with these duplicates, perhaps, is to have the “perfect innie,” with no outie persona and, therefore, no rebellious impulses. In the Season 1 finale, “The We We Are,” we learn from Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry) thatthey plan on making everyone “Kier’s children”— or, in more practical terms, severing the whole world, with MDR being the first in line. Theseverance procedureis just the first step in that direction, with the building of perfect innies being the ultimate goal. Using tissue from the severed employees and dead people, Lumon rebuilds their bodies and inserts them with a new, fully compliant, and Kier-worshipping personality.
No one doubts that Lumon has some sinister motives, and many speculate that the company’s endgame is to actually revive Kier Eagan himself. Printing him a new body and inserting his personality seems to be what the company is working towards. But Kier would require more than just that once he is back, and, in this sense,these MDR clones could very well be his first “children.”
New episodes ofSeveranceSeason 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.
