Severance Season 2 Episode 7 Solves A Forgotten Season 1 Mystery

In Keir we trust. This article contains spoilers for the latest episode of “Severance.”

A show as wide-ranging and complex as “Severance” leaves several plates spinning in the air during any given episode — some of which get resolved relatively soon, and others that take a bit longer to resolve themselves. Although certain goat-related mysteries leftover from season 1 continue to reverberate through the second, there’s a significantly more minor (though no less mystifying) one that eagle-eyed fans have been waiting to shed some light on for almost three whole years now.

Remember when our Macrodata Refinement Team moseyed on over to their rival department Optics & Design during the debut season and, in episode 6 (titled, evocatively enough, “The Grim Barbarity Of Optics and Design”), finally realized the O&D team was far larger than they ever assumed? In a subtle act, the ever-suspicious Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) poked around the department and discovered an unusual box containing laminated cards that appeared to be self-defense instructions. Dylan’s theft of one of these cards is what triggered the Overtime Contingency Protocol that went on to play such a large role at the end of season 1. But, other than that, we never actually found out where those strange items came from, why they were located within O&D, and what their purpose might be.

Well, season 2 may have just provided an unexpected answer to this extremely minor mystery … and we’re almost even more confused than ever before.

When a new episode of “Severance” arrives on streaming with a title like “Chikhai Bardo,” it naturally raises one simple question: What the heck is Chikhai Bardo? Although it took more than half of the episode to provide an answer, the one we received ended up tying back all the way to a forgotten loose end from season 1. Directed by Jessica Lee Gagné and written by Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman, the script layers several flashbacks of Mark (Adam Scott) and Gemma Scout’s (Dichen Lachman) romantic relationship throughout the hour. One of them, surprisingly enough, turns into a rare moment where “Severance” literally just … states the explanation out loud.

While the thematic and narrative purpose of the scene is to continue shedding light on how badly Gemma and Mark’s marriage was crumbling in the time leading up to Gemma’s (theoretically) fatal car accident, Erickson and the creative team found a clever way to throw in some quick resolutions to a nagging mystery. While still unconscious from the reintegration procedure, Mark remembers a moment when he came across Gemma reading the exact same type of cards we previously saw in Lumon Industries during season 1. Gemma (who we’ve previously been told was a university professor) helpfully explains that what seemed to be two different people fighting on the card is actually the same individual engaging in an almost literal philosophical battle: “It’s the same guy fighting himself, defeating his own psyche. Ego death.”

So what is Chikhai Bardo, anyway? The Samye Institute, an online resource devoted to the teachings of Buddhism, describes six “bardos” involved in Tibetan tradition and how each one represents the “experience of being between death and rebirth.” Each of the six reflects a different moment in life, with Chikhai Bardo in particular meaning the “Bardo of the Moment of Death.” The rest of the description, however, becomes mighty interesting in the context of Gemma’s impending “death” in the real world as an outie and her present limbo state between life and death trapped in Lumon with several different innies:

“According to tradition, this bardo begins when the outer and inner signs of the onset of death appear and continues through the dissolution or transmutation until the external and internal breath ends.”

None of this quite explains the most pressing question on our minds, however: What’s the significance of these Chikhai Bardo cards appearing within Lumon Industries and then popping back up here? Well, it all comes down to something Gemma offhandedly mentions during that earlier flashback scene. Alluding to that popular rabbit/duck optical illusion, she guesses that these cards fulfill a similar mind-bending purpose and arrived after she ended up on the mailing list at the fertility clinic, which she and Mark have been visiting in order to conceive a child. As we see in the episode, those attempts were ultimately unsuccessful and at least partially led to their relationship troubles leading up to her car accident. But one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in another flashback set at the clinic might have put several pieces of the puzzle into place.

Roughly 20 minutes into the episode, Mark and Gemma arrive at the clinic to undergo what appear to be IVF treatments. While making their way to the waiting area, however, an awfully familiar-looking doctor walks by in the background with his eyes firmly fixed on Gemma. This certainly appears to be the exact same doctor referred to as Dr. Mauer (played by actor Robby Benson) who we see studying and flat-out torturing Gemma throughout the scenes set in Lumon. This opens up a whole new Pandora’s box regarding how Mauer (assuming he even goes by that name in the real world) ended up at this particular clinic, whether he’s working undercover for Lumon at the time of this flashback, and if he was specifically keeping an eye on Gemma in order to kidnap her and potentially orchestrate her “accident” in the first place.

If Dr. Mauer’s the one who sent her those Chikhai Bardo cards in the past, then it stands to reason that he ordered more of them to be created by Optics & Design (not dissimilarly from the dental tools he retrieves from them early in episode 5 while whistling that creepily jaunty tune) and taken down to the secret floor where Gemma is being studied … for, no doubt, even more sinister psychological purposes. On this show, every answer we get only seems to create more and more questions.

New episodes of “Severance” stream on Apple TV+ every Friday.