Severance Season 2’s Most Disturbing Episode Reveals The Darkest Lumon Conspiracy Yet

This article contains major spoilers for “Severance” season 2 episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo”

“Severance” season 2 episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” goes hard. It reveals that Gemma (Dichen Lachman) has multiple innies — at least as many as the rooms she visits, which are named after the files the Macrodata Refinement team is dealing with. What’s more, it appears that the Gemma trapped within the Lumon complex is the original personality, and her various “room” innies aren’t the only severed personas she has. She also has a failsafe innie that’s activated in the elevator during an escape attempt, whom Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) immediately orders to return.  

The episode’s revelation that a person’s mind can be severed into more than two parts is monumental, and once again blows the show’s brain game wide open. Who’s to say that any character we’ve seen is limited to just one severance? What’s more, there’s no way of knowing for sure that the people who we thought are the original “outie” personalities or entirely unsevered don’t have further severed layers we’re yet to see. Let’s unpack this revelation a bit, and analyze which characters might have as yet unrevealed extra innies.

The twists of “Severance” tend to not only encourage viewer paranoia but outright reward it. With “Chikhai Bardo’s” revelation about the severance procedure’s hitherto unknown abilities, it’s time to start guessing just how many personalities our severed protagonists really have.

Oddly, the least likely suspect for a multi-severed brain is main character Mark (Adam Scott). The show tinkers with his brain onscreen, and assuming we can trust Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) — which, of course, is its own can of worms — it’s probably safe to believe that she would have noticed had someone been tinkering with Mark’s brain more than expected. On the other hand, there’s no telling just how many Hellys (Britt Lower) there might be out there. Season 2 episode “Woe’s Hollow” revealed that her outie is quite capable of passing as her innie, and her duplicitous nature makes one wonder whether there are other, even more devious Hellys hiding in her head … and whether we’ve already seen glimpses of them. Doesn’t the sometimes executive level confident, sometimes thoughtful and downtrodden outie Helly almost seem like two different people on occasion?

Dylan (Zach Cherry) is a curious case. There’s nothing specific that suggests that he might be a multi-severed worker, but his current storyline of a loser innie and a boisterous but inexperienced outie seems a little bit too simple for a show like “Severance,” so there’s reason to expect possible surprises here, as well. As for Irving (John Turturro), I’ve already posited a theory that he may be secretly reintegrating based on his visions and his innie’s peculiar insight in “Woe’s Hollow,” but his story’s mysteries seem so deliciously scrambled that who knows what’s really up with the guy — and how many severed personalities his brain might be hiding.

Apart from the known severed characters, the true nuances of the process make the viewer wonder if the show is hiding secret severed characters. There are several folks on “Severance” who hold a lot of important information that Lumon, a company with access to the severance procedure, should have no business nor inclination to allow them to walk around with.

For instance, Lumon seems to offer a whole bunch of extremely shady paid actor/stand-in gigs, such as the dancers in the season 1 waffle party event or the “Woe’s Hollow” doppelgängers — and, if Irving isn’t dreaming in the episode, possibly even that manifestation of Woe herself. Imagine how difficult it would be to keep all those small-time actors in check regardless of the NDAs they have to sign, especially since things like the waffle party are implied to be routine Lumon procedure that takes place all the time. The only logical way to explain this is if the people playing the roles are also severed.

And then there are people like Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman). A try-hard bureaucrat with just enough cracks in his armor to show the derangement and bitterness lying within, he comes across as secretly unstable and his employee evaluation in the episode “Trojan’s Horse” hints that the company may recognize him as such. Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) is even worse — an outright maniac who goes above and beyond the job to spy a key employee’s outie and keeps a Kier altar at home. Are these really the kind of people an evil company with access to severance tech would leave unsevered … or the kind of people Lumon would happily sever and have their worker bee innies believe they’re unsevered?

So, if there’s a risk of multiple secret severed personas and characters running around the town of Kier, how does Lumon keep things in check? At the risk of theorycrafting, the answer might be that the town’s simply a large-scale “severed floor” — an outer circle of the “Severance” hell, if you will.

Numerous Kier residents seem to straddle the innie/outie line despite having gone through severance, which implies that the process is either faulty by design to allow them to think they’re breaking out, or that the town’s purpose is to contain such cognitive leaks. Additionally, despite several serious transgressions, no innie or outie is ever physically hurt by Lumon staff, which is wild behavior for an implied mega-evil corporation. Even the creepy season 1 security chief Doug Graner doesn’t seem like he’s about to harm Reghabi before she brains him, and his stated aim is to take her to custody. Meanwhile, every major incident in the town — like Graner’s murder — seems to go unnoticed. 

The town of Kier is a strange, anachronistic, and sparsely-populated place that no one really seems to leave — save for the supposedly unsevered insider Cobel, who’s still quick to return. A fake buffer town like this would not only handily keep the knowingly severed employees in check, but also allow for an easy way for Lumon to control folks like Cobel and Milchick in case their cup tips over and they start considering spilling the beans on things like Lumon employing the patently underage season 2 cast addition Miss Huang (Sarah Bock). Whether this is the case remains to be seen, but surely, a company with dreams of world dominance would have no problem controlling one small town.