The goats, Gemma’s fate, and 4 other burning questions ahead of Severance Season 2
With Severance Season 2 finally arriving on Apple TV+ later this week after a nearly 3-year wait, fans are buzzing with excitement — and with loads of questions. That’s because the first season of Apple’s mind-bending workplace thriller left us with more Q’s than A’s, even as we all got caught up in what’s proven to be one of the best TV shows the iPhone maker has released since launching its streamer back in 2019.
Given that the first episode of the new season of Severance drops on Jan. 17, it’s time to revisit some of the biggest mysteries and most burning questions that Season 1 left us with before it’s time to check back in with the Macrodata Refinement team at Lumon. Needless to say, for those of you who haven’t dived into Season 1 yet, there will be tons of spoilery reveals below. Also, the lingering questions will be presented in no particular order.
One more time, *spoilers to follow*.
1. What’s the deal with the goats?
In Episode 5 of Season 1, titled The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design, Helly comes across a room that’s still perplexing Severance fans three years later: The room is filled with goats, and there’s a man silently tending to them. Obviously, that was an incongruous sight inside a corporate office complex, and theories as to what the goats mean have abounded online.
One of the most popular: The goats are the silent board members we never hear through the loudspeaker whenever the Lumon board assembles to speak through Natalie, the board liaison. That's an interesting theory, to be sure, but there’s obviously a huge flaw: Remember when Ms. Cobel gets fired and demands to speak to the board directly to make her case? We hear a single word through the speaker, in answer to her request: “Yes.” Which would seem to shoot down that the board members aren’t, in fact, people.
Still, though, are they some sort of avatar for broader experiments happening inside Lumon? Or do they have some sort of Kier-like, cultish significance?
2. What really happened to Mark’s wife, Gemma?
The only reason Mark S., played by Adam Scott, is at Lumon in the first place is because of his overwhelming grief following the loss of his wife. One of the things that made the Season 1 finale so jaw-dropping was Mark’s revelation that his wife is actually alive — and that she's none other than Ms. Casey, the wellness counselor Mark had visited multiple times inside the Lumon office.
The big question, obviously, is how she ended up at Lumon. If Gemma really did die in a car crash, as we'd been led to believe, that would mean Lumon’s severance chip sort of re-animated her. Given that the chips simply shut on and shut off access to memories, I don’t see how the chip would be powerful enough to do that. Which then leads to an obvious follow-up: Did Gemma even die at all? If she didn't ... what the hell? What's the point of faking that?
Something is definitely going on with her, based on her strange and unsettling personality alone. By the end of Season 1, she’s been fired as Lumon’s wellness counselor and sent back to the testing floor, whatever that means.
3. Why, oh why, is Ms. Cobel so darn obsessed with Mark’s outie?
Harmony Cobel — who heads the severed floor at Lumon, and who’s known on the outside as Ms. Selvig — has a fixation on Mark S. both inside and outside the company that clearly goes beyond professional interest.
There’s at least one thing going on while she spies on him at home, from the vantage point of her alter ego as his quirky neighbor: She keeps probing to see if there’s any spillover between Mark’s innie and outie. However, her obsession also seems to go deeper than that. Does it somehow tie back to Lumon’s enigmatic founder, Kier Eagan? Because Ms. Cobel is definitely a true believer.
My suspicion: Harmony is desperate to prove that reintegration works, despite the board insisting that the severance effects are permanent. Presumably, because she wants to un-sever or wake up a loved one?
4. What do the Macrodata Refinement numbers mean?
The four-person MDR team spends hours sorting mysterious numbers on their computers that somehow evoke primal emotions. Do the numbers somehow control human behavior? Are they a smokescreen for something even more sinister?
This is a good time to bring up something related: Any Severance fan who hasn’t yet read The Lexington Letter should definitely do so before Season 2 arrives. It’s a free companion to the show, written by the creators, that’s available as an e-book from Apple’s Books app (download it here). It’s presented as a letter from a former Lumon employee to a newspaper reporter — and it hints, among other things, that there’s definitely something foreboding tied to the numbers.
5. What’s going on with Irving’s outie?
Irving, the oldest member of the MDR team, is deeply loyal to Lumon's rules while at work and frequently cites the company handbook. His outie, though, is clearly making moves. As Severance Season 1 drew to a close, we met Irving's outie at home where he'd been painting, over and over again, a dark hallway at Lumon that looks like the one leading to the testing floor. He's also been collecting paperwork about Lumon and has a list of employees -- including a map with Burt's house marked on it.
How does Irving's outie even know who Burt is? Also, how does Irving's outie know what that Lumon hallway looks like?
One of my favorite fan theories is actually related to Irving: Remember how he keeps dozing off at work and seeing the black paint oozing over his desk, the paint that he's clearly using at home? Irving has gotten in trouble more than once about dozing. Perhaps Irving's outie, as part of his investigation of Lumon, is depriving himself of sleep so that his innie will fall asleep at his desk -- because the sleep state seems to be a place where memories can cross the severance barrier.
6. What’s Milchick’s backstory?
With apologies to Ricken, whose book title I'm now going to appropriate, us Severance fans are dying to get so many character mysteries answered in Season 2 -- among other things, so that we can learn more about The They They Are.
That brings me to Seth Milchick, the constantly smiling and super-creepy manager who exudes an unsettling blend of menace and charm. He's unwavering in his loyalty to Lumon, and he has an expert ability to manipulate severed employees -- while also pushing back, at times, when he thinks Ms. Cobel is going too far. Is he even fully human? I'm pretty sure he's not severed. Perhaps he simply represents the dehumanizing nature of corporate power?
So many questions, and so many bewildering mysteries. If I don't get at least the ones above answered this season, someone is going to the break room.
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The goats, Gemma’s fate, and 4 other burning questions ahead of Severance Season 2 originally appeared on BGR.com on Sun, 12 Jan 2025 at 19:50:29 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.