Severance will finally return for its second season at Apple TV+ on January 17. When the series clocks back in at Lumon after a lengthy hiatus from work it has some major questions to answer. Trailers have already addressed a few, like will Mark, Dylan, Irv, and Helly actually return to the office (yes), but much bigger ones await. What are we most hoping to learn when our Outies tune in? These are the biggest questions we have ahead of Severance season two.
What’s really going on with Lumon’s soap?
Before it became the world’s biggest biotechnology conglomerate, Lumon Industries was a topical salve company. Lumon’s original logo featured a flask, spoon, and drop, a symbol of its original purpose that current CEO Jame Eagen still wears on a signet ring. Founder Kier Eagan, who cared about hygiene, also met his wife Imogen while she was working as a “swab girl” at an ether factory. A modern Lumon soap store in town is named for her former job.
Severed employees are also instructed to wash their hands with the company’s soap ten times a day. It’s important enough that one of the manager’s first jobs every day is refilling the soap dispensers. Yet, as a distraught Irv Innie pointed out that soap is the only thing not labeled on the severed floor. Meanwhile, Lumon uses a “bad soap” to punish employees in the Break Room.
What exactly is going on with Lumon and soap? Is it even actual soap? Or is it a more nefarious product the company uses to keep employees in line? We don’t know, but our bet is whatever is going on with that green goo is vital to Lumon’s real agenda.
Why was Irv’s Outie repeatedly painting the door to the Testing Floor and keeping a map of severed employees?
The most prim, proper, and loyal severed employee (at least initially) seems to have an Outie counterpart trying to bring down Lumon. John Turturro’s art loving Irving Bailiff spends his free time away from work repeatedly painting the dark ominous hallway to Lumon’s Testing Floor. He also has a locked chest of anti-Lumon news stories, employee records, and a map of severed co-workers’ homes. That map included a big spot for his former office love interest Burt (Christopher Walken).
Why does Irv’s Outie seem to hate Lumon and is trying to destroy it? Is he trying to communicate with his Innie, which is why he keeps himself awake all night so his Innie dozes off at work? How does he even know about the Testing Floor, the level below the severed floor Lumon sent Ms. Casey? And why does he say he has worked there for three years yet his record indicates he’s been at Lumon for nine?
Has Irv been severed more than once? Did he not only work in Optics and Design where he already knew (and maybe loved Burt) previously, did Irv paint those Kier Eagan pictures he reveres so much? There’s so much going on with Irving and his past could help reveal what Lumon has really been up to since he got there.
Did Lumon fake Gemma’s death or take advantage of it?
There is no doubt from Mark, Devon, and Ricken that Gemma died in a car crash. Mark even visited the tree she during an emotional scene. And yet, Gemma is alive and working as severed Lumon employee Ms. Casey. How? Did the company fake her death, either with a staged accident or after a real one? We know Lumon has its claws in everything in town (which is why Devon told Mark not to go to the police). If any company could steal a patient and fake their death, or fake an accident and steal a human, it’s Lumon.
But if they did that, why is Ms. Casey so weird as she admitted? Other severed employees are still relatively normal. Why is Ms. Casey so drastically different from the rest of her co-workers? And why does she descend to the Testing Floor that Outie Irv is obsessed with? Why has she only been “alive” for 107 hours total? Why does Lumon keep her locked away and only conscious for so little time?
Is it because Gemma actually did die and Lumon somehow used her corpse to make Ms. Casey, an employee with no other identity? Is that why she goes to the Testing Floor we know nothing about? And is that where other part-time employees (like the ones who danced as the Four Tempers for Dylan) also go at the end of work?
That might be the most extreme possibility, but it’s not improbable. Some might even say it’s likely. Especially when considered alongside another major question we have for Severance and Lumon’s CEOs.
Who is really on the Board and what happens at a Lumon CEO’s “revolving?”
Outside of one single “yes” Lumon’s Board is a completely silent, unseen group that makes its presence felt by listening in on meetings via an intercom. So who are these powerful figures running a worldwide cult/company and why do they operate entirely through intermediaries? And what might that have to do with the mysterious “revolving” ceremony current CEO Jame Eagan mentioned to his daughter Helena? His statement seemed to imply the “revolving” will be when she succeeds him, but we know with Lumon nothing is ever so innocent or direct.
Are these mysteries directly connected? Is the Board actually made up of past Lumon CEOs from the Eagan family? Are they still alive in stasis? Other bodies? Is that why their life-sized statues are placed in an area called “perpetuity,” because their ultimate goal is to live in perpetuity? If so, are they currently digitized. That would explain why no one can ever see them? Did they reach this pseudo state of existence via “revolving?”
No theory is too wild for the Eagan clan, a weird, evil cult interested in bringing severance to all humanity.
What exactly is the “mysterious and important” work being done by Macrodata refinement employees?
One of the most prominent, oft discussed mysteries of Severance‘s first season is what exactly severed macrodata refinement employees do. We know the four employees each correlate to one of the Four Tempers, Kier Eagan’s obsession. We also know they look through troves of seemingly meaningless numbers until they find groups that elicit an emotional response like fear. They then fence that group off into digital “buckets” that are also connected to the Four Tempers. Those files do have expiration dates, though no refiner knows why. All they know is the work is “mysterious and important.”
Why would random numbers elicit any emotion? And why would they need to get fenced off from a file with an expiration date? Is that because they’re connected to humans? Or at least, people who used to be human? Is that why the refiners’ work is so mysterious and important, because it has to do with digital versions of past Lumon CEOs?
This all sounds wild, and yet nothing is off the table at Lumon. Especially when they’re raising baby goats down the hall.
What’s going on with the goats?
Seriously, what’s the deal with the goats? And why did their caretaker, who wears a suit and tie, get so upset. “They’re not ready,” he yelled. “You can’t take them yet, they’re not ready. It isn’t time.”
Ready for what? Not time for what? Why it going on with that room of goats and which of the questions we need answers are those cute creatures connected to?
Why was Cobel infiltrating Mark’s personal Outie life?
The Board fired Harmony Cobel when they found out she had ingratiated herself into Mark’s personal life. That was a serious enough breach one of those silent unseen figures even spoke at her termination. So why would a loyal worshipper of Kier Eagan do something unsanctioned? And why was that not the only secret she kept from her superiors?
What does Harmony actually want? Has anything she has said about her dead husband or mother true? What does any of that have to do with Mark’s Outie life? Ms. Cobel was doing her own thing for much of season one even while seemingly being loyal to the Founder and his teachings. Why?
Was there really a violent coup from one of the departments?
Two paintings, identical in almost every way except for the identity of its scene’s perpetrators, depicted the same mythical work event at Lumon. “The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design” and “The Macrodata Refinement Calamity” showed one department brutally attacking and murdering the other.
Why the two paintings? Why did Cobel and Milchick let its refiners ever see it? Also, why did Burt say he didn’t know about them even though one painting was in his department? And, most importantly, did that violent coup actually happen and why? Is that why both departments have so few employees despite their enormous physical space? If so was Irv there for it? Did he participate? Paint the pictures commemorating it?
Art is a form of control at Lumon. The company uses it to tell its Founder’s story and to manipulate it’s workers. But these two paintings are telling us so much more and we want to know what that is.
Why did the doctor who installed severance chips reintegrate Peter Kilmer?
Dr. Reghabi was the surgeon who performed severance procedures for Lumon. She’s also the person who did the seemingly impossible and reintegrated Peter “Petey” Kilmer. Why did she do it? How did she do it? And what is she ultimately hoping to accomplish by undoing severance? We know so little about her, her past, and her goals that there are questions about Dr. Reghabi we don’t even know to ask yet.
How does Seth Milchick manage so many responsibilities at Lumon?
Sometimes it seems like Seth Milchick is everywhere doing everything at Lumon. Not just on its severed floor we’re he does so much across multiple departments, either. Milchick also helped Helena with Helly R’s arrival. He also takes calls from the employees’ Outies. And he was the person who woke Dylan up in his own home.
Why does the company rely on just one man so much? How is it even possible for him to handle so many responsibilities every day? One of the best theories (for which there’s real evidence) to come out of season one is that there are multiple Seth Milchicks.
Is that possible? He does seem to have many different kinds of personalities (some might even say tempers) depending on the task and situation. But if so, how? Is he a set of twins? Triplets? Clones? If it’s the latter does that have something to do with the goats and Ms. Casey?
After Dylan bit Milchick’s arms we never actually saw the wound or scar. So like everything in Severance season two we’ll be on the look out for one. Specifically we’ll be looking to see if “Seth Milchick” doesn’t have a scar where “he” should. If Milchick doesn’t that might answer more than just one of these major questions we have.
Of course, we know by season’s end for every answer we do get Severance is going to raise even more.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist, a company that does not believe in severing. Yet. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
