After a long hiatus, Severance has picked right back up where it left off. That’s true both literally and figuratively. The show is just as great as ever, and season two’s second episode revealed Mark returned to work just a couple days after the Innie Macrodat Uprising. One thing is different about the Apple TV+ series this time, though. It has a new, even creepier opening credits sequence from artist Oliver Latta. It’s just as strangely beautiful and strangely upsetting as his season one intro, only this work-related nightmare might also be telling us something important. It might be teasing what Lumon is ultimately working towards.
While Theodore Shapiro’s Severance theme song has stayed the same in season two, the art of Oliver Latta (a.k.a. EXTRAWEG) has not. “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig” premiered the show’s new opening credits, and it’s a sequence full of references to other characters and departments at Lumon. But two moments in particular stand out in Latta’s exploration of Mark Scout’s split mind: there are a whole lot of babies.
The first comes when a bunch of faceless newborns in suits crawl all over Mark’s bed. The second comes at the very end as Mark sits on the edge of his bed in red pajamas. Suddenly a baby with the human head of Kier Eagan, the long dead Founder of Lumon, crawls on the floor shaking off snow.
Why babies? And why specifically Kier Eagan as a baby? Both could just be symbolic of the way many moments and motifs in Severance‘s two different opening credits are. But considering what we know about Lumon and what we’ve learned about “Cold Harbor” through two episodes in season two, seeing Kier Eagan as a baby feels more like a clue than a metaphor.
Lumon desperately wants Mark to finish working on “Cold Harbor,” which is literally a file of his “dead” wife Gemma. That file includes vital signs that indicate she’s in some kind of stasis or coma. Mark’s work on his wife’s file is so important to the company they brought back the severed employees who broke out. It’s as though everything they’re really working towards depends on this one project involving a possible dead woman.
All of which is taking place at a creepy cult-like company where digital files are connected to actual humans. It’s a place where Board members, the only people even an Eagan like Helena must answers to, exist only on an intercom. And everyone based at the company’s original headquarters visits a “perpetuity” wing that houses life-sized replicas of every Eagan Lumon CEO in history. Oh yeah, and everyone treats the Founder Kier Eagan like a literal god.
Now Severance‘s opening credits shows not just a bunch of babies in work suits, but Kier Eagan reborn as a baby. And he’s throwing cold snow off his head, as though his head had been on ice at a company that developed severance technology and is currently obsessed with completing a dead woman’s file it named “Cold Harbor.” They also have a whole department of baby goats for some reason.
The implication is beyond obvious: Lumon is working on bringing Kier Eagan back to life in his own body. That’s why Mark’s work on Gemma’s file is so important. It’s why Lumon never tells macrodata refiners anything about their “mysterious and important” work. No one can know the horrifying truth.
If you think that’s a reach you underestimate both Lumon and Severance. That doesn’t mean that’s what the opening credits are referring to, though. But while the evidence on its own is compelling, Latta has now confirmed there are direct connections between his intro and what’s going to happen on the show. He spoke to The Los Angeles Times about his new opening sequence, which he said he made after being given major plot points. (Latta didn’t see any season two episodes.) He had to take some stuff out because Ben Stiller said they were too spoiler-y.
What about those babies? They came directly from Ben Stiller. Here’s what Esther Zuckerman wrote in her interview with Latta:
Stiller gave Latta a directive: “Let’s add babies.” The initial idea that Latta had was to flood the screen with versions of Mark, but Stiller suggested adding babies. Thus, there’s now a scene where Mark is surrounded by crawling, faceless babies in his bed. “I asked him, ‘Why babies?’ ” Latta recalls. “Because for me it’s important why we want to do something, what is the aim, what we are trying to achieve. He just said, ‘I like babies.’ ” The babies also came in handy when Latta was trying to think of something to put near the end of the sequence. He’s pretty sure it’s Stiller who suggested a version of Lumon founder Kier Eagan as a crawling babe. Latta has no idea what it exactly means. “I have my own metaphor, but I don’t know the actual answer,” he says. “We will see when everything is out fully.”
We will see. And when we do we won’t be surprised to find out the reason Ben Stiller wanted babies in the show’s intro. Or why he suggested making Kier Eagan into one. Because the truth might be that’s what Lumon is trying to make happen. The company’s entire purpose might be to honor the Founder by bringing him back to life fully. And we’re all babies when it does.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who isn’t sure what his Outie does. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
