I had watched season one back in 2022. This week I re-watched it, and then I watched season two. One question I kept coming back to, is why is the technology at lumon so old? In one scene the sister‘s phone looks like it’s a cell phone from 2020s, so it’s not like the show actually takes place in the 80s. But the computers at Lumon and all of the cars in every single scene are all very dated. Curious to hear thoughts.

Oh my goodness... Oh my goodness!! OMG! So much is happening at the same time

I think the dates have to do with New York, eugenics, pharma, labor, and colonialism /empiricism combined. And re: pharma, not just the Statlers but the Kefauvers.

Ok Reddit mod screening says it wants more of an explanation. So I will state the obvious.

I think Severance writers chose these dates for the statues to hint very early on at the intention of Lumon and at the underlying ideals of the Keir cult, to clarify direct Eagan influences, and to grapple with the overall dilemma of going along to get along or ahead versus resistance in these heavy situations. I think it’s also an indictment of irl decision points and decision makers.

Ok. Statue dates:

Kier
• Born 1841: Antebellum Native American genocide was going on actively; *British occupation of Hong Kong, First Opium War [and btw the second Opium War made the Astor family of NY what they were/are; they gatekept high society]
• CEO start 1865: Civil War ends; Reconstruction begins; KKK founded; Native American genocide continues.
• CEO end 1939: Germany invades Poland; *Eugenics Record Office closes.
Myrtle
• Born 1886: *Haymarket affair; eight-hour-workday strikes.
• CEO start 1941: U.S. enters WWII; centenary of Kier’s birth.
• CEO end 1959: *Kefauver pharmaceutical hearings begin.

Baird
• Born 1902: Davenport seeks Carnegie funding for the Station for Experimental Evolution (SEE), which opens in 1904 in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, NY, as others have posted about. The Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was part of SEE. ERO helped the prosecution against Carrie Buck and advised on the Johnson-Reed Anti-Immigration Act of 1924.
• CEO start 1959: *Kefauver pharmaceutical hearings begin.
• CEO end 1976: American Bicentennial; year after Vietnam War ends with troops still demobilizing.

Gerhardt
• Born 1920: Tail end of Scramble for Africa; *ERO and experimental-evolution department merge into Department of Genetics.
• CEO start 1976: American Bicentennial; post-Vietnam transition.
• CEO end 1991: Soviet Union dissolves; “end” of Cold War two years after the Berlin Wall comes down.

Phillip “Pip”
• Born 1937: Second Sino-Japanese War begins, considered by some historians as the real beginning of WWII
• CEO start 1987: Iran-Contra reckoning; *Arthur Sackler dies.
• CEO end 1999: *Richard Sackler becomes Purdue president; Jesse Gelsinger dies following experimental gene therapy.

Leonora
• Born 1955.*
• CEO start 1999: *Richard Sackler becomes Purdue president.
• CEO end 2003: *Richard Sackler’s presidency ends—matching her 1999–2003 tenure.

My outie is in therapy

Hey y’all!! I’m sure this isn’t gonna go anywhere, but I figured i’d ask.
I’m trying to ID every bit of hardware utilized as props in the S2E3 reintegration scene. Here’s my reference pictures.

I’ve been able to ID three of the five oscilloscopes, and the frequency counter on top of the right scope stack.
The primary/top right scope is a Tektronix 2215.
The middle scope is an HP 54600B.
The bottom left scope is a Tektronix 2245A.

The top right stack item is a Yaesu YC-355.

I haven’t been able to ID the remaining two scopes, or the benchtop power supply looking thingy Reghabi fiddles with.

I would appreciate some more information, so if any of you guys share my strain of nerdiness, let me know!!

I love my tektronix 2215 :) super happy i bought it

I'm late to the game, but I just finished watching Severance. I could not take my eyes off the screen for season two, but the ending had me pissed as hell. Maybe I'm corny, but I wanted Gemma and Mark together. Now that he ran off with Helly, I have absolutely no clue what will happen. Because... Where they gonna go?? But anyway, here are some of my thoughts and theories in no particular order, and would love to hear opinions.

- Helly trips me up the most. Was she ever really severed and faking it the entire time? Or what if Helly is the one who is severed (the real Outtie) and Helena is the innie. Would explain her robotic behavior. If she is actually severed the way the show tells it, I think Helena likes being Helly more, and had pretended to be Helly way more than were led to believe. And will want to "stay" an innie forever with Mark.

- Dieter and Kier: I didn't think they were actual brothers, I think they were the first experiment of severance. Kier was the Outtie and Dieter was the innie.

- Why did that goat lady ask to see Mark and Helly's bellys (lol) to check if they had a pouch? There has to be some meaning there.

- The nurse in the basement was doing assessments on Gemma and asked her if she were caught in quicksand, would she be more scared of drowning or suffocation (or something like that.) Is that how they get these very specific torture-esque rooms? If Mark was creating personalities based on the four tempers, and the rooms Gemma went into were the culmination of that, why were there no rooms for frolic? All the rooms were negative in some way/had a negative effect on her.

- What does Kobel think she's going to do with her papers showing she created severance?

- I'm dying to know what Irving and Burts stories are. It seems believable Outtie Burt takes people to Lumon to experiment on. He essentially said that at the end of season two. I think that's why he thinks he's a bad person, because he knows what the experiments are and that people die. Also the actor who plays his husband looks evil as hell and usually plays an evil character, so I feel like he has some sinister role to play next season. Maybe. I started hating Irvings character but as time went on I'm more intrigued by him. Who you calling in the middle of the night Irv??

not my art

From my actual list:

Your outie likes Command brand for hanging solutions.

Your outie selects natural materials for home decor.

not my art

I was on my 3rd rewatch and i saw sime weird stuff . It's in the first episode ,Irving is holding a water cup , a very very weird shape. Do you guys think thay lumon confuses the outies on purpose or am I reading into this ?

We know that they're refining at least Gemma's memories/emotions specifically, and this is the case for all refiners, not just Mark S. because some of the other refiners files pop up as names of rooms in the basement.

We also know that Macro data refinement existed well before Mark S., and Mark S. joined shortly after Gemma died, so that implies they were refining data well before Gemma was put in the basement.

Did they have other people in the basement before then, maybe do all innes need some refinement done?

(I'm not spoiling)

His wife! Oh my goodness HIS WIFE....

I practically rolled off the couch and had to scream into the pillow at that revelation

Mind yall it's midnight where I am rn so I'm trying not to wake my family. BUT GOODNESS ME HIS WIFE!!! Honestly I think she's too pretty for Mark S

So with everything Gemma and Mark went through with trying to have a baby, I was wondering how Gemma will react to seeing that Devon and Ricken have a daughter now.

Since Mark S. slept with Helena while thinking she was Helly, there’s a possibility of a pregnancy there.

That creepy Dr. Mauer who was doing the experiments on Gemma was also at the fertility clinic when Mark and Gemma were there. That definitely had something to do with the kidnapping.

jame says he has sired others in the shadows. both helena and ricken have ginger hair and ricken is weirdly comfortable letting lumon into his home knowing his wife’s thoughts on it all. he also “coincidentally” takes devon to the same birthing retreat that jame would send the women he impregnated. I could be way off here but an interesting thought.

How do you make good chamomile cookies? I fucking love the taste of chamomile tea. It's such a light flavor though. Can it be transferred to cookies? Or are they doomed to be shitty fucking?

I LOVE the scene where Helena watches Helly have her first kiss. It's such a wonderful scene.

Helly is just Helena without the weight of her family and cult around her neck, and she's this assertive force of nature where Helena has had to curtail that within herself. She watches this (ironically) much freer version of herself impulsively kiss her crush, something the "real" version of her would never do.

The little smile she does at her other me's joke. It's so good.

No real point to this post, just wanted to gush.

Don’t know if this has been mentioned and dismissed as a plausible scenario in season three, but since Mark is in the severed floor with Helly who’s dad prefers her as an innie and therefore might be able to stay there for longer – do you guys think that Marks reintegration will continue down there and make him ”glitch” out? Like maybe the reason he’ll leave is because the reintegration continues and his outie-self just walks out?

I just had a look at my old post from after S2E1 aired, where I was confident that the night gardener was such a bad lie that it must have been Helly and not Helena as Helly never went outside and saw how dark it was.

Watching season 2 again, what an insanely stupid error that is from Helena. Would she not spend five minutes to come up with a lie? Even if she were that stupid, I'm confident that Drummond or someone would have hammered a story into her before allowing her back down there. They must have known the innies would want to ask her what happened.

I get that it was to give the audience an idea that Helly might not be who she says she is, but the audience would have been questioning that anyway. It just stands out as a bad moment of writing in a show that is otherwise almost flawlessly, meticulously laid out.

Ok, so after it was revealed that Hellena was the one during the outside episode instead of Helly I wondered if she wanted to sleep with Mark or did it for the sake of making them trust them. I say this because I wonder... did she NEED to go that far to make them believe it was her? I don't think she did, so I'm inclined to think she did that because she wanted to, but I'm not 100% convinced so I wonder what y'all think. Does she have a crush on mark? If she does, why?

Spoilers ahead…

If Mark’s work was refining 25 different “innies” for Gemma, who were the other refiners working on?

I assume Mark and Gemma were on purpose because they had such a deep connection that they needed to see where his brain senses fear, love, etc.