On Severance, the Previous Is a Darkish and Ominous Place

A lot of Severance’s major characters haven’t any previous. An innie, whose consciousness was created for the only real goal of working at Lumon Industries, remembers nothing previous to the day a chip was wedged into their brain they usually wakened a brand-new particular person. 

That complete state of affairs is its personal taste of gazing-into-the-abyss existential horror, and it’s one thing Severance spends quite a lot of time exploring. However among the many characters whose pasts we do know one thing about, the horror of what’s lurking again there would possibly really be worse than merely a large black gap of nothingness.

It’s exhausting to place that thought away whereas watching “Candy Vitriol,” the present’s most up-to-date entry. After being MIA for many of season two, Concord Cobel roared again for an episode that cleared up mysteries about the place she got here from, particularly the precise kind of setting that formed her into such a Lumon diehard. 

From the beginning, we’ve identified that Concord is unusually dedicated to Kier Eagan, Lumon’s slightly eccentric founder. In season one, she has no obvious pursuits or goal aside from Lumon, utilizing her out-of-office time to contain herself—uncomfortably carefully—within the lifetime of Mark, whose innie is her worker, and whose outie is her next-door neighbor. She has a Kier shrine tucked into her basement, recites prayers evoking Kier’s “tempers 4” and “values 9,” and she or he sings the Kier hymn (“Kier, chosen one, Kier/Kier, good one, Kier”) earlier than doling out punishments.

When she’s fired on the finish of season one for overstepping a number of boundaries, she’s livid in a manner that transcends merely getting booted from a job, even contemplating the truth that stated job encompassed her complete identification. “She’s a soldier,” Lumon defector Reghabi calls Concord in season two—and that’s actually been the case. However after she realizes she’s been betrayed by Lumon, there’s ambiguity about how her loyalties would possibly shift. 

We obtained an inkling that Concord would possibly actually be altering her path in “Candy Vitriol,” however first we obtained a complete lot of element that made us understand simply what an enormous deal that might be if it occurs. Raised in Salt’s Neck, a former Lumon manufacturing facility city that’s now a depressed smash perched on what feels just like the literal finish of the world, Concord labored within the ether mill as a baby, and even huffed the stuff earlier than her educational excellence caught the eye of Lumon boss Jame Eagan. 

The celebrated Wintertide Fellowship was presumably her ticket out of Salt’s Neck and into an vital job at Lumon’s workplace in Kier—a profession trajectory buoyed by her good designs for the severance process, since this week’s bombshell second revealed that Concord created severance, not Jame Eagan. On the time, she purchased into the concept Kier wished her to share all her data, which on this case translated to “giving her boss license to take full credit score for her genius but sinister invention.”

Concord’s strategy of deprogramming from the cult of Kier didn’t begin this week; we all know she regrets abandoning her Lumon-hating mom, who ended her days wheezing in agony in that grim home in Salt’s Neck. (The circumstances are made much more bleak by the opposite particular person dwelling in that home: Sissy, Concord’s aunt, the one particular person left on the town who nonetheless worships Kier as a god.) Whether or not or not Concord will be capable of confront her previous and possibly make some massive adjustments shifting ahead has but to be seen.

However Concord’s removed from being the one Severance character with a fraught previous. (We received’t even get into the late Kier Eagan himself, whose mythology has been burnished into peculiar anecdotes which will or will not be true: a meet-cute along with his future spouse over noxious fumes on the ether pit; the dual brother who… masturbated himself to dying?) 

As final week’s “Chikhai Bardo” totally explored, Mark and Gemma’s relationship started with sunshine and sweetness, however was in wrestle mode on the time they have been forcibly separated. For them, wanting again has been nearly too painful a prospect, even with these joyful reminiscences nonetheless current. Mark’s determined have to not take into consideration his previous is why he determined to get severed within the first place, figuring it will give his mind a break from grieving whereas his innie was awake.

Even Severance characters who haven’t gotten as a lot of the highlight have alluded to pasts that trace at misbehavior. In Dylan’s case, it’s extra irritating than malevolent; as his outie’s spouse has advised his innie, he’s had hassle determining his place in life, drifting from job to job and interest to interest. Lumon introduced him profession stability—in his case, being severed has apparently introduced him extra focus—however his lackadaisical perspective persists at dwelling. We will inform (even when Dylan can’t, as he breezily tells his quietly exasperated spouse that he needs to test-drive a brand new automobile) that the pressure has lengthy since began to put on his marriage down.

However most likely essentially the most intriguing season two growth with reference to a mysterious previous—no disrespect to Mark and Gemma or Concord, they’ve all gone via it—has obtained to be Burt Goodman. Season two’s sixth episode, “Attila,” hinted at some extraordinarily darkish conduct going again many years in Burt’s life—stuff so evil he determined to get severed so at the very least a part of him might need an opportunity at going to heaven along with his husband, Fields. 

With Salt’s Neck lastly defined, and Mark and Gemma’s storyline heading towards some type of season-finale revelation, we’re dying to dig into Burt’s secrets and techniques subsequent. Much more tantalizingly, it’s clear that no matter he was blended up in was tied to Lumon, too—the place his profession goes again years earlier than he turned a severed employee puttering across the work in Optics and Design.

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