Summary
Severance Season 2 reaches a high point in Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo”, finally giving Gemma a spotlight.
What is Lumon up to? This is the question that powers a lot of Severance, and rightly so, since the mega-corp is central to everything despite their motives always seeming elusive. What can people with all the money and power in the world possibly want? The answer, implied by Episode 7 of Season 2, is the one thing that money and power can’t buy – immortality.
I’m assuming, anyway. “Chikhai Bardo” has the unusual distinction of being an episode that tells us a great deal without really telling us anything meaningful at all, but the signs are there. If you’re looking for them, there are a lot of references to life, death, and rebirth, perhaps the latter especially. As we’ll see in the exploration of Gemma and Mark’s backstory that gives the episode some of its shape, these themes were important to them, as they’re important to everyone.
The novelty comes from the fact that this episode is devoted almost entirely to Mark’s supposedly dead wife, Gemma, who we’ve only really met as Ms. Casey. We even see her as Ms. Casey a couple of times here, but there’s apparently much more to her Lumon story than that one particular character. Quite how much will presumably be revealed a little further down the line.
Anyway, Devon having discovered Mark close to death with Reghabi hovering over him acts as a kind of framing device for extensive flashback sequences, usually smartly juxtaposed with other moments further along the timeline. Mark’s completely out of it still, and we slip in and out of the present day, his recollections, and Gemma’s mysterious time in Lumon as if he’s dreaming it all. That slightly off-kilter feeling permeates the entire episode, by design. It’s so densely littered with clues, references, and familiar ditties that it feels like one of those escape rooms you lock yourself into until you can arrange a bunch of obvious clues into a coherent mystery.
What we learn in the broad strokes is as follows. Mark and Gemma had their meet-cute and a whirlwind romance, but tragedy struck. Gemma fell pregnant and subsequently lost her baby. This isn’t necessarily stated explicitly, but it’s very strongly – and movingly, artfully – implied. The desire for a child and difficulties in conceiving one had led her to a fertility clinic that one can assume was a front of Lumon, and something about her answers to the strange questions she was asked there made her a target.
I don’t think Gemma just magically woke up in Lumon one day. It’s likely she was lured on the back of her desperation and vulnerability, making Lumon’s practices even more sinister than expected, which is quite a feat.
Dichen Lachman in Severance | Image via Apple TV+
We know that Gemma is being held in a research wing, located below that sinister-looking elevator door Irving keeps drawing. The wing is very strange. Segmented into multiple doors and rooms all named after cities – with Cold Harbor among them – it’s clearly connected to the macrodata refinery and Lumon’s ultimate goal for Mark, but in precisely what way remains frustratingly unclear. Each door seems to give way to a different innie, and it’s heavily implied that they have no knowledge of each other, their experiences individuated through barriers. One is permanently visiting the dentist; another is a knackered housewife writing inauthentic thank-you letters for rubbish Christmas gifts.
Dr. Mauer seems to oversee all of these innies, playing a substantial role – usually a romantic one – for each. It’s strongly implied Mauer is in love with – or at least obsessed with – Gemma and is using the barriers to control her and his experiences with her which presumably goes beyond Lumon’s mysterious end goal. It also seems like Mark’s progress in refining the files is what allows Gemma to access the individual doors, with Cold Harbor still remaining out of reach. Mauer knows that once she opens that door, he’ll have to say goodbye to her, which he obviously isn’t willing to do.
Occasionally, Severance Season 2, Episode 7 returns to the present day. Devon is deeply mistrustful of Dr. Reghabi, understandably, but her solutions to address Mark’s reintegration difficulties are admittedly out-there. One of them is an “innie cottage” called the “Damona Birthing Retreat” where severed people become their innies; another is contacting Harmony Cobel, who Reghabi suspects is an immovable Lumon loyalist and couldn’t possibly be trusted. When Devon insists, Reghabi leaves, leaving Devon to deal with an unconscious Mark bumbling the episode’s title, “Chikhai Bardo”.
If you’re wondering, “Chikhai Bardo” is the fourth “bardo” in Tibetan Buddhism; it’s the moment of death preceding the final breath. A bardo is a transitional stage between death and rebirth, so you can see those familiar themes coming out to play again. Lumon loves co-opting this kind of spiritual imagery for stuff, giving its various, obviously immoral products and processes the air of enlightenment. But if nothing else this episode makes it clear that there are rather mundane human emotions underpinning everything; Mauer’s manipulation and desire for control, Milchick’s servile devotion to protocol, Gemma’s yearning, Mark’s grief and desperation. Humanity is the root of everything. And attempting to control it might be Lumon’s undoing.
