‘Severance’ Season 2 Finale Mailbag. Plus, an Interview With Series Creator Dan Erickson.

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Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.
I'm Rob Mahoney. And here we are.
Rob, it's our last Severance podcast. Are you sure? Until the next time there's more Severance.
Yeah. I feel like we're going to get roped back in at some point.
Our innies will be activated, or I guess maybe we're the innies. Either way, we will be back.
You will be back in the void, inevitably, talking about Severance. I feel like it's...
We cannot stay out. Wow.
You're doing me to a future of the void i i don't know what to say about that okay listen what are we here to do today rob we are here to answer a lot of email questions that we have wrap up some things uh some questions some prevailing theories um you know just tie a tidy little bow on this entire uh orpo experience that we have shared together here in Severance Season 2. It's a notoriously tidy finale.
All questions answered. Everything resolved.
No conflicted feelings for anybody. Clear as crystal, I think, Rob, as they say.
Also in this episode, and we're about to get to it in a second, Dan Erickson, creator of Severance, was kind enough to sit down and talk to us for a little while about some of our most pressing questions. Again, we asked questions like sort of character-based questions, and he did a great job answering those questions, I thought, really enhanced our experience with the finale.
So we're going to listen to that interview first. Usually we pop interviews at the end of an episode, but as I was telling Rob before we started recording, I already spent an entire episode saying, wait till you hear what Dan says about this one.
So we're not going to make you wait. Dan Erickson interview is going to kick off the episode and then we'll be back to answer definitively with 100% certainty.
No doubts. All of your severance questions.
We have all of the answers for you. Anything you want to say before our interview with Dan, Rob? Just that I very much appreciate the severance sickos coming out in full force after this finale.
It's been amazing all season, getting emails from people at pineapplebobbing at gmail.com, prestigetv at spotify.com. But they were in rare form, Joe.
People were excited to talk about the finale. They had many, many ideas about where things were going to go in season three.
They had a lot of thoughts about some of the visual reference cues that we asked for coming out of the last podcast, which I very much appreciate. They delivered on all fronts, I will say.
Now it's Dan's turn to deliver and then our turn to deliver and the answering of all these questions. We got, and I

kept count. I don't know if

you were keeping track. I'm scared

to know. We got over a thousand

emails between

Friday and now. Holy shit.

And just about that

visual reference question alone,

we got 300 emails.

So you guys

are incredible. And

we will talk about all those visual

like the visual reference

Thank you. we got 300 emails.
So you guys are incredible. And we will talk about all those visual,

like the visual reference emails

were just coming fast and furious.

And it was incredible.

We did ask for it and we got it.

But let's start with a conversation with Dan Erickson.

Well, the finale gave us a lot to chew on,

to say the least.

But I was hoping to start with the two versions of Mark

that finally have a chance to chew on, to say the least.

But I was hoping to start

with the two versions of Mark

that finally have a chance

to interact in,

well, more or less in person,

I guess,

the closest they're going

to get to in person.

And I guess what we see

of their relationship up front

is pretty adversarial.

And I was wondering

what you were trying

to capture in

this first exchange

between the two Marks

and why it goes so differently

for them relative to,

say, the two Dylans who are ultimately able to be a little bit more cordial with each other. Yeah, well, I think that there's been this building sense over the course of really the whole series so far that any mark is becoming aware of the degree to which his whole existence is kind of being used.

You know, he sort of is there to serve a purpose. The understanding has always kind of been that he himself is not a person.
He's there to sort of as an appendage for his Audi. And so I think that there is a little bit of an immediate sense of wonder upon actually getting to talk to this version of himself that he's always wondered about.
But it sort of quickly is replaced by this distrust and this kind of sense that, you know, what does this guy want from me? Yeah. Uh, and, and I think that that, um, it really comes to a head of course, when Audi Mark makes the very, very dumb decision to, uh, miss mispronounce Helly's name.
And I think, uh, to me, that's a turning point where, where suddenly it becomes, okay, this, this, this Joker doesn't, doesn't have my best interest in mind.

Would you say something similar is going on for Heli inside of this episode?

Because I feel like previously in the season, we saw her very pro, let's rescue Gemma, let's do this.

We have to do this.

And I know that we've heard her talk about feeling not considered to be a human by Helena. She dresses me like I'm a baby, all this sort of stuff like that.
So in that moment when she goes and runs to find Mark at the end of the episode, what is, what is her intent? What's on her mind there? You know, I'm not sure she herself knows in that moment, like what, why she's going. I think that she knows that she wants to see Mark one more time.
But I also think that it's different from the last moment they had had, where I think they were both kind of accepting that, you know, this is probably their, their, their last time together. You know, there, there probably is not a life to be here, the way that Mark said in season one.
I think that they sort of make a kind of peace with that. But then to me, that changes in the moment where Dylan shows up and pushes the vending machine and Heli is able to kind of rally this, this weird marching band a little bit.
And I don't know if it's conscious for her, but, but to me, it feels like that reawakens this, this sense of fight where it's like, you know what, maybe we don't have to write this off. Maybe there is something, maybe there is more power here for us than, than we think.
And in that power, maybe there's the promise of, of a life. And so, uh, I don't think she knows exactly what she wants when she, when she goes there.
And I don't know that either she or Mark understands what they're running toward when they, when they run off, but they're running away from that door because that door is non-existence. That door means they are giving up their lives in service of their Audi's lives, and they are not willing to do that anymore.
Well, there has been so much longing between Helly and Mark this season, who have been ships in the night, narratively speaking, on and off the severed floor. They're rarely in the same places at the same time, it feels like.
But you could say a lot of the same about the MDR team on the whole. And I'm curious for you, what did we learn and kind of what were you trying to express in pulling these characters apart, the kind of core MDR team over the course of the season and having them all be in such different places fundamentally? Yeah.
Well, you know,

one of my favorite moments in season one is,

which sort of happened organically almost by accident.

It wasn't in the script,

but it's,

it's after Dylan tackles Milchick after the music dance experience and the

other sort of pull him up and they sort of just form,

make this formation behind them where it's the four of them all kind of

holding him and supporting him.

And it was sort of this just magical little moment that just happened.

And make this formation behind him where it's the four of them all kind of holding him and supporting him. And it was sort of this just magical little moment that just happened.
And I realized like this is the story about this unit of four people coming together and learning who they are as a group. And in doing so, getting more of a sense of who they are as individuals.
But then I, to me, it just felt like this season, the next stage of that exploration was what happens when you rip them apart. Um, and that happens, you know, physically we, we get, we get Irving taken away.
Um, but also, you know, it's, it's, uh, Lumen creates fissures in the relationships um you know mark and hellie are tested hellie and dylan are tested you know dylan and irving are are tested and ultimately they lose irving um and i think that in a show that's all about identity and finding out who you are you know the the the relationships that you lose or that are tested are just as important as the ones that you find. And both of those things end up defining you as an individual.
So it was just all kind of part of the development of each of them as characters. You mentioned losing Irving.
We see Totoro on the train in the penultimate episode. And if this is the last we see of Irving B or Irving Bailiff, do you feel like you got to explore everything you wanted to with this character.
I do. And I, you know, I, I, I can't speak to whether we will see him again or not, but I think that he is, you know, he's somebody who from what little we did see of him on the outside, I think he's somebody who, who is very lonely and kind of had written himself off as not somebody who gets to have love in his life.
And the fact that he was able to learn of this other version of himself that did have a really strong bond with somebody and really did get to experience that, you know, it's like, I think sometimes like, you know, some of us who are, who are single, sometimes we, we wonder, it's like, well, am I still even capable of, of loving somebody in that way? Um, you know, like I did when I was younger and, uh, and, uh, in Irving's case, it takes literally this, he, you know know there's this version of himself that is almost like a child who experiences love and so he uh that that I think awakens him in him the possibility that he could have that too so I think that he is going off to a hopeful place I think he he's not with Bert Bert Bert is, you know, gonna hopefully go back and, and, uh, uh, eventually get to go back to, uh, Milwaukee with fields, uh, for their trip. But Irving is going off with the understanding that, that maybe this part of himself that's, that's capable of love that he thought was gone is not necessarily gone.
And there might be more adventures of that kind ahead for him. Yeah, I mean, the world of Severance can be a pretty cold place.
And I would say, ultimately, the stuff between Bert and Irving is maybe as warm as we get in terms of the outward affections displayed between characters. Now, granted, some characters like Mark and Helly are able to explore their relationship in a different way this season.
But as far as Bert and Irving, and kind of all of these unions that are coming together,

whether it's Dylan and Gretchen, whether it's Mark and Helly or Helena, I'm left with this idea of in a show that is as cold and removed and sometimes corporate in the lumen sense

of severance.

Do you see this as being a sentimental show?

Is this a sentimental work to you in terms of its heart?

Yes. Yeah, I think I'm a pretty sentimental person.
And for me, it's funny, there's a meta-narrative where working on this show is often very, very challenging. And there's a lot of hard work and pressure.
And I am often saved by the relationships, uh, by, by the warmth of the people around me, both on set and in the writer's room and, and people from my life and my family. And, uh, I, I, you know, I, that may be sentimental, but I think it's deeply true is, is that the, you know, the, the, the more challenging, uh, uh, of a situation you're in, the more important it is to, to have people who will, who will try to touch your soul and, and, uh, nurture your humanity.
And, and, you know, severance is about these four warm human hearts who find each other in the midst of this very corporate environment and reawaken the humanity in each other that has been taken from them. So I think it is a sentimental show.
And I think maybe we, you know, that's something I feel good about. And we love a sentimental show.
Absolutely. It's a great answer for us.
And I think in terms of that sort of reawakening that you were outlining with Irving that you were just talking about here, someone that we've been watching struggle with their spot this season a lot has been Seth Milchick, right? Sort of struggling with the microaggressions and inside of his workplace and stuff like that. We see him sort of, you know, fight back a bit in episode eight and episode nine.
And then ultimately, though, when push comes to shove, he is sort of violently, ferociously defensive of the Lumen agenda at the end of the day inside of this episode. Was I, like, expecting too much of a rebellion from Seth or hoping too much for him? Or where are we on his journey inside of that? No, I don't think you were expecting too much.
I think sometimes the closer we get to breaking out of a system, the more sort of vitriol we have in defending it. Because, you know, I, yeah, I think that he, the fact that he feels his own loyalty to the company waning or, you know, that, that makes him that much more threatened by the rebellion.
Um, because all of a sudden he sees something of himself in it and he's not ready to, he's not ready to leave it yet. I think that, uh, and, and, and it's, it's possible that, that he, that he won't be because I think the sad truth is that, uh, you know, we, we talk a lot about cults in, in the, in the writer's room and on set for this show and what exactly it means to be in a cult.
Uh, you know, there's the, the sense of the word that we normally think of that, you know, we, we see on, you know, uh, uh, in documentaries and stuff. Um,

but there's such a thing as, you know,

sometimes sometimes companies do have cult like, uh,

tactics that they use and so do countries and so do religions.

And I think that, um, as you start to,

Thank you. And so do countries and so do religions.
And I think that, um, as you start to, for people who do evolve out of a system like that, I think it's a painful process and they may become that much more of a, you know, they might become that much more of a zealot in, in those moments leading up to the moment when they are willing to break away. But some people never do.
It's hard to do. Do you think Milchik, I mean, he's obviously graded against Drummond and Lumen more broadly in terms of the language he uses, the kind of softer approach he's trying to take with the MDR team.
But do you think he has a sense of who he is as a person outside of Lumen Middle Manager?

Or is he still finding that for himself?

I think that he is somebody who really defines himself by his work. And there may be shades that we're not seeing in terms of what he does outside and his other interests and his other relationships.
We've sort of intentionally kept that hidden. But I think that the reason for that is not just to keep it secret, but because I think when Seth is at work, he is work Seth.
In a way, all of our characters are severed, even the unsevered ones. And, uh, I, I think that he is so committed to his job there that it, in a way it's like, we, we talked about going back and seeing his home, but I think for the version of Seth that we see, it doesn't matter what his home looks like because when he's at work, he is all the way at work, you know? I mean, he does have that really cool motorcycle, but that's, you know.
Great taste in leathers, ultimately. The coolest motorcycle and the coolest jacket.
Yes. A hundred percent.
Can you elaborate a little bit on when you say even our unsevered characters are severed? Can you talk a little bit more about your thoughts about that? I mean, in the way that we're all sort of severed at work and in the way that, you know, my original idea for the show came because I was sort of, you know, walking into work and wishing I could skip ahead, but also knowing that there's a comfort to being at work. And, you know, at the time I was going through, you know, a breakup and was very, there was something weirdly comforting about stepping into a place where I didn't have to think about my own wants and desires or motivations.
I was like, well, I have to enter this data now because that's my job. And, um, and, and I think people get addicted to that, you know, and so somebody like you know cobell or somebody like milchick they're not you know that they may not have had the procedure but they've severed themselves in in the way that so many people do i mean cobell it seems like at this point in the story maybe has reintegrated in a sense then because the personal and the professional are bleeding into each other all the time.
And, you know, I think we have a sense of who that character is in a new way, having seen glimpses of her backstory, but she has a certain fascination with Mark that it feels like goes above and beyond maybe just scientific or professional curiosity. What do you think it is that Harmony sees in Mark? Well, it's a good question.
It's sort of a chicken and the egg question because I think that there is a professional interest in him. He is working on this project that is of great professional importance.
At the same time, you know, there's not,

I think there's still a question of like,

why choose to live next to him?

Yeah.

And I think that Mrs. Selvig really loves Mark and really cares about Mark.

But the question is, is Mrs. Selvig real in any way?

Or is she entirely a fabrication? Is she entirely a mask? But I think you could ask the same about Cobell. You know, I think that Cobell may be a character that this person had to create in order to fit in at in a place like Lumen.
And there's a question of who would she have been had she not been part of this machine. And that was part of the thing we wanted to sort of explore in episode eight, where she goes home, was reminding ourselves that this was a child once.
And she maybe felt like she had to create a version of herself. And that may be a version of herself that isn't working for her as much as it used to.
And so, uh, a lot of that to, to go back to your question sort of comes back to, yeah, how, how earnest is her affection for Mark? Is it, is it, is it real? Is it warm? Is it obsessive? Is it manipulative? And, and, uh, I, I think we still don't know because we still don't know who that person is under that layer of masks. I'm sure you as a, you know, a now a seasoned TV creator prefer to enjoy each theory equally.
But can you recall in across this season, obviously, the theories, the connections, the literary references, the film connections, all the big ideas, philosophical ideas that have come out of this absolutely frothing fandom that is around this show. I'm wondering if there was a particular connection or insight or theory that you most enjoyed that felt most valid validating to you, like these people really get this show, um, or that's not right at all, but I love the, uh, inventiveness behind it.
Uh, well, I don't want to, I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to accidentally confirm or deny any theory, you know, because they're, they are all beautiful and valid. I will say this, and I've said this before, but there's a theory that because Rebecca in season one mentions that she has sores on the back of her head from her bird.

She's like, I have sores on the back of my head, and you might see them. And people have taken that to mean that she is severed, because that's where the severance hole would be.
And I will not confirm nor deny that she is severed. But what,

what I will not stand for is the,

the suggestion that her bird is not real.

So you've heard it here.

Rebecca has the bird.

Yes.

Bird is a freaking jerk.

And it wants her dead. And it's smart enough to know that sometimes you have to attack from behind uh you know that that the element of surprise so the the bird wants to kill her and that that is true and that is canon now is there also a severance hole back there maybe maybe.
But the bird is real

and I will not stand for its

erasure.

Protect Rebecca's bird. I love that.

My favorite character on the show.

Well, Dan,

thank you so much for your time. Thank you for standing

up for Rebecca's bird who, yeah,

I feel like has taken some slander in a way

that it just simply does not deserve.

It makes my heart hurt. Just really quickly, Dan, what does a pineapple mean to you? To me, a pineapple is a weird thing to give somebody because it's both a gift and a chore.
It's a delicious piece of fruit that if you can get to it if you can get to it is, is wonderful, but you have to like find a way to cut through this weird, you know, spiky, uh, skin that clearly, you know, God intended to kill us. Uh, so it's, it's, it's, uh, it, I just thought that it was very fun that that was what Lumen would give people.
It's like, here's something, something beautiful that you might have to hurt yourself in order to access. Love it.
Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
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Wow.

Wasn't that a great interview that we did many days ago, Rob?

We're wearing different clothing.

Yeah, I thought that was great.

Now we know once and for all what the pineapple's for, et cetera, et cetera.

I really loved your question about, and as I've been teasing,

your question about whether or not Severance is a sentimental show because that really got to the heart of the conversation that Chris and Andy have been having and some of our listeners have been expressing about like, is this a show that's all flash, no substance, or is there sort of an emotional heart churning at the center of this show? And I really liked Dan's answer. I thought it was a really good one.
So thanks for asking that question. I think too, there's different kinds of substance.
I think you and I are aligned in this way, Joe, where if you give me the choice between a mystery box show answering all of its mystery questions or paying off emotional arcs for its characters in a fulfilling way, I am always going to pick the latter over the mystery box answers. Those things are important to me too.
And we're going to get into a lot of them today. But for me, it's always character first, and it's always going to come down to what ultimately was so satisfying about the season two finale, which was when you boil this show down, it is Mark and Hellie and Gemma first and foremost, and all of their various permutations.
And the way that twists up an audience is much more interesting to me than what is going on with the goats. Do you want to start with one of the most popular theories that we got sort of immediately, I would say night of, we started getting emails about this very popular theory that has since I would say been definitively debunked, but this quite popular theory that at the end of the episode, it's not Mark S, Gemma, and Helyar.

It's Mark S, Gemma, and Helena Eakin.

Yes.

And as far as I can tell, this is based off a look that people feel like Brit Lauer as this character gave to Gemma.

That was sort of like a triumphantphant I got your man sort of glare.

I saw it described online as a smirk.

To which I would say,

ladies and gentlemen,

that's not what a smirk looks like.

It did not read that way to me at all.

A lot of people were convinced

that this was the case.

And like, honestly,

who can blame them after sort of

being duped at the beginning of the season?

Some people were. So it's sort of like, if you're on high alert for Helena versus Helly, who can blame them after sort of being duped at the beginning of the season? Some people were.
So it's sort of like if you're on high alert for Helena versus Helly, who can blame you? But do you want to address what Britt Lauer herself said about this? Yeah, Britt Lauer said to her, in terms of her performance, that is Helly R. And I think we have every reason to believe that to be true.
Not just because it makes more storytelling sense for that

to be the case. I understand technically

someone could pop into the back room

and flip on the Glasgow

block and all of a sudden

it's Helena Egan on the floor. That's a thing

that could theoretically happen in the world of the show.

And as you said, we have been kind of primed

by this season of severance to be looking for

the differences in Helly and Helena's behavior.

That's what the show has conditioned us to look for. That said, even if you flip that switch, even if that's Helena, it doesn't really make character sense.
So much of this season, that would be a twist for the sake of there being a twist. And shows are not above that from time to time, but it being Helly is what makes it an expression of a real and genuine relationship.
And what ultimately closes the circle or at least starts rounding that corner on the kinds of conversations that Mark and Helly have been having all season as they've wrestled with the idea of who they are to each other, what they can be, what kind of life they can have on the severed floor to begin with. And ultimately, we're wrecked in the finale at the thought of giving it up.
And so if you have those character moments where they're so tortured by the idea of what they're losing, and then you swap in Helena on a little body swap hijinks, I think it would invalidate a lot of what makes that finale so powerful. I think Dan's answer, because I did come out of the finale, my initial, after the first watch of the finale, was like, Heli wouldn't do that.
Not that's Helena, but just sort of like, this is a weird character choice for a character that I understood to be sort of like noble and self-sacrificing. And what Dan was saying, and I still feel like there's maybe like a scene or a moment kind of missing in this transition in the finale.
But what Dan was talking about in terms of like her coming into her desire to fight for herself, her life, her power, what she wants happens inside of this sort of like normal, like I keep calling it this Norma Rae moment of just sort of like, we got to fight for our right to run down the hallway with Mark. And so I think that, I think what, what I, the interpretation that I like that sort of bridges the gap between these two things is as we've been discussing all season, the more these innies experience, the more heartbreak they experience, the more, you know, adverse conditions they experience, et cetera, et cetera, the death they experience, this, that, and the other thing, the more they might be traveling towards their Audis, because their Audis are their, like, the Innies are their pure self, and the Audis are the pure self, hardened, calcified by the woes of life.
And so the more that the Innies get to experience not just moving numbers around on a monitor, but all the other things that they've experienced over the last two seasons, they are becoming more and more like their outie selves. And so if a bit of recognizably Helena behavior emerges out of Helly R, that makes a lot of sense to me inside of the end of this episode.
Especially when what we understand about Helena is all the ways in which she has been tamped down and sort of repressed by her circumstances. And so the version of Helena that we know is one that is kind of gnarled up by her relationship with her dad and her public exposure and her place within this company and all the expectations that are put on her.
It's all very weird. And so, yeah, there's always going to be a commonality of something that is intrinsically Helena and Helly

that's going to start poking through the surface. As you

say, the more that they're exposed to on the severed

floor. And that's the biggest difference

between season one and season two is just the range

of elements that they're exposed

to and thus the emotions that come out of

those things. And so, to see a little bit of Helena

in Helly is not a surprise at all.

Um, all right.

Can I say one final thing on that note, Joe? All right. Just shut me down.
Just kidding. Lock me out like Gemma on the other side of the door.
I see how it is. Of course, Rob.
What? I do wonder, too, with some of this theorizing, there is a... I'm not going to ascribe nefarious intent to anybody, but there is a certain segment of the Severance fandom that is very one true pairing driven right the idea that we are cheering for mark and heli to end up together or mark and gemma to end up together and i did wonder with this helena theorizing how much that came out of a very sincere want to see mark and gemma on the outside and the idea that the only way that could be obstructed is through some sort of like foul.
I wanted to bring up in this moment, we got several emails on that, because we've been talking about the mythological sense of Orpheus and Ridicel season and this idea that this moment where Mark turns back in the myth, Orpheus turns around, looks at his ghost wife who's behind him, and in that lack of faith moment, she is sent back to hell and all of that sort of stuff. So can we put a clean map of that onto this moment? No.
But does Mark look back in this moment? Yes. And we got some emails that were saying this is actually the opposite of what Orpheus would do.
But what I really liked, and I don't have the email in front of me right now, but one of our listeners pointed out that in Plato's interpretation of Orpheus, Orpheus is kind of a coward in that in order to rescue his wife from hell, his wife dies, goes to hell, Hades, afterlife. And in order to rescue her, he finds a sneaky backdoor into doing it rather than dying himself and joining her there.
No, I'm not saying if your wife dies, you should die. But the idea is that he chose the easier path down to hell.
It wasn't, I will die and join my wife forever. It was, I can find a trick away.
I'm not'm not choosing, I'm not choosing death,

but I am trying to get love and I'm not choosing death.

In this moment,

it's a different set of circumstances,

obviously,

but in this moment,

Mark S,

Mark's innie is like,

I'm not choosing death.

No.

Like whatever that is,

whatever Gemma and Mark is,

even if it is somehow connected

to my soul in some way,

I'm not choosing death.

I'm going to go after this, on this wild run towards I don't know what. Exactly.
In order to do that. I'm just going to, let's just knock this out of the way.
A question I asked, which inspired hundreds of emails, was like, what the final moment, you know, invoked for people. Yes.
That final image. And I mentioned sort of like a post, a movie poster that I was thinking of.
And we got so many email responses. And then Ben Stiller himself on Twitter also talked about some of the references.
What do you want to say about the responses we got, Rob Mountney? One, I'm shocked and impressed by the number of people who have immediate visual recall of the Adjustment Bureau movie poster. A movie that, to me, has just been lost to time, I have to admit.
But does have a certain striking running resemb resemblance although at a bit of a different angle and a slightly different tonality than maybe like the doomed essence of what makes this ending so powerful yeah you invoked Butch and Sundance which we loved we got The Graduate came up a lot and Ben Stiller talked about The Graduate and this is is something that our colleague, Ben Lindbergh, after we had recorded, Ben texted me. He's like, what do you think that final shot is a reference to? I think it's The Graduate.
And I was like, oh, Rob said Butch and Sundance. Like, I'm not, you know, I'm not sure, like, where we are anyway.
But so Ben Stiller has definitely said that The Graduate, especially The Graduate in the sense of where we don't know where we're going.

We've done this thing impulsively.

You take the job.

If you've never seen it, you know, Dustin Hoffman and Catherine Ross run away from her wedding, run out of the church, run off into the sunset together.

But then they get on a bus.

It's like one of the best endings of a movie of all time.

Get on a bus. And then slowly you see on their face, they're like, what the fuck have we done? What do we do now? Sort of moment.
So that's something that's definitely in the mix there. Logan's run was the most overwhelmingly popular response we got.
The poster, yes, but some people sent a still image from the movie that actually shows the hallway uh lit up red sort of the couple holding hands in the hallway lit up red a bit more uh that was a bit more convincing to me than the movie poster was um but what ben stiller said was i think a lot of images come to mind but that graduate ending is one of the greatest endings in movies ever other images that come to mind were the invasion of the body, I think a lot of images come to mind, but that graduate ending is one of the greatest endings

in movies ever.

Other images that come to mind

were the Invasion

of the Body Snatchers

and a lot of people sent over

the Invasion

of the Body Snatchers poster.

That was a good one.

Really good.

400 Blows,

Sabotage video by Spike Jonze.

Fuck yes.

Ron Mahoney's pick

of Bush Cassie

and the Sundance Kid,

Breakfast Club,

who doesn't love

a good freeze frame.

So that's the official answer

from Ben Stiller.

I saw too that

Jessica Lee Gagnier

Thank you. Tony's pick of Bush Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Breakfast Club, who doesn't love a good freeze frame.
So that's the official answer from Ben Stiller. I saw too that Jessica Lee Gagné referenced another movie that many people emailed us about, which was she was citing in terms of, I think she was saying in her role for that shot, she was more kind of lighting and supervision than direct cinematography.
But in terms of influence, it was a little bit more French New Wave as well. And a little bit specifically of Jules de Jim, which is something that many people emailed us about in a film I'm going to have to get up on, Joe.
Honestly, one of the best parts about this process in terms of these visual cues was like, maybe I've seen 65% of the movies that people were emailing us about. And so it's like, yeah, I would love to go back to Vertigo.
I'd love to go back to The Graduate, but also like I've never seen charade before. So let's, let's get up on charade.
Okay. So charade is the answer that is most correct to my question, which is that was the movie poster I was thinking of, uh, which is Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn with the rings of red around them on the poster.
That is the image that I was thinking of. Um, so it may not have been what Ben Stiller and Jessica Ligagne were thinking were thinking of but it was what i was thinking of so thank you to all the people who wrote it about the about charade a tremendous uh film about paranoia and and all this sort of stuff like that and and actually people pretending to be other people etc jules and jim uh i'm excited for you to watch that that is a um an erotic thruple if ever I saw one.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers is kind of fun in that if we think of this as like the innies, you know, grabbing control of the Audi body. Somebody's getting snatched.
I don't know who and who from, but it's happening. They snatch those bodies for themselves.
So thank you all for your literally hundreds of emails about this. We did our best to read everything.
Where do you want to go next, Rob Mahoney? Let's start big picture, Joe. I have a question for you before we start digging deep into the bag.
As we are zooming out on this season of Severance, what would you say were like the standout episodes for you of this season? A lot of optimism coming out of this finale. I would say that is among my three favorite episodes of this season.
I would go Chakai Bardo, number one, with a bullet. Not a surprise to anyone who listened to our podcast about that episode.
For me, Woe's Hollow is the number two episode. I think what you get from Irving, the mystery, kind of being outside the box for the first time in any meaningful way over the course of the show was such like an energizing feeling.
And then I would go Cold Harbor number three in large part because of some of these emotional arcs we've been talking about and the Mark and Helly stuff in particular. I will go number one easily, easily Chakai Bardo.
Number two, easily Woe's Hollow. Number three is tough for me because I don't think it is Cold Harbor.
I think it's Attila. I think between the dinner party, which I loved and was like the last Irving scenario that satisfied me, and the Mark and helly, you know, romantic sexual encounter inside of the severed floor and the way all of that was shot.
Buda Brasowicz as the director of that episode. I just, yeah, I really liked that episode a lot, I think.
That's my number three. But three is like a crowded field.
It really is. It is tough to pick the third third but cold harbor was definitely in my top five of the season probably four is probably number four but i think i think we're hitting on something which is that at least for us there's kind of that top tier and it's mostly chakai bardo and woes hollow and after that there's a lot of oh i like these scenes i like these elements i like these plot threads and you can pick and choose what you like based on that but i would be curious if anybody else has a definitive other one or two other than those it seems like there's a lot of people who really really love this finale and we like it for sure and i like a lot of the payoffs within it uh but to me like chakai bardo is a that's a high watermark to hit especially for a finale that has to wrap up so much chakai bardo is one of those episodes where like know, as I watch more and more, as the TV shows I watch stack up higher and higher and higher in my life of watching television, it is harder.
Like I can remember almost every single episode title name of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode like that, because that's like, I was fresh brained when I watched that show. But I've seen so many shows since that like I can't tell you the name of every single episode.
But Chikari Bardo, like the best episodes of Westworld, like the best episodes of whatever, I'm not going to forget that title. And it's going to come up as a reference when we talk about how do you do flashback episodes? How do you bring to the fore a character who has been in the background? You know, like there's a lot of things that are accomplished at the highest level that has now entered my personal vocabulary when I talk about shows going forward.
You know? I absolutely know. And we will be returning to that parlor game of making you recite Buffy episodes based on titles.
And we're not going to stop at, you know, you Zeppos and the GIFs. We got to do some deep cuts.
Yeah, I can do that. There's a lot of things I can't do, but that's a thing I can do, Rob.
YouTube content coming soon. Putting Joanna under the interrogation lights and making her name Buffy episodes.
I'm currently under them in the void. You act like I'm not constantly under them.
Okay, back on topic. Let's talk about, we had a lot of people's questions about, obviously Cold Harbor, no clear, clear, clear answer of everything that's going on there.
But we had a lot of people ask about a couple factors. One, if Mark is refining data on Gemma.
Yes, what the hay are the other refiners refining? I don't know. Me neither.
I really don't know. And I'm not sure the show knows.
Yeah, I'm not sure either. I think this is what's confusing.
As of Ja'Kai Bardo, I was kind of wondering, are some of these other rooms that other MDR employees have completed? Some of the more generalized anxieties, for example. Being nervous on a plane, having turbulence.
That's something that anyone could infer about putting a stress test for a potential severance chip. The things that were so specialized, like the writing of the thank you notes, that was straight out of Mark's head, straight out of Mark's memory.
But it seems like he created all 25 of those rooms that Gemma was put through, that created all 25 of those innies. At least that's my feeling based on the finale.
100%. The other question is, is there another trapped person, trapped woman down there? Would it be scientifically sound to have Mark as the person most emotionally connected to Gemma be the one working on her data while the other people are working on someone that they are a stranger to? How much do you have to know the person in order to refine their data? And as it turns out, you have to know them pretty well, apparently.
How much does Lumenumen care about the scientific method? Like, do we need a control group for these things? Or are these goat people just like, whatever, wing it. If it works, it works.
I think I don't respect Maurer's scientific approach. But for some reason, I maybe respect Harmony Cobell a bit more.
This is kind of loopy at times, too. I'm going to be honest with you.
Like, a woman in STEM. She's quite accomplished.
It's not not loopy. It's not not loopy, Rob.
The candle move. But like, I feel like she's, I feel like my sense going back through those Harmony scenes that we did when we covered that episode, it felt very much like she was deeply dissatisfied with the work that Mauer was doing.
And she's like, you're doing it wrong. I got to do it my own sneaky way because you guys don't know what you're doing in terms of like reintegration is a thing.
Like, have you tried sense, like smell stimulation? I'm going to get this candle and put it in a room and see what I can see. So that's one question.
What are the other refiners refining? We don't know. Because it's not just MDR, obviously, at this location.
Oh, yeah, there's multiple branches. MDR is an international sensation.
So what are we doing? What is anybody doing at Lumen? It's a question that begs to be answered. But while we're talking about Harmony's place in this and kind of her scientific approach, Anne emailed us, why is it in Harmony's interest to help Mark rescue Gemma? We talked last week, Joe, about kind of these allies of convenience, right? This idea that Harmony wants something here.
And what is it that she's after? And Anne asked, you know, some people think that it's simply revenge for being fired, but this seems wrong to me. Her desire to thwart Cold Harbor is not recent.
She was whispering in Mark's ear, urging him to quit way back in season one at the book party. It seems like she hasn't liked this Cold Harbor project or has had conflicted feelings about it since way before they fired her.
I thought this was an interesting point. I also think if I were to pick any threads of the show in which maybe they didn't have the clearest idea of where things were going to go season to season.
Harmony is the one that jumps out to me. There's so much in her dialogue and her motivations and her behavior in season one that I don't know tracks perfectly.
You know, we definitely learned a lot having seen where she came from, knowing that she created the severance chip. But Harmony is so all over the place in season one in a way that I don't think can be totally squared i and i believe based on interviews that patricia arquette has given and some of the um behind the scenes folks have given i think they hadn't fully found what they wanted harmony to be totally initially i it's not i know that they i know that they have said and i believe because i have heard from people that they overarching plan for the show.
Yes. So I don't think they know where they want to land.
Yeah, they know the endpoints. Right.
The path they take to get there is something that should, in television, bend and curve. But it's nice when those bends and curves all connect.
And sometimes they can feel a little forced inside of a thing. So what is harmony's motivation i thought i thought that dan's answer that he gave to your question about sort of like harmony's feelings about mark was interesting definitely um okay so what are the other refiners refining we talked about that um how can this is a common question we got how how can a crib in a room, Billie Holiday or no, be more of a test to Gemma than Miss Casey sitting down with Mark for a session or sitting on the MDR floor all day? Yes.
And, you know, your mileage may vary.

If you think the stimulus of being in front of your husband

is more painful or more of a test

than the stimulus of being reminded of the pains of infertility,

I think that's a subjective question.

Totally fair.

Subjectivity doesn't have a lot of place in science necessarily, but if they think that the crib and everything that goes with it is the most painful circumstance that they can put together for her, I believe that that's something that they might believe to be true. Yeah.
Well, also, they're not explicitly the ones putting it together for her. I think it makes sense that in a way, it's almost like the crib itself is almost more of a mark test than it is a Gemma test because we see him in conjunction with the crib and Shikai Bardo.
He's the one who brings it home. He's the one who is disassembling it, right? And so this idea that he's creating a painful memory that might also be painful to Gemma, but one that's a little bit outside of her lived experience, to me works in this way because if you were to put Gemma in that scenario of taking apart the crib, she's not only thinking of the fertility struggles she went through overall and the miscarriage, she's also thinking about her relationship to Mark and the effect that it had on them collectively.
So it's the miscar's the miscarriage. It's all of the things in fertility, but it's also- It's a true twofer.
A true torturous twofer. Diabolical stuff, I have to say, straight from the brain of Mark Scout.
One last thing I want to mention on the sort of Cold Harbor testing front. We got a lot of versions of this email, but I really like this one that came from Matthew.
The gist of which is that Mark S. passed Cold Harbor.
In that he says, Mark demonstrated he was fully severed from his external trauma. His wife is screaming, yearning for him, and it didn't matter to him.
His life is fully severed from the most significant trauma of his Audi. In choosing to stay, he's actually the one that passed Cold Harbor, showing the pain of the Audi is fully divorced from his life and experience.
What do you think of that? I think it's a great point. I think overall, all the dynamics between the various Marks and Gemmas that we see in this finale is such a great construction to have of all of their various reveals, all of their moments of recognition and not recognition.
And I want to talk about some of that from Gemma's point of view as well as we go through these questions. Of course, yeah.
But yeah, the fact that Mark is ultimately tested in this way and chooses something he knows to be true, and I say that in literal and emotional terms, only on the severed floor. He's choosing his severed existence over this existence that he's been told about but doesn't fully understand.
And I guess technically has glimpsed through the overtime contingency, but that's a world that's totally foreign to him. And the idea that you can put a person in this situation, tell them all of these facts about their outside life in a way that should stoke some kind of memory, some kind of recollection, give them all the smells you're talking about, Joe, that they could possibly want to evoke those memories, and yet they're still going to pick the person and the life that they found on the severed floor.
That's a really powerful bit of technology, I got to say. What do you want to say about Gemma's point of view? I want to segue into another email we got from Caitlin, who talked about a bit of a personal story.
Specifically, this is from Caitlin's email. Six years ago, my father was hospitalized for a very serious injury.
And as part of his treatment, he had a reaction to a drug that caused him to hallucinate for 24 hours. I stayed with him all day while he spoke absolute nonsense, completely out of character for my usually stoic dad.
He hardly recognized me, and I barely recognized him either. He was just some confused, scared old man.
I often think of it as one of the hardest days of my life. But the next day, the drugs had worn off and I could tell the second I walked in the room.
I really cannot describe why or how I could tell so quickly, but it was an immediate relief. I think there's something completely ineffable about the way we know the people we love.
I know Mark would have understood the Gemma in the Cold Harbor room was an innie, but I think it's fair to think he couldn't have been sure that the hallway Gemma would have been his. Just layers of severance down there, but he saw her immediately.
Not to throw shade at Helly, but it's something Mark missed in her earlier in the season. A newer romance and a weaker bond, I suppose, Caitlin says, which I thought this was such a beautiful email and such an interesting thought to kind of project onto severance, this idea of how we know the people we know.
And specifically, I want to kind of apply it to our interpretation of this scene in the finale, where by the logic of the story, Gemma does not know that Mark is severed at all. She has been on the testing floor.
She doesn't know what his process of grief has been like. She doesn't know that he lost his job at the university, that he went so hard on the alcohol, that he's had such a hard time.
She doesn't know anything about his life since she disappeared, presumably, other than what Dr. Maurer has told her, true or not.
And so when she sees a man who she should recognize as her husband, picking this other woman, who she may or may not know as Helena Egan, that should be her mark by the logic of the story, or at least what we understand Gemma to know. And I think what's filling in the gaps of that scene, and Deeshan Lockman has talked about this, is that to her, not unlike Britt Lauer's clarification, she sees that as she can immediately tell that this is not exactly her mark, that this is a different version of that person making a different choice.
And the pain that she's going through and feeling and expressing is not the pain of my husband is betraying me, but of so desperately trying to coax and break through to the severed version of him and get him through the door.

um i i saw her talk about this on the they did a paley fest uh panel on friday last friday and she she spoke about that on the red carpet this idea that like she knows right away

that this is a severed mark because her mark Friday, last Friday, and she spoke about that on the red carpet, this idea that she knows right away

that this is a severed

mark because her mark

would not do this.

Also, she has at least the

seconds of information of

the switch that happens in the elevator

when she has to be, you know,

who's pulling whomst, when and

where.

But I also thought that was really interesting because we got a lot of emails from people saying, Oh my God, think of it from Gemma's point of view. She must now think what Dr.
Maurer said was true that Mark has moved on, that he does have a family with someone else, all this sort of stuff like that. And, and, and at least what this performer is saying, and sometimes a performer interpretation is not at the end of the day, the writer thinks.
Totally. But from her interpretation, she knows that that's not her mark.
And I also found that really powerful. And I really loved that email from Caitlin.
So thanks so much for reading it out. And, you know, all of our listeners all season and across all of our shows, I feel really lucky about the stories that they share with us.
About what About what they get out of this stuff. And that's the thing about something like Severance, and I will say bigger picture sci-fi fantasy in general, when, you know, more articulate people than me have said this before, but when you engage in a story that works on a big, loud, weird genre level, it's almost the further it gets away from our real lived experience, the closer it actually can feel to your specific experience because, you know, no one has ever experienced severance.
Right. So then it becomes what can you put on top of this story of severance that makes it feel personal to you?

And I think that's why, despite some people feeling they don't feel emotionally connected to this story, a lot of people feel tremendously emotionally connected to this story. And Caitlin's email is a great example of that.
And the number of people who have emailed us, Joe, over the course of the season about their fertility journeys. and specifically, you know, as we were trying to negotiate,

is this something that Gemma would have unwittingly or wittingly signed up for? Would she have, in the effort to get pregnant, in the effort of not having any alternatives for something she so desperately wanted, would she have turned to Lumen in some way and disappeared at the end of Chakai Bardo and kind of let herself down here? I think a lot of the emails we got from people about their own journeys helped kind of illuminate specifically for me, this idea of how worn down you get through that process, how desperate and how much you reach that sort of point of bargaining that we've been talking about of like, I would do anything for this to work. And including like, would you be willing to give up some other aspects of your life? Would you be willing to give it up thinking you might be able to get it back, but you would have this thing you so desperately wanted? I think those are such interesting ideas.
And as you said, you can tap into them in a human sense in any drama, but you can tap into them in this very different, I think severance at its most limiting can be a little clinical for some people. but when you have elements of this kind of emotion injected into it, like how can, how can Gemma's journey feel clinical at the end of the day?

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just,

I just, most limiting can be a little clinical for some people. But when you have elements of this kind of emotion injected into it, how can Gemma's journey feel clinical at the end of the day? I don't understand that read on the show because I think the emotion is coming up through the seams.
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Terms and more at applecard.com. I want to talk about this concept that a couple of our listeners hit on in their emails about the childlike nature of the innie versus the outie.
So one email that you pulled from Kelly, who is a YA book editor, said, in the books I work on about teen relationships, all written by adults, we're constantly putting ourselves back in the headspace of a teen in their first real relationship. It's so easy to be dismissive of those relationships now, but when you're in it, it's all consuming.
Audi Mark's condescending suggestion that Mark S., quote, likes someone, and any Mark's immediate declaration that he loves her feels so true to this. Adults don't understand our relationship.
Screw them. That's part of what makes our love so big.
The adults slash Audis are jaded and don't remember what this feels like. And I really love that email.
And I also love this email we got from Devin about Dylan. Yes.
And how Dylan helps sort of illuminate this, the Dylons conversation. We didn't spend a ton of time talking about the Dylons, though we brought it up with Dan, certainly.
But Devin said, what I think is so beautiful about the interaction between the Innie and Audiie versions of Dylan is that outie Dylan, as the quote adult in this situation, decides to sit down and work some stuff out with his innie. I think outie Dylan actually displays the most humanity for his innie because he has a conversation with him and then gives him the choice.
As far as outie Dylan is concerned, his innie could read this note and still want to resign, in which case outie Dylan would still be out of a job. And we saw earlier this season how hard it was for him to find any other work.
Still, he puts the ball in his innie's court, the one example of an Audi giving an innie full and undivided control over a choice that affects both of their lives. And I love that observation from Devin.
And the one thing that I want to add to that is like, is Dillon of all of the Audis that we've seen irving aside because he doesn't but like versus helena versus mark scout dylan's a dad and not only a dad but like a dad we constantly see engaging with his kids and there's ways in which gretchen is frustrated by that because it kind of feels like in some of these scenes she's just just got another kid at home. Right.
But like Dylan's outie is a guy who's just like regularly interacting with children and understanding what it is to parent and compassionately parent, it seems like. Yeah.
And so, you know, Mark Scout as someone who has like no experience and no ability to think about his innie in that way. We also got an email from a listener that you and I both did not particularly love that was talking about how, actually we got a couple emails from people talking about how like innies are not people and they don't deserve any rights.
And I just, I don't understand. It's a take, Joe.
It's certainly a take. I don't understand which show you're watching or why you're watching it.
Like that's not, that's not what the story is about. It's certainly a take.
I don't know if it's in which show you're watching or why you're watching it. Like, that's not what the story is about.
It's not about, I don't know. I'm shocked and appalled, honestly, by those takes.
Yeah, I think, look, Severance raises a lot of interesting ideas about identity and personhood and kind of where those lines end between the different versions of yourself. I cannot find any read of this show that would corroborate the idea that people like Dylan or Helly R, for example, do not have a legitimate right to exist.
And we got many emails that suggested this to be the case. Yeah, I was stunned.
What else do you want to say on this sort of in-e-and-out-y relationship front or adults versus more childlike versions or any of that. I think a lot of the stuff specifically with Mark is what's fueling some of the kind of shipping-based reaction to the finale that we've seen, where both Marks, in effect, are making really emotional decisions.
Even Mark Scout is so weighed down by his grief and so desperate to get Gemma back that we talked about all the ways in which he maybe doesn't make the best plea to Mark as far as like cooperating with the plan, why maybe he should have approached things a different way. But like he's in a very tough situation himself.
Mark, as on the floor, I love this conceptualization of it as like a teenage sort of romance and the intensity that comes with that. Like this is something that John Green has talked about a lot in terms of the way he constructs his books

and why the emotions are

as overwhelming as they are.

And of course they would be.

It absolutely makes sense that they would be.

And this is why,

even if you really want

Mark and Gemma to end up together

at the end of the day

and have a life together

outside the severed floor,

the emotional decision

that Mark S makes,

choosing the only life

and the only love he's ever known,

what could be more relatable than that?

I can't believe we got here.

Rob Mahoney invoking a fiction author, talking about fiction.

I've invoked other fiction authors in the past, but it's mostly been like,

fuck Charles Dickens and not here's this thing John Green said.

So we all contain multitudes, Joe.

Okay, listen. And at the end of the day, that's what you believe.
Fuck Charles Dickens and not here's this thing John Green said. So we all contain multitudes, Joe.
Okay, listen. And at the end of the day, that's what you believe.
Fuck Charles Dickens, John Green, a master of his craft, and who would disagree with you? One of those guys gets it, you know? All right. Let's briefly talk about sort of the conflicting Totoro reports.
I've been trying to put together all the information that I can, including some behind the scenes information that I got from some people about sort of what's going on with John Turturro slash Irving on this show. Turturro himself.
I think many people who have worked with John Turturro over the years have been trying to figure out what's been going on with John Turturro. He's a mercurial kind of guy, it feels like.
Is he? Because what I will say is that I've never heard a bad thing about... I don't mean a

bad thing. I just mean he's

doing his thing. He's doing his thing

and it may not always 100% align

with this other thing that we are trying to

accomplish. Right.
So here's

the deal. Turturro gave an interview

to my pal Josh Wigler

at THR about

how there's more

that he would like to do with Irving, that there's more of Irving's story to tell, all this sort of stuff. We've made it very clear based on the phone conversations they show this season that we would be, feel not only bereft because we love John Turturro and we love Irving, but we would feel like this is a real thread.
Years later, people love to enumerate the many questions that Lost didn't answer. And I will tell you, if Severance ends without anything, the who was Irving talking to on the phone is going to be on that list of if Irving doesn't come back.
When Dan was talking to us, it sounded to me like he felt like they were done with Irving's story. Potentially, yeah.
What I've heard from some sources is that Totoro is not going to be on the show anymore, that Irving is not going to be in season three. How do we square that with what Totoro said in THR? I think we have to go back to sort of my initial response, which is that this seemed like an open-ended place to put a character.
Yes. Where it's sort of like, if the actor is not getting along very well with the production, and again, I want to say very clearly, Totoro has no history of not getting along with people.
He's not considered a difficult performer. That's not what we're intimating at all.
But if you know, if they're like, hey, man, we can bring you back or not, it's kind of up to you how much you want to be here. That's kind of where they left it.
Could Irving come swooping in later and do something? Yes, but kind of only if Tutoro... Tutoro being kind of out on severance to a certain degree was kind of clear from the moment he did not show up to Grand Central Station, which we flagged at the beginning of the year.
So I don't know. It's been messy.
I've heard some conflicting results, reports. Totoro seems to want to do more.
Whether or not Severance has more to do with him remains unclear, you know? We certainly hope it does. I love Irving.
I love so many of the components that he brings to the show. And what is always interesting is when an Irving-shaped character disappears after a couple seasons, do they try to replace the presence with some other kind of version of that character, right? Is there a replacement on the MDR floor? Is there someone from another department who they bump into who kind of becomes a part of this sort of core clique.
It's a very tempting enterprise. And I'm curious to see how Severance handles that sort of thing going forward.
Bob Balaban, what are you doing? What are you up to? He's right there on the phone in Grand Rapids, ready to jump. You give this guy some corporate housing, he will be there.
Yeah, he'll break his lease once again for you, for your needs. Okay.
The meaning of I'm her.

We got a bunch of emails about this, and this is like a really interesting proposition. In this scene, one of the scenes that we really enjoyed, which is this sort of very intimately lit cubicle scene between Mark S.
and Hallie R. when he's finishing Cold Harbor.
By the way, sidebar, Adam Scott has said that he based, sort of looked for inspiration for the sort of the not furiously making out yet sort of feeling like you're furiously making out energy from the telephone scene in It's a Wonderful Life.

And I sent this to one of my best friends who I used to work with at Vanity Fair.

We rewatch independently on different coasts It's a Wonderful Life every year at Christmas.

And every year we talk about how we think that telephone scene is one of the sexiest scenes that has has ever existed basically if you've never seen it's a wonderful life what are you doing with yourself or um if you don't re-watch it religiously every year that's that's me i'm in that camp yeah um you have donna reed and jimmy stewart with their ridiculously high difference differences uh sort of crouched over sharing a sort of, like, handheld, old-timey telephone. And they are within, like, breathing distance of it.
And they're, like, theoretically talking on the phone, but really they're just sort of, like, looking at each other and, like, kind of panting, honestly. And they're just sort of, like, it's the moment that they decide to, like, screw all of their life plans and be together.

But like the scene goes on and on and it's just them like carrying on a different conversation, but like just looking at each other and making this decision in their heads. And so top tier reference from Adam Scott for invoking that for this scene.
But in terms of Heli saying, I'm her, what is your interpretation of what she, you know, we talked about this a bit in our previous episode, but based on the various reactions we got from our listeners or interviews you've seen with cast and crew, what's your interpretation of what that line means? Given where Heli R is at that point in time and what they're talking about, I take it a little bit more literally than I think some other people do. Like, I take it as her trying to nudge Mark that, look, we're fucked.
Like, this is cosmically messed up and I am never going to be able to get out of here, but you might be able to, right? Like, you might be able to go reintegrate, but I am Helena Egan at the end of the day. And that she changes her mind about that.
Yes. Via exposure to marching band.
Doesn't necessarily change your mind too. Like I think what's so great about this finale and specifically the final scene is that Severance can have its cake and eat it too a little bit.
Like they got Gemma out the door. Mission accomplished.
It wasn't exactly in the fine print that Mark also needed to go out the door. And so it's like they can have their runaway moment and their ability to extend this love

and this relationship for as long

as they can get away with it on the severed floor.

But they also did the thing that they set out to do.

And the thing that I think many people

looking at the show see as being an objective right,

like saving this woman from captivity and torture

is an objective good.

But once you do that,

there's a little bit of wiggle room as far as like what do we want within the context and the construct of this show? There are three, as I see it, interpretations of the line, I'm her. There's the one you just enumerated, which is sort of like, I'm Helen Egan.
So we, there's no future for me. There's no reintegration for me.
There's no honeymoon ending for me. Right? Okay.
I'm her in the sort of SAT prompt way, which is like, Mark Scout is to Gemma as Mark S is to Helly, right? Sure, yeah. That's a thing that exists.
Like, think, you know, when it comes to your certainty of whether or not to rescue her, just put yourself in his shoes. I'm her.
I'm the Gemma of the situation. Okay.
And then the last but not least, and this is the one I kind of favor. I kind of favor all of them, honestly.
But the last one kind of ties back to what I was saying about the Helena, the inner Helena sort of emerging. It was just sort of like, I'm her as in I've got some Helena inside of me and I can wreck some shit if I need to.
So all that's in the mix. I don't know if this is a fourth interpretation or a sub bullet point off that third interpretation, but we talked about your credentials as an aspiring ball knower last week, Joe.
In this context, not uncommon for basketball. I got so many messages from like genuine real life

friends and family who were like, why was Rob giving you such a hard time about this? And I

was like, no, I mean, it's not like that. Honestly, Rob is a delightful person who would never

genuinely mock me. Of course not.
But anyway, go ahead. You are an NBA podcaster.
It's on record.

You're on video asking NBA questions of Damon Lindelof.

That's out there in the world.

But as far as not uncommon for an NBA player in a moment of triumph to announce I'm him,

is this an I'm her and an I am that bitch kind of way?

You need to acknowledge my command and my supremacy of this moment and the impact that I have not only on you, but on the entirety of this floor. She is her.
Capital H, her. I'm her, the Oscar-winning music artist.
I am her, the underrated Joaquin Phoenix sci-fi film. I mean, if that's underrated, we failed as a society.
We have bigger problems. I think people should rate that movie higher.
Okay. What about all the emails we got? We have one here from Evan, but we got a number of emails about this.
Why didn't Audi Mark, in the conversation with any Mark, ever say, Hey, remember your friend Petey? I know him, and I talked to him, and he reintegrated. Don't worry about what happened next.
Yeah, this is the thing. It's fine.
Don't bring up subjects in which you have to overtly lie about the answer because the follow-up is, oh, what happened to Petey? How's he doing? Why isn't he here? And it's, oh, that dude is absolutely dead. That dude's super dead.
That dude is super dead for reasons that have to do with the reintegration process. And we have no empirical proof that it actually works.
And later someone drilled a hole in his head to remove the very chip. All of that happened.
So yeah, perhaps that's a reason to not invoke Petey. But I do think there's a way in which Petey could have been invoked in a way that might have satisfied audiences, but not completely screwed Mark over in his recruitment here.
Also, will we ever hear reference of Petey ever again on this show? I honestly don't know. Like, he may just be one of these threads and, like, little facts of season one that kind of fall, like, melt into the sauce, so to speak.
Petey's daughter, I still want more for her and from her. Okay.
From her band? Speaking of bands. Was she seeing the band or was she in the band? I think she's in the band, isn't she? Okay, I hope so.
I hope she, whatever she puts her mind to, I hope she's having a great life. Let's talk about a marching band.
Let's talk about the Goon Squad or lack thereof, etc. Let's talk about staffing at Lumen HQ.
Where do you want to start with this? I want to start with the goons because we got a great email from Rachel proposing that the reason why Lumen might be as understaffed as it is relative to our expectations for keeping all of these innies in check was that it is a panopticon-style structure in which the point is the surveillance and the intimidation and the idea that you are watched at all times, right? These like Lumen is, luminous watching kind of concept and the way that we internalizing that fear, keep ourselves in line as a result. And I got to say, I think this is right on the money, Joe.
That's part, I think that's part of it. I love a panopticon invocation.
Jeremy Bentham, who came up with that concept. if you're listening at home

that's a lost reference

but like

I also think

this idea

because everyone who's on the severed floor is severed

this is a question people had

the people in O&D are severed

we know that because of Burt

the marching band I guess is severed

we're gonna have to talk about that

I would assume so

but I don't know

the logistics of that are

it's a quagmire to say the least

Thank you. severed we're gonna have to talk about that i i i would assume so but i don't know the logistics of that are are uh it's a quagmire to say the least um our listener q said very minor minor detailed question but i find it mind-boggling is the marching band severed if not is there a larger elevator so that it's not one in one out if severed how long have they been practicing this are they held to the same arrival standards as mdr 10 to 15 minute of arrival time? That must take forever.
I'll hang up and listen. That's what, like a 30-piece band? They've got ranks.
They have a whole formation of people that they've got to get up and down those elevators. Yeah.
So if everyone's severed, is the idea that severance makes you so docile that this shouldn't be a problem? That's something I could swallow in season one, but after the events at the end of season one, the fact that they haven't hired a few goons, it kind of feels like in terms of managing the severance floor, it's almost like the rule of the Sith in Star Wars. There must always be two, a master and apprentice, but like no more, right? Well, they had three.
They had Miss Wong in there. I was thinking Miss Wong and Milchick.
I guess Drummond is like... Drummond, yeah.
He's kind of bouncing between floors, to be fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I don't know. And I understand that the work is mysterious and important, and you want to make sure that as few people know about it as possible.
But I still think if it were up to me, I would have hired a goon or two. Well, I think the other part of this that we have to acknowledge is just straight up hubris on the part of Lumen.
They're like, oh, we can keep these people controlled. They're not actually going to fight back.
And then, you know, some emailers also raise the idea of staffing issues of just like, severance itself we have seen is quite unpopular in the outside world. There's a lot of resistance to the idea.
I would still believe that there'd be people desperate enough for steady work, especially in

Kier doesn't seem like the most well-to-do

place in the world. Like, somebody must need a job.

So I would think they could

still staff it if they really needed to, but

let's throw it out there.

Also on the

marching band front,

I just want to shout out Georgia's email

because Georgia says, does Kier have a large enough population of coordinated brass enthusiasts? Yes. And that's just an incredible phrase.
To form a choreography and merriment department or do these innies learn how to doggie and play trombone on the severed floor? And if so, would their outies be able to play trombone on the outside? Georgia, incredible question. My thought is this has to be a severed skill that they are learning on the severed floor, but also where are you doing band practice down there in a way that no one's ever going to hear one of these trombones? Like no one's ever going to hear the drum line? That stuff is going straight through a soundproof wall.
I don't know. I mean, I feel like if any place, because we saw the goats, we haven't been hearing the bleeding of the goats.
I feel like Lumen... I think drumline and goats are at slightly different decibel levels.
I could be wrong, but I have questions. My other question was, do the people on the severed floor know what a marching band is? Do Dylan and Helly know what a marching band is? and even if they do, when the marching band comes in, isn't this the first time they've ever heard live music before? And if so, why are they not reacting like breathless aristocrats listening to Mozart play a sonata in a parlor somewhere? Isn't this a powerful emotional moment for them? They've got a lot on their mind.
I mean, perhaps that is the excuse we can give to Mark that he lingered so long before he took off for the testing floors. He was like, what is this feeling I'm feeling? You know, it's day whatever, 45 of Rob and Joanna asking the questions of what do the severed people actually know or don't know in terms of like, what does wind feel like versus whatever else? So it remains slightly unclear to me.
On the choreography and merriment front, we got some emails about Milchick. First of all, Tramiel Tillman, there's this image floating around from his yearbook about how he was in marching band and in when he was in high school charming absolutely um everything about that man is charming every interview every appearance like tramelle tillman cannot help but kill it um but also the the way in which this band um invokes the culture of the hbcu the historically black colleges Black Colleges and Universities, and how that might even more feed into whatever it is that they...
Your mileage may vary. We have heard from people on both sides of this, but their effort to engage with his racial identity as part of his storyline this season.
And his frustrations as a character in that moment where Milchick is not severed. He's out there putting in the work, learning these routines.
He clearly takes a lot of professional pride in his ability to perform under these circumstances. And so I thought this was a great point in terms of the HBCU connection in particular and as an expression of blackness for that character.
Just something we did not talk about coming out of the finale pod so i'm really glad we have the opportunity to circle back on i think it's a great call and also like it is clear whether in the initial dancing sequence in season one in this performance in season two like milchik does care about this stuff like he is dead sprinting down the hall to get in costume to to hit his marks, to do the whole drum major thing.

It's an important part of his life.

And so the idea that he is being thwarted by his own employees who just refuse to acknowledge the specificity and the precision of his marching brilliance.

Like, I can connect with that idea 100%.

I also want to bring up, as we're talking about racial identity, I want to bring up this really interesting email we got from Kat about sort of social class inside of this story, which is not something we've talked about, but is something that is so key to understanding any kind of like worker rebellion, which is what we're witnessing here. And something that Kat pointed out that hadn't occurred to me, I think is so smart, is that Mark and Gemma were professors.

They were intellectuals.

They were part of an upper echelon of society. And the way in which that positions Mark, leaving Gemma aside, positions Mark as someone who comes from privilege and has some privileged attitudes that some of the other characters might not.
So Kat wrote, Scout is similarly to Helena, a privileged man who had largely in his life escaped the druggery of the working class. It's very interesting that he started as a professor and is brought, quote, down to the factory, as it were, whereas the other characters we see are very much raised to it.
He's not only allied to Heliar, but to Helena. In terms of class solidarity, I think the show does something very interesting in showing their chemistry on both sides.
Lumen, like real-world corporates, is not interested in his workers to the extent that they must source the subjects of their most important project from outside the company. I think the writing with Dylan, I agree less successfully, Milchick and Miss Wong, communicates the economy of that life successfully.
Dylan and Milchik are both Black men who are forced to fight for a life that is designed to destroy their spirit, their identity. Milchik's greatest humiliation in the series is being called by his first name, a humanizing representation of the individual he's been groomed to abandon.
Dylan in his purest form is strong, assertive, proactive, and poor Miss Wong is denied her final performance and sent off to not quite Siberia without her comfort toy. We see the extent to which trying to survive on the outside has tricked him of their positive qualities.
The same is true with Milchik's use of language. There's such a richness to the portrayal of an extremely educated Black man being mocked for that education.
The goalposts are always moving. So I really love inside of the,

the,

the racial identity questions,

which we've been talking about all season with Natalie,

with Milchick,

um,

with Dylan to a certain degree with Ms.

Wong,

um,

with,

with Gemma as Kat invokes later in this email and how that interacts with

social class,

the social class element, thinking of Mark as like a professor who has, you know, moved from his like well-appointed home into this soulless corporate housing and has sort of accorded, according to the other intellectuals, like the people that we met, via Rickon sort of, you know, doomed himself to drudgery or whatever the case may be. That's not how I think about office work necessarily, but that is something that is definitely part of Mark's decision here, to abandon one life for another, which I think is interesting.
And I think it's ultimately maybe one of the reasons why, when we're talking about the differences in the way Mark thinks about Innies versus Dylan, that Dylan is more sympathetic, right?

Like that he, his station is maybe not so different from his Innies in a lot of different ways. He's been looked over.
He's been taken advantage of. He's been going in and out of job interviews for how knows, who knows how long.
And ultimately has to take this job because he needs money and he needs stable work. And so he is subjecting himself to this in a totally different way than Mark, who kind of just wants like a psychic break from the grief and the pain that he's dealing with, which is a totally different consideration set.
Totally. Versus someone like Harmony, who like came from the factories, has been raised up, up, up to this management position.
All right, what else do you want to talk about, Rob? I want to circle back to one more kind of consistency, continuity, like a logistical question about the way that the testing floor worked that I saw a lot of people asking questions about, which is specifically the idea that when Mark enters the Cold Harbor room, his Annie is not triggered in the way that Gemma's is. And we don't get a lot of concrete examples as to why, but I think this question kind of hits at something that is specific to Gemma that I think is worth answering, which is as much as we think of Mark as Lumen Jesus, I think Gemma is such a specific and powerful figure for Lumen that those rooms are kind of attuned to a different frequency.
This is just my read on it than the regular Severed Flores, that there is something about her kind of 25 innies subconsciousness that requires a different level of hardware. That's a specialized chip that she has in her head that maybe is different from Mark's.
Yeah, I think that's really interesting. That makes sense to me.
Not everything necessarily makes sense after in terms of the elevator. Basically, his chip, the only thing about his chip that is true is that it works on the severed floor.
And that's how his chip is programmed. And that Gemma's fancier, more advanced chip works differently.
That all makes sense to me. Someone did bring up to me that Mark S's experience is that he goes down the elevator holding the bolt gun to Drummond and comes up making out with his therapist, which I thought was just an incredible turn of events for that character.
He's been going through a lot. I also like the observation a lot of people have made that the question of who killed Drummond is nobody.
The blood is all over both of them and yet their hands are clean. Severance? The concept of severance killed it's true we also got this email from terry that i really liked about in in terms of relating to the the goon squad and lack thereof terry says in this in this last episode really struck me how much lumen invests in religion to its own detriment of the departments we know about only mdr's work is fully committed to the quote science of severance while optics and design is a mix managing objects used in severance testing, but also things like cure-focused paintings.
I used to think the investment in religion was to help make the innies into better workers. For instance, the perpetuity wing was supposed to give them a sense of purpose.
But now we see that the goat and band departments are completely useless from that perspective. Most of the people hired in the underground floors contribute to ceremonies that occur after the, quote, mysterious and important work is done.
Couldn't one of those departments have been used to beef up security instead? So I think that's interesting. The fact that the whole goat set up, and we didn't talk about this explicitly in terms of the conversation around Emil, the baby goat.
Yes. And the idea that he is- That he grow to be strong and have even more verve than we saw in the finale.
Sturdy-legged. That he is going to be killed so that he can be buried with a woman of great importance.
Yeah. I think it's a cherished woman is Drummond's language.
Entombed with a cherished woman. Entombed with a cherished woman.
What's your read on that line? I love an ambiguous line. The obvious answer is Gemma.
Yep. But could it be a helly of some? I mean, a helly thing doesn't make sense to me because like, I understand that Jamie Jamie Egan's like I see the fire in you and it wasn't there in my daughter Helena but like wouldn't he then just like keep Helly around rather than kill Helena which is what some people thought the implied move was there I don't think that he would want to kill Helena but I could see him like effectively kill but effectively kill her by keeping Heli around sort of thing.
And if the ultimate goal of Cold Harbor and Gemma's chip is to create a severance chip that's so powerful, it can basically wipe identity or completely subsume an identity. Is there a way that it could play a role in Heli becoming the default setting for Helena Egan versus Helena now that James is so kind of infatuated with the idea of her and the fire and the cure that he sees in her.
I think that could be part of the play here, but in that case, Entombed with a Cherished Woman would be purely a symbolic idea. That's like a ghost goat taking this consciousness into the afterlife.
And I don't know if we're going quite that far down the rabbit hole, but it's on the table. I do think it's worth questioning whether it has to be Gemma or whether there are some other interpretations here.
He died doing what he loved most, entombed with a cherished woman. Okay, I have a reading list that was, somebody literally asked me to put this together.
I didn't make anyone write this email. Somebody wrote it.
So any excuse I'll take. Anything you want to mention before we get to that? And then I think we should probably put this beloved TV show to bed.
One last thing to kind of circle back to Terry's email about the ideology versus kind of like purely capitalist corporate interests of Lumen. I think this is one of the richest ideas within Lumen proper itself.
You know, putting all the ideal, like Putting all the conceptual stuff aside as far as what severance means and identity and all the questions we've been wrestling through all season, all the show. There are a lot of very big organizations that have to invest in ideology in order to further their actual agenda.
It's a very potent way to get very fervent support. And I think for a company like Lumen to get a very willing and pliable workforce, to get people who believe in your mission wholeheartedly, even though they may not understand fully what that mission is.
And so things like the GOATS, to me, are either a remnant of that version of Lumen, that now these two threads have become so intertwined, they're basically inextricable. And also there does seem to be quite a level of investment on the Egan part of that, as far as like, even if the Eagans themselves don't believe in the mysticism around Lumen and its operations, they're at least fluent in it enough to parrot those things to the people who work for Lumen and to the people of Keir, of Saltzneck.
Like, the people who are ostensibly in their orbit in order to curry favor, to, again,

to bring more people into the factory, into the severed floor, this is a weaponized kind of ideology as much as anything. Yeah, I think that's really smart.
And I think as we look around our current, let's say, American society and the way in which these tech innovators are revered in some spheres.

I think it's a great cautionary tale. Okay.
Reading list. There's a nonfiction on here just for you, Rob Mahoney.
Wow, look at that. But mostly fiction.
Someone asked sort of like, if severance is done and I'm still jonesing for that severance vibe, or I want to continue to engage in these ideas,

what are some books I can read?

So I'll just go through some books that I've mentioned so far this season and other ideas as well.

Before you get into the actual books,

can I ask you a process question about this prompt?

Where's your starting point?

Are you thinking tone?

Are you thinking genre?

Are you thinking philosophical concepts?

Like where are you entering into this list? I started with books we specifically talked about this season, and then sort of extrapolated from there. And I came back to the list like three or four different times, and I was adding things that I think try to answer all of those prompts.
So something like Lincoln and the Bardo, which we talked about earlier this season as a good example of the concept of the Bardo by George Saunders or Escape from Spiderhead which is George Saunders story that a lot of our listeners invoked as similar in some way Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Never Let Me Go as a of people, if you prefer to think of it that way or not, who are basically invented and grown and farmed in order to be organ donors to, quote, real people. And so do those people who are grown and farmed, are they allowed to have wants and needs and desires in a life of their own? Are they allowed to fall in love? Are they allowed to all this stuff? Also, we should say for the nonfiction readers out there, the team Rob among us.
Yeah. Also very watchable in film form and a movie I quite like.
Yeah, great movie. A lot of these are movies actually.
Eurydice by Sarah Rule, the play that I talked about, quick read, great story about the underworld, about forgetting, all that sort of stuff. Story of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang.
Ted is one of the great sci-fi writers of our time, and Stories of Your Life and Others includes the story that Arrival is based on, a film that Rob Mahoney is... Fucking rips.
Fucking rips. Front to back emotional sci-fi storytelling.
Let's go. This is what we're here for, Joe.
This is why we play Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon of all the post-modernist novels about sort of like creepy secret societies and following clues down rabbit holes that have to do with like I don't know the mysterious iconography of our world Cry crying of lap 49 is one that i think about all the time that is a classic uh post-modern book um pure and easy by susanna clark which uh the animation studio laika is turning into a movie i don't know how they're going to do it but susanna clark who wrote jonathan strange and mr norrell uh pure and easy is a very disorientingly weird book that I had a great time with. It came out a couple of years ago.
And in terms of being lost in a maze somewhere, in terms of like minotaurs and all kinds of stuff and remembering yourself, memory and remembering yourself, Piranesi is a fucking bullseye. I also don't question what Laika is capable of.
As far as bringing a weird, ephemeral story to life, this is kind of the zone. The Southern Reach trilogy, which is now actually a quadrilogy by Jeff Vandermeer.
The first book, Annihilation, was turned into a film that Rob... Joanna Robinson.
Annihilation pod win. When are we doing it? How can we talk about this movie? Fucking rules so hard.
It's unbelievable. But the second book, Authority, is sort of even more engaging in the ideas of this world.
The Circle by Dave Eggers. This is a book that Eggers wrote that's, you know, Dave Eggers is a barrier, barrier boy, Dave Eggers.
So The Circle is about a shadowy tech corporation and blah, blah, loosely, very transparently based on Facebook and Google. And then to round it out with nonfiction, Sarah Wynne Williams just put out a book called Careless People, colon, A Cautionary Tale of Power, Green, and Lost Idealism about her time at Facebook.
And it is a book that Facebook is trying to suppress and they don't, I mean, what a great marketing tool. The book Facebook doesn't want you to read, but they have tried to sue her.
And she signed a non-disparagement clause, I think. So she's not allowed to promote her own book.
Interesting. So we're doing it.
Careless people calling a cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism. I actually heard that this podcast, the Prestige TV podcast, this is the pod that Lumen doesn't want you to hear.
We're the only people speaking truth to power. So please hang with us as we continue to talk about severance and otherwise.
All right. Well, severance, we did it.
Thank you for your literally thousands and thousands and thousands of emails that you've written to us about genuinely over the course of the season you guys all make it um just such a like a much richer experience for us in terms of bringing your various perspectives and areas of expertise into the conversation we love talking about television with you all um thanks to everyone who's helped us this season, be it Kai Grady, John Richter, Justin Sales, Donnie Beecham, if he perhaps filled in, CT, if he filled in, all of the people who have helped me hang out in the void with you, Rob Mahoney. It takes a village.
It takes a fully stocked floor of goons to get you into the void, Joe. It's true.
Whoever puts new LaCroix in the fridge here at the office. Completely.
All the people doing the great work. I hope we are back talking about Severance sooner than later.
Oh, yeah. But I have one final question for you along those lines, which is a notoriously long layover between seasons one and two, Joe.
If you're throwing a dart at the board right now, what is the premiere date for Severance Season 3?

Well, no.

They're going to want it for Emmys.

What would you say

is Emmy season? How can we construct

that and reverse engineer from

eligibility?

What has become

increasingly true is that they want to clog it in and around um early spring um so you know this is a january premiere this is so smart severance is so smart this season because they had january all to themselves and even as the as the field has gotten more and more crowded like they they got that toehold in and are just sort of you know the pit is here people care white lotus care. White Lotus is here and people care.
Daredevil is here. Yellow Jackets is here, blah, blah.
But like Severance is like we were here. We planted our flag.
So why, you know, why not? And they were a December to January show in season one. So like why not own your January beat? And I would say 2027.
January 2027 is what I see. What do you think? 2027 feels realistic Q1 2027 Q1 2027 January into February March if you prefer but like I think that's what we're looking at that's a long wait for a show like this that we love talking about so much but sometimes you have to wait for good things alright well thanks for sticking with us for this super sized episode of the Prest Prestige TV podcast.
We'll be back with White Lotus coverage, of course, with pit coverage, of course, and whatever else comes our way. We'll see you soon.
Bye!