As a sci-fi thriller with a dash of workplace comedy, “Severance” combines two very distinct genres. The enigmatic Lumon Industries, a corporation that uses a controversial technique known as t9he “severance treatment,” is the focus of this one-of-a-kind series. The spectacular ending of “Severance” Season 1 nevertheless leaves viewers with many unresolved concerns, despite the fact that the premise is quite obvious, and the series does an outstanding job of keeping the viewer informed about how this universe operates.
What precisely occurs in this confusing ending? Several things, the roots of which can be traced back to previous episodes. Rather than merely summarizing each Season 1 episode, we’ll look at the show’s basic elements to see how they come together in this dramatic finale. Whether you’re a die-hard fan who wants to relive the closing moments of Season 1 or a curious visitor who wants to know exactly how this series works before jumping in (and isn’t scared of spoilers), the following breakdown will answer all of your questions. This is Severance Ending Explained.
Severance Finale Explained
Harmony Corbel, a committed Lumon employee, oversees Macro data Refinement. Despite not appearing to have received the severance package, Harmony goes by a different name and has a different personality outside of work. She even lives next door to one of her employees, Mark. His outie has no idea how crucial she is in his life; she only knows her as Mrs. Selvig, the oddly absent-minded. She also looks to have unrequited affections for Mark, which she expresses in potentially harmful ways.
Seth Milchick is Harmony’s right-hand guy. Milchick appears to be a bright, pleasant young man who simply wants the best for everyone. His soft and caring personality, however, hides some major anger issues. He hasn’t been terminated, implying that his commitment to his employment comes from a true belief in the Eagans and a wish to see Lumon prosper at any costs.
Harmony is crushed by the mysterious board. The members of the board are never seen, and their words are only heard in frightening murmurs. Harmony is compelled to interact with them through Natalie, a strangely courteous woman. Natalie wears her headset all the time and appears to exist just to serve the board. Harmony & Milchick make every move to appease the board, but when they fire Harmony due to an employee’s attempted suicide, she goes insane. This makes sense: her gods have effectively rejected her.
Mark Scout and Mark S
Mark Scout (outie), as well as Mark S, are the leads in “Severance” (innie). Adam Scott plays both of them. Mark Scout is a lonely, drunken guy who is still mourning the death of his wife Gemma, who passed away two years ago in a car accident. Devon attempts to keep him straight, but her husband Ricken, a self-help guru, irritates him, so they don’t spend that much time together. Mark accepts to be severed for 8 hours a day in order to escape his grief.
Following the unexpected departure of his best buddy, Petey, Mark S is promoted to department chief. Though he’s enjoyed his time at Lumon, he’s concerned about his new duty. This is quickly compounded by a series of bizarre happenings. A new employee begins to ask questions that he is unable to answer. Petey had left a map of the building behind, which he discovers. A random workplace appears, where a man is watering goats. More the Mark S discovers about Lumon, the less satisfied he is with his job.
From the outside, a reincorporated Petey tracks down Mark’s outie and hides at his house while attempting to reconcile his two identities. Hearing Petey’s tales about what it’s like to work at Lumon makes Mark reconsider his decision to stay there even more. Mark decides to learn more about his company when Petey dies as a consequence of being reintegrated.
Helly R
The first “Severance” individual we meet is Helly R. She sits at a boardroom table with no recollection of how she arrived there. When a distant voice (Mark S) asks her questions regarding herself, she is surprised to learn that she has no idea who she is. She’s been hired to take over Mark’s position now that he’s taking care of Petey’s responsibilities. She despises Lumon from the beginning and regards her existence as forced labor. But, no matter how hard she tries to get away, her outie follows her.
Helly learns that her outie has no intention of letting her leave Lumon after attempting to cut off her fingers if she isn’t permitted to speak with her. The Macro data Refinement department as a whole sees a video of her outie saying, “I am a living being. You’re not one of them. I am the one who makes the decisions. You don’t get that.” Helly is so upset that she tries to commit suicide in the elevator. Because going in this elevator causes the personalities to separate, her purpose is to have her outie watch herself die. However, Helly is saved at the last minute and must return to work. Fortunately, her employees are beginning to wonder if leaving Lumon is such a smart decision, and they form an alliance.
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Dylan Learns The Truth
Lumon motivates its employees by providing them with incentives. These are colorful awards given to those that meet or exceed their target. Whether it’s finger traps or waffle celebrations, the rewards aren’t worth the effort required to obtain them. However, Dylan, Macro data Refinement’s extrovert, has made it his personal goal to collect as many rewards as possible.
Dylan appears to be a cocky know-it-all who is solely interested in receiving useless stuff, yet he is actually a Lumon lover. Dylan loses it when his coworker Irving starts meeting with an Optics & Design worker named Burt. To begin with, departments are not designed to work together. Second (and most importantly), Dylan thinks Optics & Design are responsible for the murders of multiple Macro data Refinement personnel and has little faith in them. But everything changes as he gets a preview of his life as an outcast. Dylan is no longer concerned with rewards or restrictions; his only goal is to permanently leave Lumon.
Irving and Burt
Irving loves Lumon with all his heart because it is the only place he has ever known. He is a firm believer in procedure and frequently quotes Lumon writings as if they were Bible phrases. The Perpetuity Wing is one of his top places to visit since it allows him to immerse himself in Eagan’s history.
Elements of his outie’s life eventually infiltrate his innie’s. He learns truths about his outie that leave him very happy when he meets with the strangely distant Lumon counselor Ms. Casey. He also has hallucinations of enormous volumes of black paint pouring from the ceilings and walls on occasion. This is due to the fact that his outie is an artist who invests a lot of time painting photos of Lumon’s feared break room, where workers are brutally disciplined.
Irving’s life is turned upside down when he meets Burt, an employee of Optics & Design. Irving seems to be drawn to Burt’s work at first, but their attraction quickly develops into a secret romance. Irving is sad when Burt’s outie retires: he can’t bear the notion that this great man is about to depart his life forever. He’s also very sure this has everything to do with Lumon learning about their connection, so he decides to fry Lumon to death.
Inspiring Book
When Macro data Refinement workers discover a duplicate of “The You You Are,” a book authored by Mark Scout’s brother-in-law Ricken, a lot of just what occurs in the “Severance” Season 1 ending begins. Ricken had originally put it as a gift on Mark’s front door. His neighbor steals it and brings it to work for Milchick to read in order to discover whether it has any secret meanings. While walking the halls, the Macro data Refinement team discovers it in a board room chair.
Mark S maintains it hidden in his desk despite knowing he should give it in. He reads it in the restroom when he feels no one is looking. The writing is a touch cheesy and self-indulgent, but it’s a breakthrough for Mark S. Several sentences, in particular, have an impact on him, stating that people should be recognized by their personal experiences rather than their professional lives. Dylan discovers the book in Mark’s desk and is moved by it as well.
While most individuals in the outside world will probably dismiss this book as half-baked gibberish, it will change the lives of the sheltered and underprivileged innies. It’s also a lot more enlightening than the false doctor’s appointments they had with boring Ms. Casey. They are able to construct a scheme that will help them to get the truths about Lumon out thanks to Ricken’s writing.
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Mark Sees His Kid
Dylan finds and grabs a card while Macro data Refinement gathers with Optics & Design to fix stuff up and review what Lumon is truly doing. Milchick does the unimaginable after stealing something: he goes to Dylan’s outie’s house and awakes his innie. Innie Dylan awakens in a closet he doesn’t recognize, surrounded by Milchick. Dylan discovers he’s in his outie’s closet while Milchick confronts him on the whereabouts of the card. Dylan is greeted by a child who hugs him and calls him Daddy. Dylan inquires as to whether or not this young fellow is his son. Milchick is enraged, claiming that the boy was supposed to be waiting outside. Innie Dylan slips back to sleep after he makes a phone call.
When Dylan returns to work, he discovers that Milchick was able to revive him due to the overtime arrangement. Dylan is meant to keep this a secret, but the incident has left him so shaken that he can’t seem to help but tell his coworkers about it. He’d had fancy thoughts about his outie up to this point, but realizing he has a kid whose name he doesn’t know tears his heart. As a result, he resolves to do everything in his power to eliminate Lumon.
The Security Key
Petey puts an old cell phone at Mark’s residence before he dies. Someone’s been calling it on a regular basis, Mark notices. He decides to respond and is advised to meet Regabhi, a woman. She is a Lumon employee who is in charge of implanting the chips in everyone’s brains. She’s also the one who fully integrated Petey, and she claims he would still be alive if he had followed her directions.
Lumon security chief Mr. Graner arrives to apprehend Regabhi. She assassinates him, grabs his security card, and instructs Mark to bring it to work with him because his innie will figure out what to do with it. During a brief dance party in Helly’s memory, Said innie finds the key. He tells his coworkers about it, and they utilize it to go into the security office.
Helly grabs the instructions for initiating the overtime contingency while he’s there. Their strategy is simple: they’ll work hard to reach their target so that one of them will receive a special prize from the brass. Dylan, the chosen employee, receives a glass cube chiseled with the likenesses of his Macro data Refinement employees, as well as a weird musical performance held in a model of the founder’s home. He sneaks inside the security office halfway through, closes the door, and initiates the overtime contingency, that requires him to hold down two levers without letting go.
The Innies Wake Up From Sleep
Dylan successfully ignites the overtime contingency, arousing the innies from their sleep. Irving is working on a new painting at home. Helly has arrived at a mysterious and certainly significant occasion. Mark is at a gathering to celebrate Ricken’s new book’s release. Harmony is also in present, having managed to sneak her way even deeper into Mark’s personal life by becoming Devon’s babysitter. When outie Mark informs her he’s thinking of resigning, she’s feeling a lot of emotions after being dismissed from Lumon earlier that day. She offers him a hug, delighted, just as innie Mark wakes up. She notices a difference and grows suspicious.
Irving learns that his outie has been wondering about Burt, proving that love knows no bounds. He stumbles on a map to Burt’s residence and decides to pay him a visit. Natalie is also at the huge event, Helly notices, with the board in her ear as usual. Everyone is looking forward to hearing the wife of a pro-severance official speak. Helly discovers her outie is Helena Eagan, granddaughter of the current Lumon CEO, due to a video presentation. She is a member of the family she dislikes, and she was severed as part of an experiment to verify that the surgery is safe and that the employees who have been severed are satisfied.
Severance Ending Explained
Mark S mistakenly calls Harmony Ms. Cobel instead of Ms. Selvig as he dismisses himself to speak with Devon. When Harmony realizes the overtime contingency has been invoked, she sees an opportunity to impress the board by preventing Helly from speaking up. Milchick is summoned and immediately goes to work. Meanwhile, Irving arrives at Burt’s residence and discovers that Burt has a new roommate. He still needs to speak with him.
Mark tells Devon everything, including the fact that Selvig is his superior. Devon panics, believing Harmony/Selvig has abandoned her baby. They investigate the house and discover the kid in one of the rooms, safe and happy. Milchick arrives at security, only to discover that Dylan has secured the door shut using bungee cables. Milchick tries to convince Dylan with new rewards and information about his children by cutting the cables with a pocket knife, but Dylan is stubborn.
Harmony enters just as Helly is about to take the stage and pleads with her not to. Helly has developed emotions for Mark S, and she swears she’ll make sure he hurts. Meanwhile, Mark S discovers a photograph of Mark’s apparently deceased wife, Gemma, and recognizes her as Ms. Casey, the job counselor. As Helly reveals the truth about Lumon to the viewers, Irving bangs on Burt’s door, Milchick enters the office and assaults Dylan, and Mark S exclaims, “She’s alive!” The overtime contingency, however, ends after that, reverting them to their outie personalities.
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