I feel like the tough pill to swallow with Severance is that Reintegration is the only ethical solution to the conflict of the show.
It’s tempting to weigh the morality of each innie/outie and try to argue that their body ought to go to the more moral of the two, but that just isn’t the case. What we have is two human beings in one body, both of which have an equal right to bodily autonomy. Short of cloning Mark, which is impossible, the only ethical solution is to turn two people into one person. The alternative is 1. killing one of the two, Irving style, or 2. granting custody of the body between the two, which is how the show already is. Swapping back and forth all the time is in violation of bodily autonomy. You don’t have to use your body to keep someone else alive if you don’t want to — see “The Most Famous Violinist” for other pro choice arguments.
Of course, this situation is different from pregnancy/being in constant dialysis with a violinist. In those situations, you can pretty strongly argue that your body is YOURS. Another being, separate from you, requires YOUR body to exist. You don’t have to make that sacrifice if you don’t want to. The innie/outie knot is more complicated, however. Innie Mark does not “require” Outie Mark’s body to exist — or, at least, that’s a pretty overcomplicated way of putting it. It’s just his body. Five days a week, from 9 to 5, Mark S. lives in HIS body. When he gets in the elevator, Outie Mark returns to what is also, undeniably, HIS body. Both beings can be said to have equal autonomy over the same body.
Innie Mark does not want to reintegrate, because the ratio of Outie to Innie is so heavily skewed that Innie Mark might as well not exist. It’s a form of death. But the death isn’t only for Innie Mark — Outie Mark would die too. They would both die, and a new, third guy would come into existence.
This sounds horrible but really it’s the way you live your life all the time. Every night when you go to sleep, you die, and every waking morning you’re born anew. We are defined by our memories, they change us, make us who we are. Are you the same person you were ten years ago? How about five? Or two? Or last week? Those versions of yourself are dead. They had to die so that you could exist.
It’s why grief is so hard. When someone you love dies, the version of you that was with them also dies. You lose a piece of yourself. Over the grieving process, you have to transform into someone who can keep living without them, someone who can meet new people and allow them to change you in new ways. I think this journey is something like what Mark is going through.
