#severance speculation

I think if the show goes on, it's very possible Dylan is going to be the first one to reintegrate, and it might happen naturally. Dylan George has had direct communication with Dylan G, and they've started to understand each other and accept each other. They've bonded over their shared love of Gretchen, and Dylan G wishes for Dylan George's life, while Dylan George wishes for Dylan G's confidence.

So current theory I have is that Gemma is clearly the test subject for the new severance chip Lumon is planning on marketing to the world.

She was never intended as the final product, hence Drummond’s remark to Mauer that once Cold Harbor is finished he’ll have to say good-bye to her.

And now we see Helly’s chip ID on Cold Harbor. Who better to market this new worldwide severance other than the Eagan heir? The whole season has felt like one giant bear trap closing in around these characters but the writers have been casting so much doom and gloom on Mark x Gemma yet I suspect it’s Helly/Helena who’s really in trouble.

We’ve been building up to Gemma’s reveal and the focus on getting her out, it makes no narrative sense for her to die or be left behind in the finale. But you know who does make sense?

The one who this whole severance project was presumably built for. The perfect heir.

can you imagine yelling into the camera. do you even know what you put me through. you left me in a hellish prison and forgot all about me. I'm a person. I'm a person. I'm a person. let me live my life even though we can't both do it at the same time.

can you imagine yelling into the camera, into yourself, do you even know what I've been through. you're the only one who can rescue the person who is the other half of my heart. I love her. I love her. I love her. I'll never be okay again as long as I live until she is safe. lead eurydice out of hades even though you'll never ever ever be able to look back at her even once she's out. even though it means leaving you there. please.

what right does mark scout have to ask this of mark s?

to give up his love for helly r and his agency and in some ways his very life just to get gemma out so that reintegrated mark can live the life with her that only mark scout wants and longs for

but on the other hand. on the other hand

can you imagine being mark scout. you lose this person who is the other half of you. who you love more than life. and it breaks you so horribly that you do this thing. the only way you feel like you can go on is if the only part of you not squandering his hours as quickly as possible in numbness and drink and migraines and sleep has forgotten all about her in order to survive. the only part of you that will ever be okay again is the part that will never really be you again. and what if then you learned that she's alive, she's alive, you haven't lost her, you can be alive again, but the only one who can save her is the part of you that you cut off to save him from being choked to death on the grief. what if you begged him to save her. but because you shielded him from the grief that was the vengeful ghost of your love for her, he cannot love her now. what if you begged him to love her. and what if he said no.

mark scout just wants back the beautiful, love-filled, joy-filled life that lumon stole from him. mark s just wants to keep the life that he's clawed together from the nothing that he was given.

okay i normally do funny haha no context thoughts but i didn't have them this episode really. just a lot of thoughts about gemma. i love gemma. (also like yeah mark is hot but ive been on that train it's wtv.)

i get sort of analytical w it but im not really an analyst. i am simply yapping.

a) the association with gemma and spring is my favorite thing ever and the imagery is so so beautiful.

b) what the Fuck are they doing with her down there oh my god. let her ouuuuuttttttt.

c) with the way that severance has dissected and implemented race as a construct in this world what they're doing with her down there is soooo sooo terrifying. like genuinely the letter writing scene is something that rattled me deep in my core in ways that i think the milchick kier portrait thing has done for others. the concept that lumon is taking this asian woman, a character established to have had a lot of her own agency, but struggles with her bodily autonomy (attempts and failures with pregnancy) going through lumon for treatment, and severing her. not only severing her but teaching her innies that she is subservient to the extreme traumas that they're putting her through in those rooms. dressing her up in outfits like a doll. one of those traumas being this submissive traditional wife to a domineering white husband figure, forcing her to say that she loves him, Knowing her outie has a husband but insisting she belongs to the men at lumon. that they are entitled to her and the love (servitude) of her innie is so unsettling. ms casey is a caretaker, forced to take the traumas of others while ignoring her own. to be saved by her white superiors, to be owned by them. it's so scary.

this contrasts her relationship with mark where there is very little of this known racial dynamic in their relationship. he falls in love with gemma because she's gemma and doesn't really base it on what she could be doing for him, or what he thinks she Should be doing for him.

ntm severance is science fiction and dystopic, this depiction of east asian women is a known trope. it is techno-orientalism at its core and the show is Aware of this. it uses the way that asian women/femmes are treated in media as a device. ms casey is supposed to be treated like that not because the show wants you to think that that is how it portrays asian women in this world but how it comments on the way that lumon (corporations as a whole) still treat and percieve asian women in the workplace. and how the white men at the top of the company will never deconstruct this mindset in themselves because they're benefitting, they'd never need to.