We’re only three episodes into Severance season 2 and we’ve already seen Lumon complicating child labor laws, Mark Scout (Adam Scott) suspiciously being treated like the most important Lumon employee, and the people of the Mammalians Nurturable who tend to the goats we are all still confused about. Now, after hours of Severance episodes since we last saw this series’ most mysterious procedure, the latest episode reintroduced it in a way that could change the entire season.
After Mark’s intense encounter with Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) in Episode 2 ended with her nearly hitting him with her car as she sped away from his justified questions about what everything with him and Lumon means, he hatches a desperate (and mostly stupid) plan to send a message to his Innie. He thought he could stare at a light burning the question “Who is alive?” (the title of the episode) into his eyes and the afterimage would last long enough that his Innie would momentarily be able to see it. He gets an F for effort from us, and thankfully some helpful advice from Regabhi (Karen Aldridge), the former Lumon employee who helped Petey (Yul Vazquez) reintegrate.
After letting him know that the severance switch dilating his pupils would mean the afterimage would be erased, that going this route could blind him, and that Innie Mark would have no way of communicating back to him, she tells him his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) was alive the last time she saw her. Then, she gives him one glimmer of hope of reconnecting with her: reintegration.
The last time we heard about reintegration was when Petey described it to Mark as “having two different lives suddenly stitched together” in Season 1. Unfortunately for Petey, his reintegration led to hallucinations of his past on the Severed Floor and in his present in the outside world, frequent nosebleeds, crippling paranoia, and his eventual death in a convenience store bathroom. Those reintegration scenes were heartbreaking because you could see a man struggling to trust who he is at any given moment, showing the most devastating effects of the severance process.
Regabhi assures Mark she’s improved her reintegration process, and we get our first glimpse of how this mysterious procedure works. She wires Mark up to a complex arrangement of equipment that monitors his brainwaves while asking him a series of questions to see when his Innie memory merges with his Outie’s. The Mark from the outside could probably tell you his date of birth instantly, but the Innie Mark would have no idea. That’s why him forgetting and then later implying he only knows time by business quarters were signs of his reintegration working. Then, we see his first memory at Lumon—him being interviewed by Petey the same way he interviewed Helly R (Britt Lower) on her first day—but this time his clothes glitch between his Severed Floor attire and his present-day attire, and his environment switches between Regabhi’s basement and Lumon. For a second, we see a severed employee dressed in their severed attire in the outside world. Reintegration is complete…somewhat.
The show exploring reintegration with a character it showed us was indispensable to Lumon in last week’s episode could mean we see the first Innie-Outie team-up on Severance. Regabhi does say the only way to get information in and out of the Severed Floor is through reintegration, so we could see the lengths of reintegration’s powers.
With Innie Dylan George (Zach Cherry) spending time with his Outie’s wife in the Family Visitation Center, Helly R’s mysterious behavior prompting Reddit message boards to question if it’s really her, and now Mark reintegrating, this season of Severance is quickly shaping up to be one in which the inseparability of the Innies and the Outies leads to the truth coming out…for better or worse. Let’s just hope Mark doesn’t bleed out at Pip’s.