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Severance Spoilers - Blog Posts
but of course mark s feels nothing for gemma that’s what he was born to do
she just watched him eat fried rice with his fingers
congratulations to mark scout for somehow getting every employee at lumon to completely obsess over him. they are stalking him at restaurants they are living in his basement they are baking him cookies they are seducing him on work retreats they are doing experimental brain surgery on him they are lying about being lactation experts just to get close to his sister. and he’s truly just a guy. what can’t he do
what if we fell in love forever under the plastic desk tarps
Some may be apprehensive that Severance won’t portray Mark’s interaction with Helena in the tent as the sexual assault it was. But not only will they — they already are.
Mark’s behavior toward Helly has completely changed. He doesn’t sit next to her at Irving’s funeral. He shuts down attempts at conversation with offhand, vague snarky comments and a defiantly blank facial expression. When Helly knocks on the door to the bathroom, his eyes dart around like an animal cornered. Where he once would have slowed down for her in the hallway so they could talk, he walks much faster ahead. He’s trying as hard as possible to avoid her. To ignore her. To run away.
Now contrast this with his treatment of “Helly” when she first walked out of the elevator in season two. He waited for her to arrive! He was so relieved she’d come back! And when they were walking down that hallway and he was explaining the situation with Ms. Casey, he stopped mid-stride, turned to her with a smile on his face, and said “Look, Helly—“
He never got to finish that sentence. But some say he was going to confess that though his outie had a wife, his affections lay with her. And I think they’re right.
So why is he acting so differently now? The answer is obvious: “Because they are smarter than us, okay? They know everything.”
After the assault, Mark likely feels like a complete idiot. He spent so much of season one deconstructing his beliefs and breaking free from Lumon’s propaganda. And the minute he believes he’s immune to their lies and no longer a corporate slave, he is taken advantage of and hoodwinked by the very figurehead of said company, masking as someone he loves.
A symbol of Lumon convinced him he was safe. Tricked him. Invaded him in the most intimate way possible, with him completely oblivious, “like an idiot.” Right when he thought everything might be okay.
So maybe Lumon’s right. Maybe there’s no point in fighting. Because if he was stupid enough to not realize his own friend was being possessed by her billionaire doppelgänger, then maybe Lumon is correct about innies being nothing more than pawns. Maybe they are people, and he really is… not. (That’s how Helena treated him, anyway.)
And if that’s the case, of course he wants to give up looking for Ms. Casey and lose himself in work! For a moment he thought he was a human being, deserving of autonomy over his own body and capable of something more than sitting behind a desk — but his assault sends that all crashing down. He is an extension of his outie, made for work and nothing more. Going beyond that gets dangerous. That’s what got Irving killed… and him in Helena’s tent. And Helly? He cannot trust Helly. As far as he knows, his only confirmed moment with Helly since the OTC was when he was holding her in his arms, his jacket wrapped around her shoulders. Why should it be Helly coming back to the severed floor? If Helena could trick him before, who says she can’t learn from her past mistakes and trick him again over and over? Mark refuses to be humiliated and hurt after last time, so he avoids her (and Dylan!) and puts up a barrier of cool, snarky indifference — just like how he deals with grief.
But we know that indifference is a mask. When Milchick walked out of the elevator after revealing he knew about him and Helena Eagan, Mark had no one to pretend for — and he went completely stiff, blankly wide-eyed in an expression extremely reminiscent of his usual innie self. Whatever the reasons for this, one thing’s for sure: Mark does deeply care about what happened in the tent. And at least for now, he will lose himself in Cold Harbor to cope with it.
Lumon certainly got their productive worker back. But good Lord… at what cost?
imagine you are a gay man in your 60s and you've been in the military most of your life so you've never been free to be yourself or to seek out people like you and as a result you're now elderly and alone and you've spent a lifetime betraying yourself and you've never been loved and you get experimental brain surgery to cope with this and then one day you learn that the innocent child version of yourself who knows nothing of your isolation or your sins fell in love with another man and the man he loved was killed for pursuing that relationship and then your other self is also killed presumably for the same reason but you meet the other version of the man he loved and he's married but he wants to get to know you and you don't know him but you have some inextricable connection, something is pulling you towards him and you know you shouldn't trust him but you do and you just don't want to be alone and his husband is kind of a dick so you follow that feeling and it leads you right into a trap he set for you and it turns out that he was just manipulating you all along, to make you let your guard down, and you fell for it because there's a part of you that wants to put your life in his hands and so you do and he takes you to a train station and tells you to get as far away from here as you possibly can, he's saving you perhaps even at the cost of his own life and you think maybe you weren't entirely wrong about trusting him so you tell him you want him and he doesn't deny he wants you back, you tell him you're ready to be loved by him and you don't even know what that means but you keep saying it over and over because it just feels right, like you've been waiting for this your whole life, and maybe you have, all you know is your life hangs in the balance but for the first time you're not afraid, and maybe his interest in you was under false pretenses but you don't care because there's a part of this that's real and you both know it, he doesn't let you kiss him but he lets you touch his face and stroke his cheek with your thumb and then you walk away and get on the train with your dog going to god knows where and as the tracks whisk you away into the great unknown and the dying light of a cold winter day paints your face you think maybe you have been loved all along. happened my friend irving bailiff
What happens once I've been to all the rooms?
You’re not ready for this edit
you quit your dangerous espionage brain surgery procedure. you go out to eat. you run into your boss. she disrespects your dead-not-dead wife. it pisses you off so much you resume your dangerous espionage brain surgery procedure. the first thing you remember is fucking your boss. the second thing you remember is hallucinating your dead-not-dead wife while fucking your boss. your sister interrupts you to tell you about the woman who only existed to get pregnant she had a crush on. you have a stroke and die. rip mark scout king you were having a hell of a day
the whole episode was spent establishing that mark s is his own person with his own life and that love does not, actually, transcend severance, and he knows that he’s gonna have to go upstairs eventually so he doesn’t have much time left and of course he’s going to want to spend it with the woman he loves, and people are still like “hehehe sorry gemma markhelly won” and I feel like I’m going insane. mark s/helly won. mark scout/gemma won. they just hammered it into us that innie and outie mark both have lives with the same value!!! this isn’t a ship war!!! Im gonna lose it!!! please go read frankenstein!!!
omfg, amazing catch why didn't I think of that
but of course mark s feels nothing for gemma that’s what he was born to do
Imagine scarfing down chinese food like a rabid animal only for jeff bezos to come and sit next to you and insult your dead wife, so you go home and get a lobotomy about it
CAUSE THEY DONT KNOW THAT PETEYS DEAD NONE OF MDR KNOWS BUT NOW THAT MARKS REININTERGRATED HE (WILL) KNOW CAUSE THEY ALL JUST THINK THAT MAYBE HE’S HAVINGTHE TIME OF HIS LIFE IN FLORIDA BUT HES NOT HES DEAAAD. 😭. PETEY YOU WERE TAKEN TOO EARLY (this is in complete disregard to s2 ep4 but dude… that was a crazy episode)
Hannibal (2013-2015) Severance (2022-)
One might even call it, the pursuit of a throuple…
pursuing innie mark wasn’t enough for helena, she had to stage a meet-cute with outie mark too… this is the kind of greed they talk about in the bible
for my followers who do not watch severance:
dylan's wife cheated on dylan with dylan so dylan threatened to kill dylan so dylan's wife broke up with dylan and went back to dylan and dylan was so depressed about it that dylan killed dylan but dylan's still alive
Employee of the month
Helly R piece for severance, based on Norman Rockwell's "Double Take" Saturday Evening Post Cover from March 1, 1941. props to this show, weird punk art saves lives
Innies: the egg bar is coveted as fuck
Gemma side plot:
miss huang: your first performance review is today, right? that was a question.
mr milchick:
clearly you've never been in college marching band
C & M department is crazy imagine clocking in for band practice
ok we need to talk about this
I’m not sure if it's the re-integration talking or if Mark's coping mechanisms run so deep in his nature, but the fact that both he AND Mark S. have the same grief response is just WILDLY fascinating to me and I'm surprised no one is talking about it. like it COULD be reintegration. it COULD. but having that death and trauma be so deep it breaks that mental boundary (notice no flashbacks) is an equally compelling concept
SEVERANCE 2x05 "Trojan's Horse"