‘Severance’: Did Helena just reveal why Gemma is at Lumon?
The last two episodes of Severance have been especially spicy. In a show as rich with mystery as Severance is, it turns out that the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. But Severance is also good at dropping casual hints, and one Reddit thread poses an interesting solution as to why “Ms. Casey” may have joined Lumon.
Major spoilers ahead for Severance
The absolutely stunning episode “Chikhai Bardo” finally provided us with a long-awaited look at Mark and Gemma’s relationship. The episode was so gut-wrenching, you temporarily forgot that, in the previous episode, innie Mark and Helly had sex in the same episode that Helena Eagen approached outie Mark in a diner. And something that Helena says to Mark in this bizarre encounter has become fodder for fan theory.
What drove Gemma to Lumon?
When Helena Eagan approaches Mark at a diner, she attempts to act sympathetic. “I know you’ve already been through so much with losing your wife and all,” she says, before conjecturing, “Hannah.” The line reads like Helena intentionally playing dumb.
But then, in the next episode, we get more of a sense of what Gemma’s been up to: living in Lumon’s basement under strict supervision from doctors and caretakers, going through a number of mysterious “doors” every day. And we also learn that Mark and Gemma had been trying to have a baby, but the difficulties they experienced in conceiving drove a wedge between them.
And so, one Reddit thread is blowing up for reading deeper meaning into Helena’s little slip up. “The story of Hannah in the Bible is about a woman who is unable to have a child, so she makes a deal with God (the promised servitude of her child to the temple) in order to have one,” writes the Redditor. Several Redditors commented to say that Helena’s actor, Britt Lower, said this line was improvised. But neither I nor the original Reddit author could find evidence to back this claim.
The “Hannah” parallel is an interesting, if not incredibly dark, theory. It would infer that Gemma’s baby would be doomed to work for Lumon. Yet, given how Lumon regards Kier Eagan as a god-type figure, the parallel checks out. All of which makes it even more interesting that, when her caretaker keeps using verbiage praising Kier, Gemma gets fed up and retorts, “Can you please just talk like a normal person.” In the Biblical story, Hannah is being rewarded for her reverence to God. Gemma is very much expressing the opposite emotion to Lumon.
Having a theory which draws a parallel to the Bible is also notable, since the following episode is named after a phenomenon in Tibetan Buddhism. “Chikai Bardo” is described within the show as “ego death,” but it’s also the first of three intermediate state at the time of one’s death—something which resonates for Gemma.
Truly, the more Severance shows us, the less I feel like I know.
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