It may be Sunday, but everyone’s heads are still spinning from Severance episode 7 on Friday, Chikhai Bardo, which featured Dichen Lachman’s Gemma front and center for the first time ever. While there are endless fan theories that have stemmed from the reveals of the episode, there is one I’ve come across that seems more likely to be correct than others, and springs from something that came to my own mind while watching this.
Spoilers follow, I guess, if this turns out to be correct. I’m going to start with my takeaway from the episode, but after that, I’ll get into the longer-form theory.
- Seeing Gemma going through all the “pain” rooms, and the reference to the “birthing cabin” that we saw in season 1 where rich people can skip going through painful labor by being severed said to me that this entire thing was about using severance to get through any period of pain or unpleasantness with this method.
- The examples we see here are the dentist (a thing people hate), writing Christmas thank you cards (which is just pointless and annoying) and severe plane turbulence (which can be terrifying). And of course we already have birth, which is horrifyingly painful (I also wonder if Gemma did have a child, and they tested the birth one with her as well, and she doesn’t remember it happened).
- I believe the point of the multiple severance personalities Gemma has (one is always doing the dentist, one is always doing the Christmas cards) is that putting all the pain and horror on one alternate personality may be too damaging to that personality, but spreading them out over a dozen? A hundred? That may work better.
That’s what came to my mind, but I saw an expanded version of this by u/Dry-Consideration. The highlights:
- Lumon is tracking a lot of people through different means, blood collection, fertility treatments, and Mark and Gemma are chosen because of the shared tragedy from losing a child.
- (The theory then highlights what I said about severing to avoid unpleasant experiences, albeit based on woe, malice and dread specifically).
- The idea is that Cold Harbor refers to drowning, Gemma’s biggest fear (and the theory doesn’t say this, but experiencing this horrible fear plus actual death may be the final step, and why Mauer realizes she won’t be around forever).
- Ms. Casey exists to see if Mark and Gemma can co-exist without either recognizing the other.
- The goal is to market severance to the rich to not experience any pain or trauma or even boredom, potentially. Or possibly even a painful, traumatic death when all is said and done.
Most of this makes sense to me, and while I know that parts are probably incorrect as trying to guess what Severance is actually up to and getting everything right seems almost impossible, the “rooms” idea specifically does lean toward the idea of at least the concept of avoiding negative life experiences entirely. My thought, however, is if that’s true, can a person really experience the highs of life without any lows?
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