Severance Season 2, episode 7 cracks the show wide open.
Titled "Chikhai Bardo," the episode finally reveals what's happening on Lumon's ominous testing floor. There, Mark's (Adam Scott) wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) is the subject of strange, severance-related experiments. In true Lumon fashion, these experiments are a surreal hellscape, but they also give us a better idea of Lumon's end goal and answer some of our most pressing Severance questions.
From the meaning of MDR's file names to the return of the ideographic cards from Season 1, let's break down Gemma's journey in "Chikhai Bardo."
What is happening to Gemma on Lumon's testing floor?
First, some good news: Gemma may be severed into Ms. Casey, but she remains her Outie on the testing floor, meaning she has all her memories of her outside life. That includes her marriage with Mark. "Chikhai Bardo" treats us to flashbacks of their relationship, from their sweet meet-cute to their heartbreaking struggles with fertility. (Since none of these flashbacks show Gemma actually getting in a car crash and dying, it's safe to say that Lumon didn't resurrect her, and instead opted for good old-fashioned kidnapping and death-faking.)
Now for the bad news. Gemma is trapped on the testing floor, where she is monitored by the sinister pairing of Cecily (Sandra Bernhard) and Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson). They draw her blood, ask her strange questions — "If you were caught in a mudslide, would you be more afraid of suffocating or drowning?" — and guide her through a series of rooms, where a new Innie persona undergoes an uncomfortable experience, like a trip to the dentist or a rough flight. These rooms may just be the most revelatory part of "Chikhai Bardo," starting with their names.
Each door on the testing floor is named after an MDR file.
The doors to each room on the testing floor bear the names of files MDR team members have been refining throughout the show. These include Allentown, which Mark worked on; Tumwater, which Dylan (Zach Cherry) worked on; and Siena, which Helly (Britt Lower) worked on. Mark's current file, Cold Harbor, is the only room that Gemma hasn't been in.
Apparently, Cold Harbor will mark the end of Gemma's torment at Lumon, since Dr. Mauer assures her that once she goes through that door, "You will see the world again, and the world will see you." But can you really trust anything Lumon tells you?
The fact that the MDR files correspond to different rooms on the testing floor answers one question but opens several more. First, how does the MDR team's refining contribute to the creation of these rooms? We know the numbers in their files correspond to Kier's Four Tempers: woe, dread, frolic, and malice. Could they be manipulating Gemma's Innies' emotional responses to the rooms? Are they building the rooms themselves and trying to craft scenarios that will elicit certain responses? Or are they balancing the Tempers in each of Gemma's new Innie personas?
Another question: With Cold Harbor being the only room Gemma has left to go through, what are the other MDR Innies currently refining while Mark works on Cold Harbor? Are there other people in Gemma's situation at Lumon? Or are they just working on fake files in order to ensure Mark has his team around him?
What is going on in the testing floor rooms? And why is it so awful?
All the rooms on the testing floor put Gemma's Innies through universally unpleasant experiences: dental work, airplane turbulence, even having to write tons of Christmas thank-you notes. They're all fairly mundane, if aggravating, parts of life, but imagine having to go through them over and over again in rapid succession. That's the life of each of Gemma's many Innies, whose entire existence boils down to a never-ending loop of repetitive tasks or frightening experiences.
With all these rooms in mind, it seems like Lumon is trying to make it possible to sever yourself into multiple Innies: one for each inconvenience you don't want to experience or task you don't want to do. That way, you can eliminate not just work, but any part of your life you don't want to live.
As Dr. Mauer tells Gemma in one of their discussions, "Mark will benefit from the world you're siring. Kier will take away all his pain just as Kier has taken away yours." Is that Lumon's end goal, then? A world without any pain?
Of course, there's a big hole in Lumon's reasoning here. They're not ridding the world of pain. Instead, they're just passing the Outie's pain off onto a poor Innie, condemning them to an eternal living nightmare. Also, if you're sectioning off so many parts of your life, how much of a life are you truly living?
Lumon is testing the severance barrier.
As Cecily and Dr. Mauer send Gemma through the rooms every day, they ask her whether she has any memory of what happened in the rooms, or whether she felt any residual emotion from her time there. Mentally, she does not recall. Physically, though, she's feeling the rooms' effects: Her teeth hurt following the dentist visit, and she's rubbing her hand in pain after the Christmas card room. So much for Kier taking away Gemma's pain, right?
Cecily and Dr. Mauer's persistent questioning about Gemma's experiences points to them trying to ensure the severance barrier holds fast, even when a subject, like Gemma, has been severed many, many times.
Severance has hinted that it's possible for things to bleed through the severance barrier. Innie Irving's (John Turturro) daydreams about his Outie's black paint, for example, or Outie Irving's recollection of the black hallway down to the testing floor. Mark's "freshman fluke" of completing the Allentown file could also be an example — did his Outie's connection to Gemma affect his speed at all? And could it influence the completion of Cold Harbor?
Maybe that's why Lumon was so adamant Mark be the one to finish that file. If neither Gemma nor Mark can recall their connection after the file is complete, maybe that will prove this multi-severed technology can withstand anything and is ready to be given to the masses.
Who is monitoring the MDR workers?
At one point in "Chikhai Bardo," Severance shows us what looks like the testing floor's control room, where Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and Dr. Mauer observe MDR's progress. But they aren't the only ones watching. Four people observe the MDR team through their screen, with each person looking quite a bit like their MDR counterpart. The effect is similar to the eerie "twins" Lumon gave the Innies in "Woe's Hollow."
There are key differences, though. While Mark's double in that "Woe's Hollow" (played by Adam Jepsen) is credited as "Shadow Mark," Mark's double in this "Chikhai Bardo" (played by Eric J. Carlson) is credited as "Mark Watcher." The different actors and role names confirm these characters are different and fulfill differing functions — but could there be similar Lumon technology at work in each case?
Lumon has been watching Gemma long before her accident.
In the flashbacks to Mark and Gemma's relationship, Severance reveals that Lumon was part of Gemma's life before her time on the testing floor. When she first meets Mark at a blood drive, the Lumon logo is on the equipment. Later, when she and Mark go to the fertility clinic, Dr. Mauer pops up in the background.
These instances are proof of Lumon's insidious reach in the world, and also that they've been keeping tabs on Gemma for a while. Severance doesn't clue us into why Gemma was so important to Lumon just yet, though. Maybe there was something special about her blood or her intake form that piqued the company's interest. Speaking of...
What's the deal with Severance's ideographic cards?
Another way Lumon sunk its claws into Gemma was with the ideographic cards Optics and Design manufactures. They sent her the cards through the clinic mailing list, and she had to write out how they made her feel.
One of the cards is labeled "Chikhai Bardo" — a Buddhist term for the transitional state in the first moments of death, and also a fitting description of Mark's post-seizure state throughout the episode. It's also the same card Dylan stole back in Season 1, depicting one man pointing his hand at another man's chest.
Gemma sees these two figures as being the same person, interpreting the card as a man overcoming his own psyche in a moment of ego death. (Someone at war with their own psyche is right up Severance's alley!) Meanwhile, Mark just thinks that the card shows two men fighting and finds it pointless to engage.
Perhaps Gemma and Mark's differing reactions to the ideographic cards point to why Lumon singled her out for capture. Maybe her inquisitiveness and unexpected understandings of the cards were just what they were looking for in a test subject. Could that mean the cards are a recruiting tactic and that more people are on Lumon's radar for similar experiments?
That's just one of many questions "Chikhai Bardo" leaves us with, even as it provides us with some more clarity on Severance's biggest puzzles. Now, the biggest question going forward is simply, "Why did Lumon choose Gemma?"
Severance Season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV+, with a new episode every Friday.
