Severance Season 2 Episode 6 BREAKDOWN and Ending Explained

0:00 we used to call each other hun then about 10 years ago that became a tiller hey welcome back to screen Crush I'm Colton Ogburn and these are all the Easter eggs references and little things you might have missed in Severance season 2 episode six Atilla guys I think I have finally cracked the code so to speak on what is happening in Severance and all of the secrets lie in this HP Lovecraft book The Shadow over insouth so we're going to take a closer look at that book and connect some shots in dots between the Lovecraft universe and the sance universe breaking down how Kier Egan may actually be a God and hey be sure to check out our praise cure sticky note shirt up on the merch store right now screencrush merch.com and guys I I hate to say it but a little later I want

0:46 to talk about how I think Bert's Audi is bad news oh no so this episode being titled Atilla is of course in reference to Burt and Field's little pet name for one another but we can't Overlook the significance of name dropping AA the Hun in this series it goes without saying that AA the Hun was one of the most gruesome Barbarian conquerors the world has ever seen I mean you guys do know history right he knows history we have talked a lot about the similarities between Kier Egan and tyrannical Kings and rulers throughout history Kier Egan has modeled himself as this Christlike savior of mankind but I think we'll soon learn that he was a brutal Tyrant similar to that of the aformentioned a TIA the Hun so we open with Mark explaining the

1:31 reintegration experience he had in the final moments from the previous episode in which he came face to face with Miss Casey or as he knows her his late wife Jemma Mark asks I mean why is she rattling off a bunch of facts a reference to him hearing her voice from a wellness session giving his any facts about his Audi so rabi says all I know is she's essential now one of the biggest questions I have every single time I watch this show is why Mark why Gemma why Devon and ricken what does Lumen want with Mark and his family and why are they all so crucial to this earth shattering grand plan that they have in motion over at Lumen why are Mark and Jimma so closely tied to This Cold Harbor project we've discussed

2:17 previously how Mark was a history professor and we've seen connections to the civil war with these paintings of Kier as well as Cold Harbor being a battle from the Civil War but it's beginning to look like Mark is really only essential to this whole thing because Jimma was essential to it first so I'm anxious to see what jima's involvement was in this whole experiment prior to her death we know that she too was a professor but a Russian lit Professor now I'm actually starting to wonder if perhaps Gemma got tied up with lumen in her and Mark's attempts at having a baby perhaps was some form of fertility treatment that she was keeping Mark in the dark about but we shall see now I have personally theorized that Jimma May really be dead and that Miss Casey is just a 3D printed Recreation of Jimma Mark did say after all that he saw

3:03 her burned dead body so I do think it's possible that if Lumen is trying to create these 3D printed clones which is what I theorized these creepy things were in episode four of this season perhaps Gemma is like a really Advanced version of one of these things but riabi actually says that Jimma is still alive within Miss Casey the Jimma that Mark knows is still in there so this either means that this really is her original body and she is simply severed or per perhaps her Consciousness was transferred to this 3D printed body following her fleeting moments of life as we've theorized here many times before lum's ultimate goal is likely the resurrection of kir Egan and the achiev of immortality similar to like emper of Palpatine in Star Wars and how he actually transferred his Consciousness

3:50 to a clone body somehow Palpatine returned now part of the process of achieving immortality would not only be the creation of a new body but the trans of a Consciousness into that new body so perhaps Gemma was used as a test subject to perfect this process of resurrection and Mark's connection to her old self is essential to rebuilding her mind hey buddy what you doing there oh me and Ryan are in a borg Alliance on Star Trek Fleet command we are fighting off a swarm together and done so guys Star Trek Fleet command is the sponsor of this video and what I love about this game is that it's fun if you're a massive Star Trek fan or if you're you're just a beginner to the franchise well what is it anyways well it's a strategy game where you recruit legendary characters to crew iconic

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5:23 can have for instance Lieutenant peard from the episode tapestry serving alongside Cadet Kirk wow can use an alternate universe version of peard yes exactly and when you buy any bundle greater than $4.99 you unlock him and I actually have him paired with Next Generation data and rker for extra bonuses the game rewards you with tons of daily rewards and chests including the crucial 7-Day login streak with this promotion you get epic Romulan Captain Nero who increases the damage of weapons by 40% and this month I am so excited to play the new event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Trek Voyager you play a story that picks up with seven of nine right after the series ended you can unlock seven tuac and when you use

6:09 the code Voyager 30 you can unlock neix the morale officer from Voyager and there's another promo code that I'm putting in the description because it's really long don't forget to use my link or scan my QR code to download the game the Galaxy needs a leader will you answer the call so scan this QR code or use our link and come find me in game so Mark then mentions the five stages of grief there's denial anger bargaining depression and acceptance bargaining you know what that is what do you mean well it's one of the stages we've seen Mark essentially go through each of these stages but he specifically mentions bargaining bargaining is widely accepted as The Grieving person's own negotiations with God Mark is now in a position where he might have to remain true to promises that he made to a

6:55 higher power in hopes of getting his wife back and now that Bill may actually come do aren't you forgetting something no pay your bill damn who raised you we could also learn that Mark's negotiations with a higher power were actually negotiations with Kier Egan himself so in episode 4 we heard Irving say hang in there which of course was a hint for Dylan to look behind this poster which we saw in the previous episode so Dylan found that note behind the poster and he's now sharing it with the class now when they asked Dylan why he didn't bring the note with him he he says okay I don't want to get in trouble right now this is of course in reference to his new secret privilege of getting to visit with his Audi's wife Dylan has gotten in trouble before for taking that card from o d back in season 1 and he

7:41 got busted so he's worried that if he were to take that note he would have got busted then as well now in milch's office we hear him speaking with Miss Wong you cannot graduate from this Fellowship until I have deemed you winter tide material so all season with Miss Wong we've been wondering why are you a child it sounds like she is part of some type of internship here at Lumen likely hoping to be accepted into a school called winter tide likely a lumen sponsored institution it's very common for private organizations to actually fund universities and it's like a rotating door if you get into that University you're pretty much guaranteed a corporate job at whatever big organization sponsors the school now we also saw mention of Miss Wong being a winter tide fellow in this LinkedIn post by Lumen so winter tide it essentially

8:27 means wintertime which it seems to always always be in this mysterious fictional town of kir PE we still don't know what state PE actually stands for but we have our theories now many think that kir PE is actually in the New England area of the US and there's lots of evidence that points toward that and I think that this winter tide name drop may have just given us a major clue so in my research of what winter tide could be connected to or in reference to in this show I went down quite the rabbit hole and started getting some more flashbacks to my True Detective night country cover let me explain it's no secret that Severance is essentially Cosmic horror Cosmic horror also known as love crafty and horror is a subgenre of science or fiction that explores the fear of the unknown and the unknowable it's often characterized by a sense of

9:14 existential dread and insignificance which I mean that that's Severance I just describe Severance and well wouldn't you know it there is a book that actually takes place in an alternate history written by science fiction writer ruanna IM now I personally have theorized here in our Severance coverage that this show might actually be taking place in an alternate history of its own perhaps one where the Civil War or one of the world wars had a different outcome in my research I found that winter tide is the second installment of a Trilogy called The insouth Legacy Series so I'm about to tell you all about this book and the HP Lovecraft story that inspired it now as we go I want you to keep Severance and all of its Mysteries and storytelling Beats at the front of your mind and I promise you I think I just cracked the connection between Kier e the devil and

10:00 cthulu so the insouth Legacy series takes place in the cthulu Mythos Universe now the cthulu Mythos is essentially a shared Universe of stories that are inspired by the original writings of HP Lovecraft it's called cthulu Mythos because the Beast cthulu was pretty much a centerpiece of all of Lovecraft stories now cthulu is essentially this Cosmic entity that is woried by followers of various Cults so in this Mythos cthulu exists within the tomb of a sunken city in the Pacific Ocean and he's been there for eons cthulu awaits to one day be awoken and regain control of the planet and he has the special ability of being able to possess one's mind and drive them mad sound familiar I've talked aium about the connection between the severed floor

10:47 and The Nine Circles of Hell being represented by the many levels beneath Lumen and how at the bottom of the nine circles of hell you would find the devil but in this case I think that devil would be Kier Egan a waitting his own resurrection and return to take over the planet I mean Mr Drummond did say Mark Scout's completion of Cold Harbor will be remembered as one of the greatest moments in the history of this planet and this is all very similar to how at the bottom of the sea you would find a dormant cthulu awaiting his Awakening so the insouth Legacy was inspired by the Lovecraft book The Shadow over insouth in that book we follow the lead character as he investigates this decrepit town of insouth massach etts which is in New England now the town of

11:32 insouth is eerily similar to the town of Kier especially with its seclusion from the outside world they even have their own cult-like following similar to that of the cult of kir and the people of this town are even referred to as the Deep ones which could have inspired the concept of the severed being the Deep ones being that they exist beneath the surface okay now moving over to the more recent series of books which were inspired by this work of of Lovecraft we have winter tide in this book we have two groups of humans the Deep ones and the people of the air do I need to say it no we get it the Indies are the Deep ones and the outies are the people in the air keep going well that's pretty much it and you know in the previous episode I talked about how this Iceberg painting in milch's office was alluding

12:17 to not only the depths of lumen and the expression just the tip of the iceberg but also how Severance is adapting the iceberg Theory coined by Ernest Hemingway keeping the story vague and mysterious Lovecraft was another author whose style of writing was one of amplifying mystery and leaving a lot in the shadows for the reader to fill in in their own mind Mark tells heli about him and Helena having sex he he finally tells her and she is understandably feeling violated Mark and heli you know they they were both taken advantage of in this situation by Helena Helena lying to Mark and pretending to be this woman that he loves to seduce him in having sex that that was a violation of him and it was also a violation of heli not simply by having sex I mean an Audi

13:03 having sex while they're an Audi is not a violation of their in bodily autonomy or anything but what made it a violation in this case was that Helena was pretending to be heli and infiltrated her in Mark's relationship that's what makes it really screwed up now after heli had a chance to process all of this information I am glad that we finally got to see her and Mark share vessels but you know it really just makes me hate Helena even more because she robbed hel and Mark of this being their first time I mean yeah it's hel's first time but Mark's first time was was with Helena and she robbed him of his first time getting to be with heli but look that didn't change the fact that their first time was still super special super romantic and I'm really glad that they got to have that human experience but it

13:49 does worry me for what's going to happen when Mark is fully reintegrated and hopefully Miss Casey or Jimma is safe from Lumen assuming that that really is her where will that leave heli I mean even if Miss Casey wasn't a factor what would be the path forward for heli and Mark to have a relationship in the outside world is there a scenario where Helena goes dark and heli becomes the dominant Consciousness and I mean what would it look like for heli and Helena to go through the reintegration process and become the same person I think if that were to happen perhaps even down on the severed floor because it would be heli that would likely decide to go through with that operation maybe we'd see Helena finally be pulled over to the good side throughout this season she has seemed a little shaky and I've even

14:34 theorized that she doesn't seem fully on board with all of the Kier and Lum and stuff so maybe there is a chance that a reintegration could mean a happy ending for heli and Helena we'll just have to see so there's also this Theory going around that Mark got Helena pregnant when they hooked up in the tent in episode 4 but now we're seeing Mark also have sex with heli now of course they're the same person they're the same body but different consciousnesses were present when the baby was conceived whose baby is it if she's pregnant or they going to wonder was this baby conceived when Helena was conscious was this baby conceived when heli was conscious okay so let me clean up that rambling stream of thought that I just had it has been theorized by some biblical Scholars that when the serpent

15:20 seduced Eve he actually seduced her into having sex sex with the devil and that Eve then immediately shared this new thing she learned with and they had sex similar to how Helena the devilish Egan seduced Mark into having sex and then Mark who would be the Eve in this situation he then shared sex something that he just experienced for the first time in his any life and he shared that new thing that he learned from Helena with heli just like Eve shared it with Adam and there's actually evidence for all of this Beyond a thematic argument that actually comes down to perhaps a mistranslation type issue in Hebrew the word yada which means to know or to have knowledge it can also be translated as

16:07 to have sex and then of course there's the whole forbidden fruit thing that has Illusions to sex so anyway it has been theorized that when Eve became pregnant with Cain and Abel that Cain was actually the son of the devil and that Abel was the son of Adam because those two sexual encounters were so close together Eve then became pregnant with twins Kan and enable but they were twins with different fathers which is an actual thing called heteropaternal super fundation so I wonder if she becomes pregnant with twins could one of the children have been conceived with Helena and the other conceived with heli with these two sexual encounters having been so close together could it result in her being pregnant with twins but from two different sexual encounters both of course were with Mark so they have the

16:53 same father and technically Helena and heli are the same person so they'd have the same mother but if she is pregnant with twins as a result of those two separate sexual encounters that could mean that one child was conceived with Helena at the wheel and the other was conceived with heli at the wheel all tying back in to the Kier Ander Kan and Abel twin thing that is going on at Lumen we hear mention of Woodworking and garage beer making you've had a lot of phases scuba diving woodworking wow so my Audi's really diverse garage beer making now this was likely a nice little reference to another great show Breaking Bad Jesse Pinkman aspired to be a woodworker and Hank shider had the hobby of garage beer

17:41 making so during this visitation with Dylan and his Audi's wife we can see behind them a wheat field now wheat Fields have been used in films Like Gladiator to represent the afterlife which is of course a key theme of this series with all of the religious imagery that the showrunners have placed throughout the show but in the work of artist van go he used wheat fields to represent the circle of life and The Human Experience and that actually wouldn't be the only van go reference that we've gotten in this series in the previous episode when we saw the watermelon head of Irving and Dylan was eating the earpiece of the watermelon head I talked about how that was Dylan Like symbolizing that he's listening now he told Irv that he should have listened so now that we're seeing him eat Herb's ear that's like demonstrating him listening but one of you one of our

18:27 great viewers commented about how that was also like in reference to Van go when he went kind of mad and cut off his left ear so lots of Van go references now we're finally getting to see Dylan have a human experience he is feeling love for the first time in his life he is experiencing the physical contact of a hug he's getting to be a human being despite people like Miss Wang and Helena treating their enies as like subhuman animals who don't have true emotions or feelings it we are getting to see this season and we saw it last season they're wrong about that enies are human and we're getting to see Dylan experience that Humanity so I think that's a really nice touch and with that Humanity comes things like deception we're seeing him deceive his fellow co-workers because he is feeling things like lust and love and

19:14 he's having his own selfish emotions which that is what it is to be human so over with Mr milch we see him trying to remove big words from his vocabulary you must eradicate from your essence childish folly you must grow up and hey I like a big word here and there you do your thing Mr milch Mr Drummond can get bent but all seriousness I really like what they're doing with Seth this season you can see the conflict within him and it makes him all the more interesting as essentially one of the show's antagonists so Mark is continuing to experience reintegration sickness resulting in a nose bleed and this leads to one of the coolest reintegration scenes we have gotten so far I've discussed before about how the life of an in is a like a dream that the

19:59 Audi can't remember it seems super real in the moment and then it's just gone when Mark essentially wakes up in his basement here and starts trying to remember where he just was it's just like when you wake up from a fleeting dream and you're trying to remember what the dream was about he's I just had the craziest dream where I bought a100 million vase so I loved the attention to detail here when we see Irving going to have dinner with Bert and Fields he's combing his mustache before going in just like how Felicia said Bert spent an hour fixing his hair before going to visit Irving he spent 2 hours on his hair the first time he went to visit you now similar to heli and Mark s and as we'll later see with Helena and Mark Scout the infatuations that one feels can transcend the inie outy barrier so we finally got to spend some time with

20:45 Christopher Watkins spt in this episode I've missed him dearly he was one of my favorite parts of the first season and with all that cowbell in episode 3 I have been eagerly awaiting his return now I've commended Britt low for her ability to play heli and Helena so differently down to simple nuances Like the Way She carries the weight of her eyes and Christopher Walkin is doing the same thing with Bert Bert's inie seemed like such a kind and genuine passive person well his Audi for some reason just gives me the creeps there's something off about him there's just something menacing and you know I actually felt this way before they got into the whole he's going to hell thing don't get me wrong you know he's a polite and funny guy I loved this little joke when Irving first arrived at his door

21:31 hello who the hell are you but there's something before the whole hell conversation there's something like behind that smile and the squinting of his eyes and it he just gives me the impression that we shouldn't trust him and that feeling was then Amplified as their dinner ensued now we hear Bert's disdain for the whole mind Collective the whole mind people are off the deep end is my point the whole mind Collective being a group of activists who are against the severance procedure and Lumen they believe that severed employees are forced to undergo the procedure and that it is tantamount to slavery which yeah exactly Bert says well as a matter of fact I was guided to Lumen store by Jesus Jesus Christ so the theory amongst

22:19 Burton Fields is that Bert's Ali is already on route to Eternal damnation but that perhaps his any as a separate entity with their own soul could make it into heaven with fields and my biggest question coming out of that was what the hell did Bert do I mean the way that they are talking he must have done something like truly awful in his younger years to be so convinced that he is destined for Eternal Hellfire I've been what you might call a scoundrel in my younger days now that wasn't the only awkward dinner scene taking place in KP in this episode over with Mark we see him dining at a Chinese place and we see him giving Two fortune cookies at the end of his meal a nice little Touch of having one Fortune for his innie and one Fortune for his Audi and then we get the return of Helena who we saw was

23:05 following Mark in the previous episode and again she is just so different from heli I I don't know how Britt low does it but it's insane how much I can love heli and hate Helena just by the look on her face now this isn't actually the first time we've seen these two interact Helena and Mark had a brief exchange here in season 1 hey sorry maybe keep your eyes on the icy Road an eerie reference likely to the car crash that killed Gemma now Helena invites Mark to meet her father to which Mark says you want to take me home to dad already and then Helena says he'd be the first once again reminding us that Helena is jealous of the love her innie has found with Mark down on the severed floor something that she's never

23:51 experienced likely because she has dedicated her entire life to serving her father and Lumen so there's no doubt that we are feeling some sexual tension here between Helena and Mark and that's a common theme throughout this episode we're seeing it with Dylan's innie and his Audi's wife both of them feeling sexual tension for one another Burton Irving's Audi they are feeling sexual tension for one another and now Helena and Mark same thing going back to the point that I made a little earlier that these romantic or lustful feelings tend to transcend the inie oute barrier now while Irving is over at Bert's we do see Drummond break into Irving's house making me wonder if Bert let Drummond know that Ving would be out at his house for dinner at this time I say this because one throughout this whole dinner scene as Charming as Bert seems

24:36 something just seemed off about him and we now know that he must have done something truly awful for he and his husband to both be convinced that he's going to hell and we also got this little scene where Fields let it slip that Bert was totally working at Lumen 20 years ago and I would assume is still involved with Lumen now even after having been retired it wasn't 10 years ago was 20 no yes no yes and I have to say the way that Bert reacted to Fields letting this little fat slip was super eerie and Bert seemed pissed maybe that's enough that I should also mention that on these papers at Irving's house we can see Bert's name so Mark had initially turned down rabi on removing his severed chip and risking Hemorrhage

25:23 but I loved that after his little runin with Helena on the outside it wasn't a runin that made made him feel all mushy about her no no no he saw it for what it was he knows that he is being followed and her showing up at the restaurant was all the confirmation Mark needed that he and rabi are closing in on Lumen and closing in on saving Jimma so I thought it was great that we saw him race home and go forward with the procedure and he is not falling for any of Helena [ __ ] and so Mark getting his chip removed is actually a part of the reintegration process that we haven't seen before pety never actually got to this step his chip was still inside him when he died now Mark says and what is that smell which is likely him experiencing something called parosmia which is very common following severe head trauma now for the past few episodes as Mark has been experiencing

26:09 reintegration we've often seen heli and Jimma glitch between one another just like in this season's intro this is showing us how Mark s and Mark Scout have their two love interests in their feelings for these two women that they love those feelings are stored in the same part of their brain and hey that makes perfect sense and you know we have several episodes left to go this season so I think we can safely assume that Mark is going to be okay but damn did he hit his head hard after just having a major surgery I hope my boy is okay so before we end I wanted to expand upon this big reveal that Bert has totally been working at Lumen longer than the 12 years that the severance procedure has been public like saying I worked at Lumen 20 years ago which is of course before Severance even existed of course you know ever since the first time I met

26:55 bird Sal back in season 1 something just felt off about him the first time we heard him speak was at his retirement party in this video message this is kind of strange but a lot of things about this job are and the message you know it seems nice enough pleasant but there's this little part at the end when he tells them that he's done recording and it has always made me feel just a little off oh it feels like the whole thing was a performance he went from feeling like an employee to like he was kind of in charge he he just seemed a little elitist in his like his mannerisms and the whole thing just felt like okay my little Act is over and at the time this

27:40 always made me think that maybe Bert's Audi was likely not a kind man unlike his very pleasant in so it's nice to see that I wasn't overthinking that little moment there from season 1 for all of this time and I think that that that little Nuance moment there of him you know gesturing that he was done I'm beginning to think that not only has Bert worked at lummen longer than the seven years we previously thought but that he's been there even longer than the 12 years that the severance procedure has been public likely meaning that berts Audi was a lumen employee prior to the creation of his innie I think Bert's Audi could in fact be a higher up in the Lumin echelons but I'm anxious to hear your theories and thoughts about Bert's true motives here with Irving down in the comments below as well as what Helena is hoping to

28:25 achieve by befriending Mark on the outside I want to hear all your thoughts and theories and more down in the comments or you can at me on Twitter or you can find me over on our Discord Link in the description below if you're new here please do feel free to subscribe smash that Bell for alerts for screen Crush I'm colon Ogburn [Music]