Severance finally brought the goats back but now we’re even more confused

We are only three episodes this season of Resignation And it already makes me feel a little, I would be a good fit for Lumon. What I mean by that is every episode bury itself in my head so I can’t think of anything else. This is especially true for the third episode of the season, “Who is alive?” who took all our protagonists on their own unique adventures, each adding layer upon layer of mystery and intrigue to their lives both inside the lumon and out.

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As the episode jumped between each character almost individually, we will break down this story by history.

Innie Mark and Innie Helly

If you asked one Resignation Fan after season one, what their biggest, most random question about the show is, it would have to do with goats. Why does Lumon have a room full of goats in his office building? This episode did not answer that question, but it gave us more to the mystery, which was more than welcome.

Innie Mark and Helly lead a mission to explore the cut floor of Lumon and find out if anyone knows the residence of Mrs. Casey-as also Gemma, Outtie Mark’s thought-to-be-dead wife. They print “missing” flyers (somehow without lumon noticing) and asking the team to walk around the office and see if anyone has seen her. Dylan says he will do it later, Irv says he will go to optics and design, and Mark and Helly try to find the ged room. Which they do, kind. They find part of it attached to a goat-sized time (Major To be John Malkovich vibber) which leads to something even more incredible.

Severance Gwendoline Christie
We hope Christopher Walken helped her with Cowbell. – Apple TV+

Mark and Helly find a massive space filled with rolling, grass -covered hills. These are mammals that are cared for, the goat department in Lumon, and it is led by none other than Brienne from Tarth/Captain Phashma himself, Gwendoline Christie. She sees Mark and Helly and immediately asks if they want to kill her, which is a pretty weird question to ask in a workplace. When she is aware that this is not the reason why they are there, they all sit down, but it is clear that she hides something. Mark challenges her and asks what she knows about Mrs. Casey, and the character loudly calls a cowbell that brings out several dozen other employees.

In a scene that looks like something out of a horror film, Mark and Helly are surrounded by the sad, undeveloped mammal staff that cannot be cared for, and it seems something bad is happening. That’s until Mark wins them over by revealing that they think Lumon is lying about Mrs. Casey. It turns out that everyone who knows her. They really like her and promise not to stop Mark and Helly in their quest. It all was the perfect blend of creepy and fun Resignation is known for.

Plus, we have now seen where the goats are going. This space. But to what end and why does the department manager think she might be killed? What do all these other people do there? Why do they think people from Macrodata -forfin have bags like kengurus (a detail that calls back to the season’s perceived rivalry between MDR and O&D)? Typical Resignation: We learn a little more about the goats and it just creates lots of new questions.

Dylan G.

After refusing to help with the search for Mrs. Casey, Innie Dylan is visited by the creepy child Miss Huang. She brings him to a mysterious space where he is told that he is being rewarded with an 18-minute visitor event with Gretchen, his Outtie’s wife. The two strike up an awkward conversation and it is simply wonderful. This is exactly what we have been waiting to see. How someone on the outside who knows and loves these people would respond to spending time with an innie. Gretchen gently tells Dylan about their family and her disappointment over him. He is understandably confused, but ultimately happy with it all.

Later we see Gretchen and her husband, Outtie Dylan, at home, where he watches TV and admits to forgetting some important things with the kids. Obviously, Gretchen can love Dylan, but this version of him may just be less lovable than his sweet, innocent indie.

Irving

We didn’t get to see Outtie Irv this week, but Hans Innie made a crucial discovery. His task in the search for Mrs. Casey brings him back to optics and design, Burt’s old department. Once there, he runs into Burt’s old colleague Felicia and the two share a few laughs about him. She then sees one of his drawings and reveals that she knows the dark gait he remembered to see painted again and again in his outtie’s apartment (and one he has begun now to recreate as his innie). She says it is the export hall and although their department used to deliver there, they no longer do so.

Retirement Milchick
Not a great day for Milchick. – Apple TV+

Mr. Milchick

By arriving at work and meeting some deflated balloons strokes of a stand-in for its current position inside Lumon-HR. Milchick finds Natalie in her office. She is there and speaks on behalf of the board that will thank Milchick for all his work and offer him a gift. It is a set of paintings originally by Kier Eagan, but has now been reintroduced with Kier drawn as a black man instead. The goal is to make him feel more like a part of the team and he says it was working. He lied. Later we see him hide the paintings in a storage room. Maybe it’s an indication that his commitment is that Lumon is worsening?

Devon and Ricken

Lumon’s violent honor girl Natalie makes double duty this episode as we also find her at home for Mark’s sister and brother -in -law, Devon and Ricken. She’s there to knock the rick out on a new version of his book exclusively for Innies, which blows her already big ego to new heights. Flirting only adds it. Meanwhile, Devon Outtie tells Mark about it and the two laugh. The siblings are working on … something. More about that in a moment.

Harmony

The episode began with a very Fargo-Inspired shot of harmony parked on the side of a snow -covered road driving in the middle of nowhere. Last time we saw her, she avoided Mark and all his lumon questions. And even though she continued to drive, she eventually turned around.

We see her next back in Lumon in the parking lot waiting to talk to Outtie Helly. Seems she has been thinking about the new position and has a counter -offering. She wants Milchick out and finish her work with Cold Harbor on the cut floor. Helly thinks she is too selfish, but says she will let her ask her case to the board. The two go back to the building when harmony has a change of heart. She thinks she is lured into a kind of trap and quickly leaves.

This story, almost more than the rest, keeps us sticking. We still have no idea what Harmony’s plan is here, how or why she got up in the company and so much more. We also don’t know what’s out of Helly’s intentions. It feels like the most mysterious story on the show so far.

Severance Harmony
This story is still super weird. – Apple TV+

Outtie Mark

And yet we have saved the best in the end, just as the episode did. Before the opening credit we saw Mark Timing how long it takes for him to get from his car and into the Lumon elevator. Later, he and his sister create a message – “Who is alive?” – That he will try to burn on his retina in just long enough to give the message to his innie. This is a terrible plan that has more than a few holes in it, but when he starts training himself, he is shaken out of it by a surprise guest.

It is Regabhi (Karen Aldridge) that we met last season; She is the person who tried to help formerly cut off employee Petey fleeing. She tells Mark why his retina -burning plan does not work, why reintegration is the only way and that the process has gotten better since she tried it on Petey. She also drops a piece of knowledge she could only know if it was true: that Mark’s wife lives inside Lumon. Mark agrees to let her try to reintegrate him.

And that’s how down in Mark’s basement, Regabhi begins the procedure. Then we see as Mark’s Outtie Self and Innie Self starts to become one. An action that, if it works, will change everything.

So yes – “Who lives?” is a mind fuck of an episode of Severence. Each character is deeper into the mystery of himself and thereby Mysterys of Lumon. We are only three episodes in a 10-episode season and we die to see what happens then.

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