Unlike many mystery-driven shows that deliberately withhold answers, Severance has consistently resolved its central enigmas. While the weekly episode release and the shocking Season 2 cliffhanger finale might obscure this truth, Apple TV+’s workplace thriller already answered some of the burning questions fans had since the series’ debut season, proving that it cares more about character than dragging things out to long for the sake of secrecy. Even if viewers understandably fixate on what remains unknown, sometimes it’s also important to look back and realize Season 2 of Severance didn’t hold any punches when it comes to deciphering the puzzling nature of Lumon Industries.
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WARNING: Spoilers below for Severance Season 2, Episode 10
Following the MDR revolution at the end of the first season, Season 2 of Severance brings the main cast back to the Severed Floor, where they keep exploring the dark corners of Lumon. This journey allows Severance to unveil Lumon’s twisted ambitions while explaining exactly how miraculous technology works. Here are all the big questions answered in Season 2:
What the Purpose of the Testing Floor Is
Lumon designed the Testing Floor to determine exactly how much psychological stress a severed consciousness can withstand before memory barriers collapse. Episode 7 of the second season shows Gemma living in a sterile environment, following a repetitive daily routine that has her dressing up and entering various rooms. Each room activates unique personalities through her severance chip, all of them unaware of what happens outside. Inside these rooms, each personality experiences targeted distress: endless dental procedures, Christmas thank-you note writing until her hand fails, and simulated airplane turbulence that never stops.
The Testing Floor serves as a laboratory for pushing the severance technology to its limits. Lumon’s scientists monitor how these isolated personalities respond to stress, measuring the threshold where compartmentalization breaks down. In other words, Lumon meticulously documents how much trauma can be isolated within a severed personality before memories leak across barriers. The goal is to refine the severance chip to the point where no amount of pain can cross the barriers separating different personalities.
Why Gemma Is at Lumon (And What Is Cold Harbor)
Gemma’s (Dichen Lachman) specific trauma history made her the ideal test subject for Lumon’s experiments. Flashbacks throughout Season 2 reveal her past struggles with infertility, including a devastating miscarriage followed by failed IVF treatments at a Lumon-affiliated fertility clinic. This history established her psychological vulnerability to specific triggers, particularly around family and motherhood, creating perfect testing conditions for memory compartmentalization under emotional stress. The ultimate test in Cold Harbor directly exploits Gemma’s deepest wound by forcing her to dismantle a crib, symbolizing her unfulfilled desire for motherhood.
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Beyond her personal trauma, Gemma’s connection to Mark (Adam Scott) provided Lumon with an experimental bonus. By employing her husband on the Severed Floor, the company could observe whether emotional bonds transcend memory barriers, explaining Harmony Cobel’s (Patricia Arquette) scientific fascination with their innies interactions.
What MDR Does
The Macrodata Refinement team directly creates the artificial personalities used on the Testing Floor. Season 2 establishes a perfect one-to-one relationship between the files MDR refines (Wellington, Dranesville, Allentown) and the testing rooms where these personalities experience different forms of stress. That means Mark has been unknowingly participating in his wife’s torture, sorting numbers that shape the very consciousnesses subjected to psychological experimentation. This revelation explains the secrecy surrounding MDR’s work and the departmental isolation, both measures enacted to prevent workers from discovering their role in human experimentation.
Lumon’s Larger Plan For the Severed Chip
Lumon aims to develop consumer-grade severance technology. While it’s still unclear if their cult-like beliefs are the biggest motivator for this move or the profits they could haul, the Testing Floor experiments ensure the severance chip will work for the average user. Testing Gemma in scenarios like dental appointments and turbulent flights reveals their target market: everyday discomforts people would pay to avoid experiencing. Their technology would create disposable consciousnesses that exist only to endure specific unpleasant situations and then disappear without memory, freeing humanity from all discomfort — while constantly creating innies that know nothing but suffering. This explains why completing Cold Harbor was so critical to Lumon’s plans, as it represents the final validation of their technology before broad distribution.
Who Invented the Severance Tech
As Season 2 of Severance reveals, Harmony Cobel created the severance technology, not the Eagan family. Episode 8 explains that young Harmony worked ten-hour shifts at a Lumon ether factory when she was eight, where chemical numbing provided her only escape from suffering. These formative experiences seem to have inspired her technological breakthrough, a method to separate painful memories. However, indoctrinated through her aunt, Celestine “Sissy” Cobel (Jane Alexander), and her education at the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls, Cobel surrendered credit to Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry), believing in the family’s divine right to leadership.
What’s the Purpose of Mammalian Nurturable’s Goats
The mysterious baby goats from Season 1 serve as sacrificial animals in Lumon’s religious rituals. The Season 2 finale explicitly shows Lorne (Gwendoline Christie) from Mammalian Nurturable bringing a goat to Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson). As this creepy interaction explains, once Cold Harbor testing concludes, the goat is killed and entombed with Gemma as part of a ceremony to guide her spirit to Kier. Lorne’s visible discomfort when delivering the animal and her questions about how many more sacrifices she must provide confirm numerous previous test subjects have already died this way. It also explains why the innies from this department are so protective of their goats, as they are disturbingly aware Mammalian Nurturable exists primarily to raise animals for these ritual killings.
The two seasons of Severance are currently available on Apple TV+.
What do you think of how Season 2 of Severance handled its mysteries? Which questions would you like answered next? Let us know in the comments below!
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Dead by Daylight from Behaviour Interactive.
