Severance Subtly Confirms Season 2’s Biggest Fan Theory

Fair warning: there are spoilers ahead! Severance Season 2 is just getting started, but one of the most explosive fan theories seems to have been confirmed this week. Season 1 ended with the shocking reveal Helly (Britt Lower) is really Helena Eagan in the outside world. The other characters still don’t know that, and Helly chose not to tell them — even after Mark demanded that they be allowed to return to work alongside him. That has raised some suspicions among viewers already, but Episode 2, “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig,” seems to confirm that Helly is just Helena in disguise. As Reddit users pointed out, the elevator did not ding twice when she arrived back on the Severed floor.

Severance is a weaves a complex web with two versions of each character — an “innie” and an “outie” — but in the case of Lower’s character, the two are particularly distinct and are referred to as “Helly” and “Helena.” It seems safe to say that Helly was genuinely on the side of the Macrodata Refinement Department, at least up until the point of her speech at the Lumon gala at the end of Season 1.

Now things are a bit different. At Mark’s insistence, all three of his co-workers were brought back to MDR and each seemed to be given some concessions to convince them to stay — except for Helly. In Episode 2, we see Helena persuading Cobel (Patricia Arquette) to take a new job with Lumon. Helena is also the one who insists that Mark (Adam Scott) must return to work to finish the “Cold Harbor” file for some reason. That project has something to do with Mark’s severed wife, Gemma, but we don’t know what exactly. Helena is sent back to work in part to accomplish this task at the behest of the board.

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All of this had some fans thinking that Helena may not be severed anymore at all, but may actually be Helena in disguise. This makes a lot of sense — Lumon would want a spy inside MDR, and they would have enough security footage and recordings to train Helena to impersonate Helly. If that weren’t enough, many viewers took the elevator scene as subtle confirmation that this fan theory is true.

“I just rewatched it and you’re right. There’s a ding when the elevator starts to go down for everyone but not for her!!” one person wrote. Another added that “her look of disconcernment on her face is really really interesting,” while other commenters tried to speculate about who knows about Helena’s undercover job and who doesn’t.

This is a huge reveal to drop at the beginning of the season, which is exciting because it could mean even more big twists coming later on around the finale. New episodes of Severance premiere on Fridays on Apple TV+, with the season finale scheduled for March 21st. Season 1 is streaming there now.