Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Severance Season 2 Episode 7.
Severance is a number of things. It’s a send-up of the illogical monotony of corporate culture, it’s a warning about capitalism, a warning about the perils of technological development. It’s a mystery, an exploration of trauma, and a love story between Helly (Britt Lower) and Mark S. (Adam Scott). It’s also a tragedy, centered around the seeming death of outie Mark’s beloved wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and her apparent corporate rebirth in Lumon. That loss has proven a rich motivator for Mark and has set the tone for Season 2. Even so, it does feel curious that, at this point, we’ve heard about Gemma, we’ve seen Mark mourn her, and we’ve seen her as Ms. Casey, but we’ve rarely seen Gemma. “Chikhai Bardo” is a stunner of an episode that provides our best look yet at Gemma, her relationship with pre-tragedy Mark, and what exactly is going on with her in Lumon’s halls.
It looks like Lumon isn’t the only institution parasitically surviving off Mark and Gemma’s lifeblood: the episode opens with their meet-cute at a university blood drive. They’re each reading, and after a cute exchange (and a laugh at the title of his student’s paper, “All Quiet on the Western Blunt”), they introduce themselves. Cut to a spaced-out Gemma getting blood drawn somewhere within Lumon’s characteristically white halls. We see a brief interlude of her with Mark, before returning to Devon (Jen Tullock) and Dr. Reghabi (Karen Aldridge), who are overlooking the incapacitated, reintegrating Mark. Devon emphatically declares that if Dr. Reghabi gives “one solitary thought” to messing with Mark again, her life is forfeit. “It’s settled f*cking law, lady, just accept it, the end.” The latter confirms that Gemma is alive, and as Devon sits with the revealed confirmation, we cut to the season’s opening titles.
Gemma Flashes Back To the Past in ‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 7

Image via Apple TV+

Back with Gemma, an unnamed nurse’s (Sandra Bernhard) over-manicured, pale hand takes a variety of her measurements before asking: “If you were caught in a mudslide, would you be more afraid of suffocating or of drowning?” (Her answer’s drowning.) Gemma asks, “How many rooms today?” to which the doctor replies, “Six.” Later, Gemma opens a cabinet to see the blood-red dress and cute, short wig she has to don before exiting to a hallway full of doors with city names on them: Allentown, Cairns, Dranesville, Siena, Loveland, Tumwater, Adelaide, Sopchoppy, all before landing on Wellington (with Rhodes and Cold Harbor to follow). When Gemma walks through the door, her innie emerges in a dentist’s office, where a man rolls in with the cart we saw in Episode 5 while whistling the same song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” “There she is,” the creepy Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson) says. Gemma (we don’t know her innie’s name here) asks, “Could I please get a break? Just for a little while?” “But it’s been six weeks,” he replies. “I was just here,” she says. “I know, nobody likes the dentist,” he replies before beckoning her to sit.
On the outside, we reenter Mark’s reintegrating memories. A much happier Mark wanders through the hallway to catch Gemma en route to a lecture on Hadji Murad, a Tolstoy novel about a rebel commander who enters a careful alliance with the Russian forces he’d been fighting as part of a campaign of revenge. Mark’s brought her a small ant farm because he remembers her saying that she “liked ants,” but Gemma clarifies that she loves plants, and hates ants, before kissing him. The scene slides to another memory, with the pair living together as Mark buys a crib.
A montage of dreamy moments suggests the passage of time, and the pair seem serenely, passionately in love. Cut to Gemma and Mark having lunch with Devon and Ricken (Michael Chernus), as well as ribbing him for saying “I belayed my first couloir in middle school.” “That sounds painful,” Gemma says before turning down a pour of wine from her sister-in-law. Devon understands what that means. “Oh f*ck right off,” she whispers as the pair share happy looks. An elegant transition later sees Gemma in pain, alone in the bathroom. She sits in the running shower, in shock, with blood running down her leg. Mark discovers her there, and she breaks down in his arms: it seems the subtly-alluded-to baby they’d been expecting was miscarried.
The Severance Barriers are Holding in Season 2 Episode 7

Image via Apple TV+

The episode cuts to one of Mark’s memories of Ms. Casey. “I’m here to observe Helly R.,” she says, “I’m to watch her for signs of sadness.” It’s a scene following Helly R.’s suicide attempt in Season 1 Episode 5, “The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design,” and we exit it in a Fincher-like manner, following cables until we enter a room with four desks, facing outward, each assigned to a different MDR team member (we see Irving (John Turturro) and Helly R.’s faces on monitors). There’s a quick montage of the screen of the man spying on Mark S. through his computer, showing his progress through various Lumon projects (first Dranesville, then Cold Harbor). “Are the severance barriers holding?” Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) asks Dr. Mauer, to which he replies, “Yes, the technology is working.” “You like her,” Drummond replies. “She’s easy to like,” a very 1970s-looking version of the creepy doctor replies. “She’s fond of me too, of course.” “Didn’t she try and break your fingers?” Drummond retorts.
We return to Mark and Gemma visiting the Butzemann Fertility Center together (where they pass an unsuspecting Dr. Mauer in the hallway), and he talks to her about their visit being the “next step for a lot of people,” saying he loves her. She apologizes, but Mark is warm. The episode returns to Gemma sitting alone in a sterile Lumon office before we take a nightmarish tour of the hallways, complete with the black Exports Hall elevator. Cut to Gemma and Mark in another flashback with a “third time’s the charm” injection of fertility drugs, then back to Gemma with the creepy Dr. Mauer. “How are you feeling?” he asks. “My mouth hurts,” she retorts. He asks which room caused her mouth to hurt. “Wellington.” He asks how many rooms she visited, and they discuss it, but Gemma doesn’t remember what happened in the rooms. “How did you feel in the hall?” Mauer asks, inquiring about whether she left any rooms with residual feelings.

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Instead of answering, Gemma asks her own question: “There’s only one room I haven’t been to yet, and today it had a name on it…” “Cold Harbor,” he replies. “So what happens, once I’ve been in all the rooms?” she asks. He replies in cryptic Lumon fashion: “You will see the world again, and the world will see you.” “So I’ll see Mark?” she asks. “Mark will benefit from the world you’re siring,” he replies, “Kier will take away all his pain, just as Kier has taken away yours.” Her demeanor changes, and she angrily demands that Mauer “just talk like a normal person” — but he only eerily replies with “Goodnight, Gemma. Dream sweet.”
It’s Always Christmas in Allentown in ‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 7

Image via Apple TV+

Back with Mark, Devon, and Dr. Reghabi, the latter says Mark will wake up “when he’s ready to.” Devon asks Reghabi if she thinks the reintegration will work, and she replies they had no other choice. Devon then recalls an “innie cottage,” a place where severed people “become their innies.” “Damona Birthing Retreat,” Dr. Reghabi replies. The two argue, with Devon suggesting that the cabin could be a way in, and suggests calling Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette). “Why would you do that? She runs the severed floor,” Dr. Reghabi replies. “Not anymore, she doesn’t. She might know how to get to the cabin. And, f*ck, she might know how to get to Gemma,” Devon counters. Dr. Reghabi rejects the idea, expecting Cobel to be a true “soldier” who will turn them all in, but Devon’s committed to reaching out. It’s the last straw for Dr. Reghabi, who packs her tech, wishes Devon good luck, and leaves. “This isn’t my choice, it’s yours… do not call that woman.” Meanwhile, Mark can only mumble “Chikhai Bardo,” still unconscious.
We then visit a memory from Mark and Gemma’s past, with the latter looking at a set of the O&D Ideographic Cards from Season 1. We’ve seen one before — the one looking like a man performing yoga into another’s chest, which Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) previously swiped, and it’s referred to as Chikhai Bardo (the title of the episode). “It’s the same guy fighting himself, defeating his own psyche. Ego death,” Gemma replies, before adding she received them in the mail — and must have gotten onto some mailing list at the fertility clinic. A “bardo,” in Tibetan Buddhism, is a transitional stage between death and rebirth. In Tibetan Buddhism, there are six bardos, three experienced in life and three experienced during and after death, before rebirth. The fourth bardo, the “chikhai bardo,” describes the moments of death leading up to the final breath.
As Gemma tells Mark about the toll their attempts to have children is taking on her, he snaps that maybe they should stop before the scene centers on black flowers. When the episode jumps back to Gemma, she’s wearing the garb of a passenger on a crashing plane, before cutting back to Drummond and Dr. Mauer lamenting that the Cold Harbor file is stuck at 96%. “When he’s done, you’re gonna have to say goodbye to her,” Drummond comments, before asking why Mauer is wearing a “stupid” sweater (notably, a Christmas sweater), and the doctor doesn’t respond before walking off. We cut to Gemma dressed in a red robe and putting on a ring. As she enters a new room (Allentown), she narrates the thank-you note she’s being forced to write with her non-dominant hand to a “Mr. Tisdale” on behalf of her and “her husband” for an electric grouter. This is the latest letter in a batch of many, her hand exhausted and covered in ink. “How much longer do I have to do this?” she asks. Mauer reiterates that she’s done, but that Christmas comes back every year. “It’s always Christmas,” she angrily replies. “I love you,” he says, forcing her to reply with the same before she leaves.
Gemma Attempts To Escape Lumon in ‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 7

Image via Apple TV+

We cut back to memories of Gemma listening to Mark angrily dismantle the crib, the pair more distant than ever before as Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” plays (a callback to Season 1 when Ms. Casey’s identity as Mark’s wife was first revealed). As Gemma listens to the same song in her room at Lumon, she gets a visit from Mauer and tells him she wants to go home. In response, Mauer lies to her, telling her that Mark has remarried and had a daughter. “He’s moved on. Maybe you’ve moved on, too, in one of the rooms. What do you think?” She doesn’t believe him, but he asks if she “gravitates” towards one room or another, suggesting that “maybe [she] felt things behind those doors [she] never felt with Mark. Maybe I’ve seen it.” (Incidentally, he’s not lying, because she never seemed to feel disgusted with Mark… but I digress). He grabs a copy of The Death of Ivan Ilyich from a shelf (the same book Gemma was reading when she first met Mark) and starts to idly flip through it before Gemma knocks him out with a chair. She makes her way down the corridor’s dark hallways in an effort to escape. The episode then cuts to the night Gemma “died,” when Mark stays home as she leaves for an outing.
Back at Lumon, the elevator Gemma takes to escape opens at the dark entrance to “Exports,” and as Gemma makes it down the black hallway, Milchick (Tramell Tillman) opens the door. Now Ms. Casey, she asks Milchick what’s happening, and he replies that her outie has gotten on the wrong elevator. “How long have I…” she starts to ask, before Milchick interrupts, asking if she can turn around and go back the way she’s come. Sadly, she walks down the hallway and back to the elevator going down. In Mark’s memories, we see him receive the police visit confirming Gemma’s so-called death, intercut with present-day Gemma’s heartbreaking discovery that she’s been returned to the research floor. Her only word? “Mark.” Back in the present day, Mark wakes up, and all he can think about is Gemma when Devon asks him where he went.
We learn a lot in this episode. Gemma and Mark’s difficulties in conceiving a child precipitated their turn to a fertility clinic that seems to be a front for Lumon, and her responses to those cards are likely the reason why Lumon targeted her and faked her death. She’s in some sort of research wing below the elevator Irving’s outie keeps painting, and possibly entered under her own initial free will, perhaps with promises that Lumon could aid her fertility. There, she’s been forced into becoming a variety of different, independent innies in various projects (each with its own code name and somehow connected to the MDR files). These innies’ experiences are kept individuated by “barriers,” and they’re likely unaware of each other (given that one of her innies literally spends her entire psychic life at the dentist), so she has little idea how much time has passed in the outside world. Dr. Mauer has clearly fallen for Gemma and has been using the innie barriers to control her — or attempt to, anyway — but other than that, we have little idea what these different projects are expected to accomplish, save for their probable connection to Kier’s odd psychological framework.
The end goal is likely connected to the process of death and rebirth, however, given the episode’s references to Bardos. Could Lumon be trying to control death itself? Is it part of an effort to gain absolute control over a person? Is the company trying to bring back Kier Eagan? What’s going to happen with the creepy whistling Dr. Mauer? Oh, and Devon is almost certainly going to attempt to partner with Harmony Cobel, given the Hadji Murad reference and her displeasure with Lumon, so we’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, praise Kier your job didn’t sever your personality into one whose entire life is on the receiving end of dentistry.
Severance Season 2 is available to stream on Apple TV+ in the U.S. New episodes air on Fridays.

Severance

Severance Season 2 Episode 7 answers a huge number of questions all at once, giving us a deeply tragic look at what Lumon’s been subjecting poor Gemma to.

Release Date

February 18, 2022

Showrunner

Dan Erickson, Mark Friedman

Writers

Dan Erickson

Pros & Cons

Dichen Lachmann is given the best showcase of her talent all season, and delivers an incredible, heartbreaking performance.
The complex episode is packed with clever uses of literature, philosophy, and spirituality that add interesting layers of meaning to excavate.
The episode’s cinematography and editing are some of the series’ best, as gorgeous as the narrative is moving.