Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Severance S2E4, “Woe’s Hollow” (written by Anna Ouyang Moench and directed by Ben Stiller)
As Severance S2E4 begins, our innie friends find themselves suddenly outside in a snowy landscape. They have no idea where they are or how they got there, and neither do we. It’s bewildering since S2E3 left us with Mark’s (Adam Scott) apparent reintegration, along with Irving (John Turturro) learning that what his outie has been painting is known as the “exports hall.” We know that’s where Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) went, even if our innie friends don’t, so it seemed like everything was about to come to a head.
Instead, “Woe’s Hollow” displaces us along with the characters in the story. I found myself double-checking to make sure I hadn’t accidentally watched episodes out of order because it’s not clear how the events of S2E4 follow those of the previous episode—we’re missing something in between.
First of all, how did Mark, Irving, Dylan (Zach Cherry), and Helena (Britt Lower) get to Woe’s Hollow? The innies come to consciousness standing outdoors, and while there is an elevator ding, there is no elevator. How did the outies get there, and how does that relate to their normal experience of going to work?
I have considered the possibility that what we’re seeing in S2E4 is some kind of computer simulation—could they somehow be inside the Lumon office but experiencing it as if they were outside in the snow?—but I don’t think that tracks with the events that close the episode, unless it is a simulation that includes a very real threat of drowning.
As the narrative proceeds, Mark, Helly, Dylan, and Irving see doppelgangers of themselves who point the direction in which the group is to go. Are these clones, holograms, or robots? I think those are the only options.
Besides the fact that many Severance fans have speculated about Lumon being involved in cloning for some time, the Kier Eagan story that structures the team’s Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence, which is about Kier’s secret twin Dieter, also points in this direction, but we don’t really know.
One more big question before I recap the events of “Woe’s Hollow,” which are significant in themselves: Why is Lumon sending MDR on an ORTBO at this moment? Every indication is that they want Mark to complete the Cold Harbor file as soon as possible, and this seems like a distraction from that goal.
It’s also hard to imagine the outie versions of Mark and Dylan agreeing to a two-day work trip. We know Dylan is often responsible for watching his kids at night after Gretchen (Merritt Wever) goes to work, and last time we saw outie-Mark, he was agreeing to reintegration on the belief that Gemma was alive and being held inside Lumon.
In short, events must have occurred in the outside world between the end of S2E3 and the beginning of S2E4 that led to this point, and I’d imagine Severance will show us those events next week.
Mark does not seem to be reintegrated, though he does have a moment where he sees Gemma in place of Helly. One possibility is that the process will be slow. Maybe going slower is part of how Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) has gotten better at the procedure. Or maybe Lumon quickly figured out what Mark was doing and this ORTBO is a response to that.
Regardless, a lot of important things happen in “Woe’s Hollow,” so let’s run through them.
Once the team is assembled, they follow music to a TV stand on a cliff that provides them with an introductory video from Milchick (Tramell Tillman). He tells them they will learn about Dieter Eagan by going to Scissor Cave, where Kier first tamed his tempers. And, OK, I don’t know how important the Kier mythology stuff is, but I always find it entertaining.
The aforementioned maybe-clones appear to guide our team along their way. They find the book in the cave, then a dead seal (which Irving wants to eat because he’s kind of freaking out), before coming across Milchick, who takes them to a camp where Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) is preparing food.
There, Milchick tells them more of the story of Kier and Dieter while Miss Huang plays a theremin. Ultimately, it would seem that Dieter masturbated in the woods and then started disintegrating until Kier threw him in the water, and there was some kind of nymph named Woe in the hollow.
It’s hard to take this seriously, and Helena doesn’t. She starts laughing, Mark joins in, and Milchick punishes the group by having Miss Huang toss their block-shaped marshmallows into the fire. I do wonder, though, if there is some message to glean from the Dieter story about the instability of clones or something like that. Maybe Lumon has been working on cloning human beings for a long time, only to find the clones have a short half-life. Maybe Mammalians Nurturable is focused on cloning goats to learn things about the process—can they nurture the cloned goat well enough to keep it alive? Of course, the people working there might not even know the goats are cloned under this hypothesis.
If Lumon is engaged in cloning, it’s worth asking why. I continue to think we have to take the pseudo-religious stuff seriously when we’re speculating about Lumon’s goals, but I don’t have a robust theory to offer at the moment.
After the marshmallows are summarily burnt and the team is left alone, Irving pushes Helly to tell the group more about the night gardener she saw during the OTC because he clearly believes she’s been lying. She deflects, and everyone gets defensive. Helly makes a remark about how Irving is just upset because he’ll never see Burt (Christopher Walken) again, which leads Irving to storm off into the woods.
Of course, Irving is right to question Helly because she’s actually the outie Helena Eagan posing as the innie Helly R. and has been since the beginning of Season 2. “Woe’s Hollow” confirms this in its closing scene. Irving tells Helena that her remark about Burt was cruel and that Helly was never cruel. He’s figured it out. Who would have the power to enter the severed floor as an outie but an Eagan?
Irving shoves Helena’s head underwater, yells for Milchick, and threatens to kill Helena unless Milchick brings innie-Helly back. I love the fact that Severance took the opportunity last week to remind us that the innies aren’t allowed to know Milchick’s first name, as it makes Helena’s line telling Seth to do it definitive evidence. Even better is Irving’s repetition. “Yes! Do it, Seth” (you smug motherfucker).
Milchick gets on his walkie and ends the Glasgow protocol that was keeping Helena from becoming Helly. We see her change underwater, and again get a ding. We do not, however, get to spend any significant time with Helly in this episode since Milchick moves quickly to berate and fire Irving.
I don’t know what is about to happen to Irving in an immediate sense as “Woe’s Hollow” cuts to the credits, but there’s clearly something Milchick wants the person on the other end of his walkie to do right at that moment. It wouldn’t make sense to revert Irving to his outie out there wherever they are, but maybe they also have the power to make these people unconscious zombies or something, and that could explain how they got out there in the first place.
I’ll be really sad to lose innie-Irving, even if I imagine this means the show will spend more time with his outie. I get the impression that outie-Irving is a bit more jaded than his counterpart, but at least we don’t lose John Turturro, who has consistently been a delight in this series. And I am curious to learn more about his relationship (or lack thereof) with Burt on the outside, who he was calling on that payphone, etc.
One more thing. As I recapped the events of S2E4 just now, I skipped over the fact that Mark and Helena have sex in this episode. Of course, when this occurs, Mark thinks he’s having sex with innie-Helly, and we don’t know definitively that it’s outie-Helena until later in the hour. I’ve suspected from the beginning that it was, but I know others have been thinking otherwise, and Severance has done a good job of keeping things ambiguous.
Regardless, we have to think about this sex scene retrospectively, with the knowledge we have by the end of S2E4. It really puts how we think about the innie/outie relationship to the test. If innie and outie are distinct persons, then Helena was pretending to be someone she isn’t in order to take advantage of Mark. I think that’s plausible, and it’s how I tend to read things.
In Season 1, outie-Helena expressed the view that her innie was not a person. If she continues to think this way, the implication is that innie-Mark isn’t a person, either, so there’s nothing wrong with using him as she sees fit.
If you want to be sympathetic to Helena, however, you might point out that her innie, Helly R., is a version of herself stripped of the stresses and expectations of life as an Eagan. In other words, you could take the view that innie and outie really are, at some level, the same person, in which case Helena’s seduction of Mark might feel a little less problematic. She envied her innie’s connection with Mark when she saw it on video, sure, but maybe she started to genuinely feel that connection herself.
I’m not sure how to resolve this question or whether Severance should attempt to resolve it in any definitive way, but it’s worth thinking about.
I am curious where the show will pick up next week. Will the innies still be out at Woe’s Hollow? Will we spend the whole episode with the outies? If so, back to the first question two weeks from now…
I do hope we get to spend some time with Helly R. I’ve missed her.
See you next week.
