On ‘Severance,’ desire is radicalizing—and oppressive, too

Just like in real life.

Adam Scott and Britt Lower on Severance. Photo: AppleTV

A deserted corporate office, cold linoleum flooring, desks tented with sheets of plastic—not a typical sexy set up, but I’m prepared to rank it within the top 10 TV sex scenes. Maybe even the top five? I’m talking about the most recent episode of Severance—SPOILERS AHEAD—in which Mark S. and Helly finally have their moment.

Very important sex scene rankings aside, this episode made me look back at the entire series through a different lens. Severance is most obviously a critique of the dehumanizing aspects of corporate culture and late-stage capitalism, but what about the commentary behind Mark S. and Helly’s relationship?

Fifteen episodes into the series, I think Severance tells us that love and sex are radicalizing—and oppressive, too. They teeter on a razor’s edge.

Briefly, for the entirely uninitiated: the show revolves around Mark (played by Adam Scott), a grieving widower who gets a cutting-edge “severance” procedure that allows people to divide their consciousness such that they can go to work as “innies” at the biotech company Lumen Industries, return home as “outies,” and not remember anything. We’re talking one body and two separate consciousnesses. As an outie, Mark is peacefully ignorant about the corporate toil of his innie, Mark S.

From the get of season one, Helly—one of Mark S.’s coworkers—is rebellious and intent on escape. She hates working at Lumen and threatens to chop off her hand with a paper cutter unless her outie releases her from this freaky, nightmarish workplace, but her outie denies her. Helly (played by Britt Lower) goes so far as to attempt suicide—still, she’s forced to return to work. Meanwhile, Mark S. is a rules guy, dissuading her from the rebellions she cooks up.

As his feelings for Helly grow, though, it seems to give him a sense of solidarity and motivation to revolt against the powers that be. Similarly, his co-worker Irving only decides to join their worker revolt after Lumen pushes his office crush, Burt, into retirement, effectively ending his life. “Let’s burn this place to the ground,” Irving says. Their co-worker Dylan, too, is motivated by love, though the non-romantic kind: he learns that his outie has a son (“I wanna remember my fucking kid being born,” he screams). 

The innies are routinely dehumanized—at one point, Helly’s outie responds to her protests by cruelly telling her in a recorded video, “I am a person. You are not.”

Well, desire can be a potent reminder and affirmation of humanity. An office crush makes the body speak up—by way of a pounding heart, sweaty palms, butterflies in the stomach, a hard-gulp of a swallow—and in a domain where it’s supposed to be all but nonexistent. Helly and Mark S. share their first kiss right before they embark on their revolt with their co-workers. Their romance blooms right alongside their rebellion. 

It’s only in the cliffhanger ending of season one that we learn the shocking identity of Helly’s outie: Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumen CEO Jame Eagan. She kinda is Lumen, at least on the outside.

Now, in the second season, we’re seeing the many ways that love can also be a tool of oppression. In episode 4, “Woe’s Hollow,” they go on a bizarre offsite in the woods, where Mark S. climbs into Helly’s tent and gets into bed with her. Soon enough, we learn—along with Mark S. and his co-workers—that it wasn’t Helly.

This season, in the wake of their worker rebellion, Helena has been masquerading as Helly, possibly to spy on them in the office. I also think Helena is jealous of Helly—for being principled, funny, and embodied. For being liked and loved. Just how much love has Helena experienced in her life? What did it mean for her to watch that security footage of Helly and Mark S. kissing?

Many people are calling what happens between Helena and Mark S. in that tent a “sex scene,” but it’s rape. Yes, sure, the severance procedure complicates bodily consent in ways that make my brain feel like it’s going to explode, but this much is clear: Mark S. was deceived into “sex” under false circumstances.

Fast-forward to episode 6, “Atilla.” They’re back in the office and Helly returns as Helly, and she’s disturbed to learn of her outie’s abuse. “What sucks is she got to have that, and I didn't,” she tells Mark S. “That she used me to trick my friends, used my body to get close to you.” She decides to reclaim her identity—and her body. And here comes the scene I mentioned before.

She and Mark S. escape to an abandoned office and climb under a pair of neighboring work desks that have a long sheet of plastic pulled across them. Another tent. His suit jacket comes off and so does her underwear. For viewers, the reward of this moment comes not just from the ongoing will-they-or-won’t-they of the show. As innies, they have both endured relentless psychological and bodily torture. 

Now, there’s the possibility of pleasure—this time, consensually.

“Yes?” he asks, placing a hand on her knee.

“Yes,” she says.

His hand moves between her legs, then he’s on top of her, and her head curls back in pleasure. It’s a beautifully executed scene, if all too quick. They successfully sneak this intimate moment—in the middle of their extractive work day, and in the midst of a maze of corporate hallways. Severance splits the self, but love and sex can seem to transcend it.

This moment feels radical and unsanctioned. But is it? Silvia Federici tells us that sex helps to enable worker exploitation. In a worker’s off hours, sex provides a momentary release, allowing them to return refreshed to the office in the morning. Sex can both feel like an escape from the grind and sustain us as good worker bees. 

We’ve already seen that Lumen high-ups believe that Mark S. won’t be able to complete his work on the all-important Cold Harbor project without Helly around. She boosts his spirits and makes innie life bearable. From the perspective of Lumen’s leaders, she is a productivity tool.

One compelling fan theory further complicates any notions of innie sexual rebellion: maybe there’s a breeding program afoot at Lumen. It’s plausible enough, given clues that some women are electing to be severed for a different kind of labor: childbirth (and maybe even some of the thankless labor of caring for their own children). We also know—via a TV news report in season one—that a severed worker discovered that her innie had become pregnant at work without her consent.

In fact, Kier Eagan, the founder of Lumen and the revered patriarch of his family, met his wife Imogene as coworkers at a factory. They were “bonded by the spirit of industry,” as the Lumen handbook puts it. Maybe Lumen wants Mark S. and Helly to have an office romance and procreate to further some mysterious ends for the company. And now it’s possible that Helena and Helly could both end up pregnant by Mark S.—from either Helena’s night on the offsite or Helly’s escape to that empty office. 

This is all absurd and far-fetched and fantastical, and yet! This uncertain teetering of love and sex between freedom and oppression feels like one of the most realistic aspects of Severance. 

The oppression of women relies not only on sexual and reproductive control—from slut-shaming to forced pregnancy—but, also, romantic ideas. Consider, for example, how the institution of motherhood is designed to use women’s “bodies and psyches, to put them to work for free and call it love,” as

Amanda Montei

writes in Touched Out. And in heteronormative sex, women often find themselves trapped in punishing and un-pleasurable scripts.

Love and sex are exploited as tools of oppression, but they can also be doorways to connection, community, solidarity, and self-discovery. They can highlight our current discontents and bring about new ideas about how to organize our lives and world.

They can also give a false sense of rebellion and escape, and provide a means of making do with the status quo. Let’s not forget that Mark S’s outie only got severed because of his unbearable grief for his dead wife (who is maybe not-so-dead, after all). It was love that drove him to this exploitive and self-objectifying procedure.

That image of Mark S. and Helly under the tented desk is lovely, intimate, and hopeful. It also raises familiar questions: What’s exploitive, what’s empowering, and what are the limits of that empowerment? 

Is there empowerment short of burning this place to the ground?