[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” Season 2, Episode 4, “Woe’s Hollow.” For coverage of earlier episodes, read our previous reviews.]
“Stray not from Kier’s path, lest you roil nature’s wrath.”
Irving (John Turturro) has all the time been probably the most religious member of Lumon’s Macrodata Refinement workforce. Effectively-versed within the handbook and respectful, if not outright reverent, of the Eagan household mythos, Irving could be the final worker Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) would count on to spoil an organization ORTBO (Out of doors Retreat and Group-Constructing Prevalence) — particularly one which’s designed as a reenactment of the founder’s fateful remaining outing together with his secret twin brother.
And but, it’s Irving who strays from Kier’s path, and thus Irving who sparks the ire of Woe’s Hole.
In the previous few minutes of an eerie, unsettling, and more and more ominous Episode 4, two stunning developments roll out one proper after the opposite. First, Helly (Britt Decrease) is uncovered as a fraud — a “fucking mole,” as Irving calls her, whereas he drowns Helena Eagan to be able to carry Helly again to life. Irving got here alive within the woods, like Dieter as soon as did, and he’ll die there, additionally like Dieter did, however the waterfall can’t quiet his bellowing convictions: The lady working alongside them because the starting of Season 2 has been Helena Eagan, Helly’s Outie, all alongside. In fact, Irving doesn’t know her actual identify is Helena Eagan (or that she’s the daughter of present Lumon CEO Jame Eagan), however he’s accurately deduced she is an Eagan, since it could take fairly a little bit of energy to rearrange for an Outie to the spy on the corporate’s Innies.
Sadly, this isn’t a thriller anybody at Lumon wished him to unravel. As shortly as he forces Mr. Milchick to verify his suspicions, Mr. Milchick terminates Irving from the corporate — and, primarily, from the world itself. As Dylan (Zach Cherry) apologizes for not listening to his pal and Mark (Adam Scott) quietly grapples with the implications of Irving’s revelation, Mr. Milchick performs a de facto execution. “It is going to be as should you, Irving B., by no means even existed or drew a single breath upon this Earth,” he says. “Might Kier’s mercy comply with you into the everlasting darkish.”
And with that, Irving B. isn’t any extra.
The suddenness of every huge twist is sufficient to produce a little bit of whiplash: How did we get right here? With Helly, the reality has been shrewdly hidden behind a key theme of the episode (and “Severance” total): twins. In a present the place each severed character primarily varieties an equivalent duo, Season 2 additionally launched a variety of scenes involving Helly/Helena that, whereas maybe curious or notable on the time, now invite two distinct interpretations.
Take the temporary shot within the first episode the place Helena Eagan research surveillance footage of Helly kissing Mark. On the time, it appears like Helena is catching up on what her Innie has been doing. She’s only a Lumon government who — after getting hoodwinked by a lower-level worker (her personal Innie, how embarrassing) and chastised by her boss/father — dutifully follows up on the work she’s been neglecting. However now, it’s clear Helena wasn’t simply studying about her Innie; she was finding out her Innie. She wanted to know not simply what Helly was doing, but additionally what she was feeling. If Helena had pretended to be Helly with out figuring out her Innie had the hots for Mark S., her espionage try would’ve been apparent from the soar.
One other telling scene, additionally from the primary episode, sees Mark suggesting he ought to assist search for Ms. Casey/Gemma (Dichen Lachman) as a result of he and his Outie had been “the same-ish individual.” Listening to this, Helena adamantly disagrees. “We’re not the identical, truly,” Helena says. “And we don’t owe them shit.” Within the second, after we nonetheless assume she’s Helly, her response seems to be motivated by Helly’s latest discovery that her Outie is an Eagan; she’s so repulsed by Helena’s position in persecuting severed workers that she will’t entertain the suggestion that she, Helly, would share something with her, Helena Eagan (not to mention “owe” her any semblance of help).
However now that we all know Helena is the one who’s emphatic in regards to the break up between Innies and Outies, her outburst appears like Helena’s true self breaking via. In any case, in Season 1, Helena all the time handled Helly with brazen disregard. Helena refuses to let her Innie stop. She’s completely happy letting her Innie endure. She reacts to her Innie’s repeated cries for assist — together with a suicide try — as in the event that they’re an irrelevant annoyance she shouldn’t must cope with. So in fact Helena doesn’t assume Innies and Outies are the identical — not even the same-ish.
Put one other manner, Helena is merciless to Helly, and it’s that very same cruelty that ruins her ruse. Positive, Helena’s half-assed lie a few “evening gardener” set off Irving’s bullshit detector, however it’s Helena’s spiteful phrases about Burt (Christopher Walken) that units her destiny. “What you mentioned to me final evening was merciless,” Irving says, when confronting Helena the subsequent day. “Helly was by no means merciless.” As soon as once more, Helena’s mistake is pretty well-hidden. Making a snide comment is an comprehensible response to being pushed, time and again, a few subject she clearly doesn’t wish to discuss (what actually occurred in the course of the Macrodat Rebellion), and to us, the viewers, it looks like she doesn’t wish to discuss it as a result of she doesn’t wish to inform her colleagues she’s an Eagan.
However Irving isn’t blinded by his emotions, like Mark, and he hasn’t been incentivized to behave, like Dylan. Whereas his two co-workers have been manipulated into dialing down the urgency round their authentic mission, Irving is extra devoted than ever. Out within the woods, he tames his personal mood of Woe and sees what everybody else can’t. That Helly isn’t actually Helly, and that the one manner he’ll ever be with Burt once more is that if they’ll determine the way to get the Innies out of the basement and into the surface world. Saving Ms. Casey/Gemma is, in a manner, like saving Burt. If they’ll join Mark’s Outie together with his spouse, who’s trapped inside Lumon, why can’t they join Irving’s Innie with Burt, who’s caught exterior Lumon?
However with Irving B. completely dismissed — and Helena uncovered as a spy — what does that imply for the rebel? Befitting the episode’s duality, every twist might be learn as a setback or a step ahead. Sure, Helena has been caught, and Helly is again. Nice! However that additionally means Helena was spying on the MDR workforce, unnoticed, for weeks on finish. Clearly, the Lumon higher-ups know the foursome (now a threesome, with out Irving) is on the lookout for Ms. Casey/Gemma, and with their mole exterminated, Mr. Milchick & Co. might determine to maintain a more in-depth eye on Mark and Dylan.
Dropping Irving is clearly a blow. He’s been with them because the starting, proving himself as a loyal pal and a worthwhile mutineer. Plus, assuming Lumon replaces him (they want the workforce to complete Chilly Harbor), there’s no manner Mark, Dylan, and Helly can belief a brand new member, and even when they someway show themselves loyal to the trigger, successful them over would take time — time they might not have.
On the flip aspect, possibly Irving wasn’t punished for leaving the trail. Possibly he was freed. What little we’ve seen of Irving’s Outie reveals a person who’s very interested by Lumon and its workers. He’s obtained a secret stash of firm intel buried in a trunk. He’s obtained recordsdata on different workers and maps to their homes. He’s obtained army coaching. So relating to re-connecting the severed workers with their full selves, possibly Irving’s Outie might be much more useful than Irving’s Innie?
“The reality you search lies throughout the Fourth Appendix.” It positive did. However which reality will matter? Which interpretation of the previous will win the day? Woe’s Hole is the place Kier Eagan first tamed the 4 tempers of the human soul: woe, frolic, dread, and malice. And woe is operating wild on the finish of Episode 4.
Grade: A-
“Severance” Season 2 releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.
W(ho)TF Is Dieter Eagan?
Effectively, that’s a superb query, since nobody knew about Dieter earlier than they had been invited to stroll a mile in his footwear. Alongside the trail, Irving and Mr. Milchick present a sporadic studying of Kier Eagan’s Fourth Appendix, a e-book banned from the severed ground and ceremoniously housed in a darkish, damp cave someplace throughout the Dieter Eagan Nationwide Forest. (There’s merely no manner that is the place it’s truly saved. The pages could be in tatters by now.) The e-book begins with a dedication to Dieter, earlier than the primary chapter tells a twisted model of his (temporary) life’s story.
Given the baroque language of the textual content, to not point out the metaphysical occasions throughout the narrative itself, Dieter’s actual exploits stay open for interpretation. There’s clearly extra to the person (or boy, because it had been) than Kier chooses to share, however right here’s what might be safely summarized from the scripture.
Dieter Eagan was Kier’s twin brother. The 2 had been “bosom pals” as infants, however began to float aside “in boyhood” as Kier was drawn towards commerce and capitalism (whereas working at numerous factories), and Dieter most well-liked to reside as a “woodland pauper.” In the future, Dieter satisfied his brother to run away from house and discover the forest. They set out for Woe’s Hole, and Dieter “unfastened himself” — a phrase that may be taken each actually and figuratively. To the latter, it appears like Dieter got here alive within the wilderness. “The din of his fervor fell unusually into live performance with the music of the wooden, and for a second I couldn’t inform the 2 aside,” Kier wrote. However he additionally unfastened himself within the sense that Dieter unbuttoned his pants and masturbated till he “break up his lineage upon the soil.”
Regardless of this off-putting little bit of brotherly bonding, the twins saved the nice instances rolling nicely into the evening, feasting on rabbit and telling one another jokes… till Kier lastly advised they go house. “We should return to Father,” he mentioned. At this, Dieter fell silent. When he lastly spoke, all he might muster was a whimper, and shortly after, he fell aside — actually, if we’re to consider Kier’s phrases. “I used to be taking a look at him when his eye got here out. It popped from the socket pushed by a sudden torrent of puss from his cranium,” Kier wrote, including that his hair turned to moss and the puss turned to sap. As Dieter screamed in agony, Kier fled to the waterfall to flee the sound. There, he met “the tempest Woe, a gaunt bride half the peak of a pure girl.” She blamed him for what occurred to Dieter — “you suffered his wantonness” — and that’s when Kier tamed the primary of 4 tempests.
So… what actually occurred to Dieter? As Helena suggests, he “jerked off in entrance of his brother and obtained punished for it,” however… who supplied the punishment? And how much punishment was it? Was it deadly? It positive sounds deadly! However whether or not that’s how Dieter died or simply the place Kier left him is tough to say. Absent any myth-making mumbo jumbo, Dieter appeared determined to flee no matter life he shared together with his brother. The opposite appendices state that Kier began working at a really younger age and suffered intensive abuse from his employer. Within the Fourth Appendix, Kier promised to take care of Dieter on the “ether mill,” which signifies he was probably working and struggling alongside his brother. In case your mother and father have a “shut organic relationship” and your boss is thrashing you with a wood dresser leg, wouldn’t you like to reside within the woods as a pauper? Isn’t a life with out mountains of cash higher than a life monopolized by distress?
All that being mentioned, there’s one other manner to have a look at Dieter’s story: Possibly there is no such thing as a Dieter. Possibly Kier by no means had a twin. Possibly the story he’s written is only a fictionalized model of his personal inner battle between committing to a lifetime of arduous labor and fleeing to the relative security of the wilderness. In any case, wouldn’t it’s extra becoming for Kier’s twin to solely exist in his head? That the Fourth Appendix is banned from the severed ground as a result of it depicts the primary battle between an Innie (Kier) and an Outie (Dieter)? And that battle ends in a violent loss of life?
I do know I wouldn’t need my loyal employee bees studying something like that. However then once more, I wouldn’t have taken them out to the forest both.