“Chikhai Bardo,” episode 7 of Severance Season 2, is nothing short of jaw-dropping.
The episode intertwines Mark’s (Adam Scott) memories of his and Gemma’s (Dichen Lachman) relationship with our first-ever look at Gemma’s experience on Lumon’s testing floor. The former gives us a deeper understanding of their marriage, in all its highs and lows, while the latter offers terrifying insight into Lumon’s greater project.
Gemma’s storyline in particular offers up bombshell after bombshell. But perhaps most intriguing is the reveal that the files that the MDR team has been refining, like Allentown and Cold Harbor, correspond to various rooms Gemma is forced to enter every day. There, a new Severed identity undergoes an unpleasant experience, including a trip to the dentist, a turbulent flight, or a long afternoon writing mundane thank-you notes for Christmas presents.
In classic Severance fashion, each answer “Chikhai Bardo” provides prompts even more questions. Mashable spoke to Severance creator and showrunner Dan Erickson to learn more about this game-changing episode, from Gemma’s first real introduction to the testing floor to room ideas that didn’t make it into the show.
Mashable: This episode is our first time really meeting Gemma and getting to know her beyond Mark’s memories of her. What part of her introduction was most crucial to get right?
Dan Erickson, Severance creator and showrunner: We’ve seen her in such a diminished capacity at Lumon, where we’ve gotten to know her as Ms. Casey. And I’ve always thought of Ms. Casey as a corporate automaton with a human being somewhere deep down inside her that is trying to get out, and that’s why she asked questions. She’s curious, she’s compassionate, she worries about the people around her — like in Season 1, when Mark and Helly go off to see the goats, she says, “I was scared.” All of these traits are in there, they’re just very muted.
With all the characters, when you see their Outie, the question is always, to what degree are their Innies different? But also, to what degree are they essentially the same? So Ms. Casey’s traits of being intellectually curious and kind and compassionate and worrying about others were a basis to start on for finding out who Gemma is.
We also wanted to see on Mark’s side that this is the version of him that he was before his loss. That involves joy, and that involves humor, and that involves warmth. We wanted those to be traits that they shared with each other. We wanted to be sure that they as a couple felt lived-in. They had jokes that were theirs and they could mess with each other, but at the end of the day, they were a very loving couple.
I’d love to hear more about the memories, because here we get the interplay of Mark’s memories of his and Gemma’s marriage alongside Gemma’s time at Lumon. Tell me about the decision to put these elements in parallel. How do they speak to one another?
I really liked this as an idea, conceptually, that in this episode, both Mark and Gemma are trying to get to each other. We see Gemma is literally trying to get to him, to break out of the testing floor, only to make it up to the Severed Floor where she turns back into Ms. Casey and turns around of her own accord. I found that one moment really heartbreaking.
Both Mark and Gemma are trying to get to each other.
Then Mark is unconscious, but in his mind, he’s trying to find his wife and sifting through these different memories and trying to figure out what’s real. The memory that Mark has of their marriage, which he had sort of presented as this perfect thing, shows that it might not have been. He may be remembering it the way that he needs to, as opposed to the way it actually happened. Memory can be imperfect, but at the same time, the story that gets patch-worked together through your memories ends up creating your identity, or at least the way that you think about yourself.
In this episode, we finally get down to the testing floor, and we get some big answers. We now know the files Mark was working on correspond to the different rooms that Gemma goes through, where she encounters different scenarios, like a trip to the dentist or a bumpy plane ride. How did you choose which scenarios she encountered in each room?
That was a big conversation, and I can’t fully get into it yet because there is still some question of why they’re doing this to her.
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But I will say what’s interesting here is that she’s going through these painful or unpleasant experiences and then she’s leaving, and the question that’s being asked throughout the episode by Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson) is, to what degree is anything leaking through? Is she walking out of that room with any emotional echo of what she was going through in that room? So far it seems that she’s not, so that’s the throughline that I think is happening with what’s going on in those rooms. But again, there’s still a question of what exactly they’re doing, or what they’re trying to prove or disprove.
Dichen Lachman in “Severance.”
Credit: Apple TV+
A lot of the rooms feel like universally hated experiences. Were there any other scenarios that you and the writers’ room thought of for other rooms that didn’t end up making it into the show?
There were a lot. At one point I made a list of about 50, and then we winnowed it way down. You know, I happen to really, really hate flossing, and I was like, “Well, maybe there’s a room where she’s just flossing.” And then someone else said, “Well, I like flossing. It’s satisfying.” So we had an argument as to how nightmarish or wonderful that would be.
The rough flight room was one where I unfortunately thought to myself, “If I were given the option to sever myself for a flight, I might do it.” Which is awful, especially after watching the show and knowing so much about what Innies go through! But that relatability feels like a big part of Lumon’s project. Could you speak more to the mundane aspect of these scenarios?
One of the first things that some people ask after watching the show is, “What would you sever, if you could sever away anything in your life that you don’t like?” It’s really interesting to hear the different answers to that for different people, and then also to think of what the experience of that poor Innie would be who had to to do that one task repetitively.
For example, the Christmas card room was just me being catty about having been forced to write a lot of thank-you cards as a kid and always being annoyed by that. I thought, “It’s not even worth it to get presents now because I have to write these long thank-you cards, and it’s annoying!” So when the writers were talking about things that you wouldn’t want to have to do over and over again, that was one that came to mind for me personally.
It’s funny, turbulence has never bothered me, although I know a lot of friends who are really, really afraid of that. But I am a very claustrophobic person. I hate elevators; I hate getting in an elevator ever, for any reason.
This show must be a nightmare then.
Yeah, I hate elevators and Ben [Stiller] hates eggs, so we’re both working through something on this show.
But to me, what’s such a nightmare when you talk about potentially severing is that if you were having that experience that Gemma seems to be having in the plane, that’s your whole life. There’s literally nothing outside of this room for you. That was the element of it that really felt especially nightmarish to me.
There’s literally nothing outside of this room for you. That was the element of it that really felt especially nightmarish to me.
This episode answers some questions, but it raises many others. We know Mark’s files are tied to Gemma’s rooms, but are Helly, Irving, and Dylan also working on what’s going on with Gemma? Are they refining for different people, or maybe doing other things that we don’t know about yet?
[pause] That’s a really good question, a really good question.
Then there are the people who are observing MDR’s work through their screens. They look very much like the shadow selves from the “Woe’s Hollow” episode. Are these similar Lumon creations?
That is also a terrific question that I would love to answer. It would be fun to have that conversation with you, and sadly I don’t believe I can.
Coming back to the memory portion of the episode, can you tell me about Lumon’s involvement in Gemma’s life before her abduction, and why she was targeted?
That’s definitely still an outstanding question on the show. But I think what does become clear is that there was something special about her. We see the Lumon tear drop on the machine at the blood drive, we see Dr. Mauer at the fertility clinic. The big question we’re asking ourselves now is, when did she first end up on Lumon’s radar? How long had they been watching her, and to what end? What exactly was it that they were looking for as they were watching her?
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Severance Season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV+, with a new episode every Friday.