This text incorporates spoilers for “Severance” season 2 episode 4, “Woe’s Hole.”
Lumon Industries is as much as no good, proper? “Severance” loves enjoying the company’s mysteries near the chest, solely revealing the very tip of the horrific iceberg when it completely should. Nonetheless, what the Apple TV+ thriller present has revealed of the corporate’s true goal to this point is nothing wanting chilling, and “Woe’s Hole” does not precisely ease the viewer’s spirit.
The episode expands the present’s mythology in quite a lot of creepy and characteristically veiled methods, a few of that are seen via the eyes of an more and more unbalanced Irving (John Turturro). After successfully severing ties with the remainder of the Macrodata Refinement crew throughout their open air team-building retreat, the previously dependable workplace drone wanders into the woods to present Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) a bit of his thoughts. Sadly, Irving loses his manner and is pressured to sleep tough at midnight forest.
Right here, he experiences a dream imaginative and prescient that is proper up there with essentially the most unnerving sights “Severance” has featured to this point. It reveals a haggard-looking personification of Woe — one of many collection’ Eagan-mandated “4 humors” — engaged on the Macrodata Refinement work station in the course of the forest. When Irving investigates nearer, he sees a display with numbers that dance and type eerie patterns that resemble a watch. Small textual content up high reads: “Montauk 3% full.” The dream ends with a predictable however efficient soar scare by the Woe woman, however the aforementioned textual content reveal is the actual wallop.
Let’s check out the Montauk Venture, and what this previous conspiracy concept may imply for the poor innie characters of “Severance.”
Montauk is the present’s clearest conspiracy concept reference but
The most probably perpetrator behind “Severance’s” Montauk reference is already acquainted to devoted followers of Netflix’s “Stranger Issues.” The Duffer Brothers’ sci-fi journey present was impressed by a creepy, supposedly actual experiment referred to as the Montauk Venture, to the purpose that the collection’ working title was “Montauk.” The phrase refers to an alleged high secret U.S. navy mission that passed off at both the Montauk Air Pressure Station or Camp Hero on Lengthy Island, New York. The Montauk Venture supposedly concerned the best hits of government-related conspiracy theories, from time journey and thoughts management analysis to teleportation and aliens.
The idea of the Montauk Venture’s assorted shady antics bears important similarities to the Philadelphia Experiment, a Forties U.S. Navy conspiracy concept that itself impressed “The X-Recordsdata” season 2 episode “Død Kalm.” This alleged time journey incident was additionally the topic of the 1984 sci-fi thriller “The Philadelphia Experiment,” amongst many different popular culture allusions.
Figuring out Montauk’s historical past, the best way “Woe’s Hole” drops the identify in one of many episode’s most pivotal scenes is unlikely to be coincidental. Montauk carries loads of weight in popular culture — within the collaborative fiction mission “SCP Basis,” as an example, it lends its identify to a terrifying however unspecified process that is used to include an entity often called SCP-231. Seeing the phrase on “Severance” and realizing its historical past provides no small quantity of weight to the likelihood that Lumon’s severed flooring is definitely a significant experiment of the psy-ops and even paranormal selection.
Severance is fond of making its personal variations of actual occasions and ideas
Other than the unusual guidelines and cult-like fervor that the corporate imposes on its severed personnel, each Lumon division on the severed flooring appears to be as much as one thing shady, from the absurd rural antics of Mammalians Nurturable to the truth that Mark’s (Adam Scott) seemingly useless spouse Gemma (Dichen Lachman) remains to be alive and has an innie referred to as Ms. Casey. The present has additionally teased the significance of Chilly Harbor, an vital macrodata file that hinges on Mark’s work and appears to be related to Gemma. The recurrently reemerging concentrate on Kier Eagan’s 4 Tempers — woe, frolic, dread, and malice — additionally appears to be related to the Macrodata Refinement’s job of finding out numbers primarily based on the feelings they elicit.
It is price noting that most of the present’s extra ominous ideas have real-world significance. “Chilly Harbor” could also be a reference to a Civil Struggle battle that passed off in 1964, a yr earlier than Lumon Industries was based. The 4 Tempers philosophy is actually a Kier Eagan twist on Hippocrates’ historical psychological idea of 4 Temperaments, which itself derives from a good older medical concept of 4 Humors.
Since these “Severance” ideas have sufficient connection to the true world to make the viewer surprise, the dream referencing Montauk in “Woe’s Hole” is unnerving. Maybe it merely refers to a file that is Irving’s model of no matter Chilly Harbor represents to Mark. Possibly this Montauk ties into the ending of “Severance” season 1, which suggests that Lumon is planning one thing severance-related on a world scale … or it may very well be one thing even worse. No matter it’s, viewers ought to in all probability be completely happy that the Montauk course of in Irving’s nearly actually prophetic dream is at the moment solely 3% accomplished.
