‘Severance’ Season 2, Episode 3 Review

Episode three of ‘Severance’ ramps up the tension, as if the plot wasn’t twisty enough, this week we get a few more twists added in, as we return to one of the biggest unanswered mysteries from season one: what are the baby goats for?

As we see, there are still dozens of them running around, and an entire office on the severed floor has been turned into a fake pasture, so they can live a more ‘natural’ life. There’s also a large team of handlers to look after them, who we’ve never met before. Like most of the workers at Lumon, they seem a little odd, and have a mistrust of other departments, but are clearly severed too, unlike the management.

But what exactly are they doing? What are the goats for? There were some references to them before, like in the dance performed for Dylan’s party in the last episode of season one, where some of the dancers wore goat masks, similar to what one of the handlers was wearing here. While the most obvious suggestion would be that they are being reared for experiments, instead of rats, this weird imagery, and the way Keir Eagan is treated as a god, does make you wonder if there are more sinister uses.

Without a doubt, the biggest and most important thing that happened in this episode was that Mark has undergone the procedure to “reintegrate”, meaning his in-work and outside personalities are now one, so he can access his innie’s memories while he’s outside Lumon, and presumably will still remember his real life when he’s in the office. This will be a big help to his search for Gemma, his wife, who is supposedly dead, but was seen working at the company.

But as we saw with Petey, his former colleague, this procedure has risks, as the brain can’t always deal with what are essentially two different personalities and sets of memories being clashed together, and he even died as a result.

Even without that happening, things aren’t going to be easy for Mark. If Lumon found out, they would do anything to stop him, but there are potential problems in his own team. Dylan didn’t get to use the OverTime Contingency last season, and so never met his outie’s wife, but Milchek has offered him the chance to do that now, something none of the others know about, and I don’t think it’s something he’ll be willing to give up very easily.

We also find out what was on Irving’s mind when he painted all the same pictures of a dark hallway with an elevator at the end. It’s where they ship out products designed there, and yet he doesn’t have any recollection of ever seeing it himself.

As is unsurprising for this show, every new revelation just leads to more questions, and every new twist in the plot opens up many more possibilities for where the story will go, making it hard to second guess where it will end. Wherever it is, I hope it lives up to expectations!