Fans of Severance on Apple TV+ have been anxiously awaiting a second season ever since the Season 1 finale back in 2022 featured arguably one of the most bone-chilling cliffhangers in television history. Unfortunately, they’ve stayed waiting, as Severance Season 2 production experienced delays due to the WGA strikes and, perhaps, some rumored behind-the-scenes creative differences between co-showrunners Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman.

Fortunately, production was reportedly back underway, and according to a press release from director and executive producer Ben Stiller himself, it should be nearly done by now. However, this extended release schedule marks a trend of TV shows taking long breaks between seasons, which can be problematic in terms of maintaining interest or momentum—or, at the very least, memory retention around the show’s key plot points.

Severance seems to subvert this, thanks to fan engagement. With so much to unpack just in the first nine episodes, Reddit threads and YouTube videos with theories and in-depth analyses are still being created weekly. These theories tend to revolve around unsolved mysteries such as: What are Lumon’s severed employees doing / what significance do the numbers have to the macrodata refiners? Who is (on) the board? How and why was Gemma’s (aka Ms. Casey) death faked? Let’s explore some of the most compelling answers viewers have posited.

What Are the Macrodata Refiners Refining?
Severance Release Date February 18, 2022 Seasons 1 Studio Endeavor Content & Red Hour Films

Mark S., Helly R., Dylan, and Irving are the severed office employees whose objective is to sort what appear to be meaningless groups of numbers on their computers into four categories. To the naked eye, this seems like a typical message about office horrors, a parody of busy work. However, when you look closer at the categories, you can see that they’re abbreviations for the four tempers referenced throughout the show: woe, frolic, dread, and malice. We also know from a glimpse of a work manual that macrodata refiners must possess “strong intuition and emotional intelligence.” So, what does this all add up to? What job were these four specifically called to do?

Related Severance: Every Season 1 Episode, Ranked After its successful premiere in February 2022, the public has been asking for Severance Season 2. However, its premiere has been delayed a bit.

A lot of fans believe and have theories that operate under the assumption that the severance chips record data. So, the popular competing theories tend to agree that the MDR team is refining the data stored on these chips that will eventually be implanted into either a) future Lumon employees or b) some resurrected form of Kier Eagan, the founder. Lumon would want intuitive, emotionally intelligent people for the job to rid the data of anything exemplified by the four tempers, thus creating the perfect person— be them a docile worker bee or a Frankensteined-together CEO.

The Kier 2.0 theory is particularly compelling because the office space is basically a museum filled with all of his creature comforts (waffles, artwork, goats, etc.). There’s even a floor with an exact replica of his house!

Who Is (on) the Board in Severance?

One of the eeriest running bits on Severance is something that, again, initially plays for laughs. “The board” (of directors) is presumably a group of people entrusted to oversee operations at Lumon… only we never hear members of the board on Severance speak, and therefore can’t be sure who they are. We do, however, receive messages from them via the employees at the other end of the calls. Fans have latched onto a couple of clues that might give away who the board consists of.

For starters, viewers may recall the perpetuity wing. This space contained wax figures, placards, and other relics related to Eagan lore. A quote on the wall said how history lives in us all, whether we learn it or not, etc. Theorists have surmised that the perpetuity wing is more than just a flowery name, and perhaps some (or all) of the former CEOs are “alive” and on the board.

Let’s jump ahead to the last episode where we meet Helly’s father, Jame Eagan. He says to her, “One day, you will sit with me at my revolving.” The theory goes that Jame is the host and speaks on behalf of everyone whose consciousnesses are embedded in a chip in his own mind. It would certainly help explain the weird pauses that come every time the board is addressed. Jame might need to stall to consult the former CEOs, or perhaps he doesn’t, but his frailty makes him choose to speak sparingly.

Gemma/Ms. Casey in Severance Season 2

The wildest Severance reveal by far was that the wellness counselor, Ms. Casey, appears to be Mark’s thought-deceased wife, Gemma. This opened up a whole can of worms and left fans to come up with their own headcanons explaining what happened on the day of the supposed car accident. There seems to be some consensus on this theory, with deviations mostly in the minor details.

We see evidence to support the fact that Kier is clearly a company town, has its fingers in a lot of pots, etc. So Lumon, a medical technology conglomerate, could’ve easily accessed Gemma if she were hospitalized, for example. If Gemma were brain-dead or in a coma, Lumon could’ve intervened and used the severance chip to save her life. Being alive but nothing more than an “innie” devoid of memories, it would be very easy to then exploit her and hide the truth from Mark. Helly also has a line at one point asking Dylan if love conquers severance, which could be an Easter egg.

2:39 Related 10 TV Shows Like Severance to Watch Next These 10 series will undoubtedly scratch the same itch as Dan Erickson’s AppleTV+ series, Severance.

One thing is certain when it comes to Severance. For a show that imbues meaning in everything from the colors of the costumes to the intro sequence, there’s no doubt that even the most half-baked theory supported by the least amount of evidence could be proven right come Severance Season 2. Severance is streaming now on Apple TV+.