I feel like I need to watch this last episode again to fully form thoughts on where I think things are headed, but quick thoughts: I don't necessarily think Gemma went willingly to Lumon, but it is weird how accepting she seemed of her situation at first. She's also clearly under the impression that eventually she will be allowed to go back to Mark. I don't think she realizes that she's "dead." I also don't think she (the real Gemma) is ever going to be allowed to go back to the real world. They're either going to kill her or maybe send one of her innies back into the world, but even that seems unlikely because what if she runs into literally anyone she knew before she died? Most likely scenario is they plan to kill her or keep her forever. Devon is absolutely not in on it, that would be stupid. The scene with all of them having lunch/Devon finding out Gemma was pregnant was one of the best scenes in the series. It's incredible how unattractive they've made Adam Scott throughout the series so far until tonight. I was starting to think that it was just that he's older now or something, but it's apparently just a wig and make up.
I think Lumon is working on super soldiers. The Lexington Letter seemingly implied they were triggering sleeper agents. Cold Harbor is going to be them testing whether Gemma can be brought to slaughter the baby goats(we already know O&D were printing axes). They want to see if the barriers can hold up when someone who has dealt with the trauma of childloss/infertility is asked to kill something young and innocent. Mark is needed because he's central to recreating those specific memories.
She said she loves farms. Maybe they keep raising goats because in one room she has a farm and raises them in that room so they have to stock the room with young every time she enters (frolic temper) and/or there is a room where she has to slaughter them over and over to see if that trauma bleeds through to her outtie or other innies?
It's interesting how the dissociative aspect of severance mirrors the current prevalence of AI "replacing" the parts of work that are tedious or require critical thinking. My favorite part of this show (thematically speaking) has always been how it satirizes the actual corporate experience. Building the lore has been fun but I hope they don't lose that element in all the mythos they're creating.
Yep. People trying to outrun/not deal with trauma and normalized corporate dysfunction/evil are the core personal and social themes and I try to remember that when theorizing what might come next. This isn’t a show like the Killing (US) or a pulpy detective/mystery show where absurd misdirections and cliff-hangers are the fun main goal. Everything, at least within the actual show, has been pretty focused on those main themes. That’s also why, although I like it, I don’t know that immortality and downloading consciousness is the big plot. I think it’s probably just chipping a populace so they don’t experience anything negative (or immoral) and, in turn, stripping them of the very parts of the human experience that help give us the meaning and joy and freedom we find in fleeting bursts. It might just be that and no immortality or sleeper army add-on, etc.
This is actually why I’ve been losing a lot of interest this season. Like you said, the lore is fine but it’s SO much funnier and the metaphor works better for me if “macrodata data refinement” is just meaningless office work.
Not necessarily, I just hope that the central question of the show remains “why do people get severed?” and not “what does the sorting of the numbers mean?” I’m so much less interested in the latter.
No, I trust where they're going with this, but I like the real-world connection and that it's a satire / not so sci-fi that I lose my grounding.