The title of Severance Season 2 Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” refers to the fourth stage in the Tibetan transition from life to death. The first stage on the death side is also known as the Bardo of the Moment of Death.
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While Mark (Adam Scott) struggles with reintegration, we continue to wonder about Mark’s wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman). Also known as Lumon’s Wellness Director, Ms. Casey, where is she now that she’s no longer in the Wellness Center? Is she also at some unknown bardo? In any case, this is Severance, unlike anything we’ve seen so far.
Severance, “Chikhai Bardo”
Gemma starts talking to a scruffy-looking Mark as they donate at a blood drive. In a Lumon room, a nurse (Sandra Bernhard) draws multiple vials of blood from a passive Gemma. Seeing the faraway look in her eyes, the nurse calls her name and asks her where she’d gone. Gemma and Mark wake up together in a sunlit bedroom with birds singing outside. Close-ups of both their eyes.
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In Mark’s house, Asal (Karen Aldridge) checks Mark’s eyes with a flashlight as Devon (Jen Tullock) watches anxiously. Asal assures Devon that Mark will be okay and explains that he is undergoing reintegration. Asal tells her that Gemma is alive.
Living the Lumon Life
In Lumon, the nurse takes Gemma’s vital measures, asking her questions and checking the readings on a machine each time. She asks if Gemma were caught in a mudslide, would she be more afraid of suffocating or drowning? Gemma replies, “Drowning.” She walks into the next room and opens a closet to reveal an ensemble she recognizes and mutters, “Sh*t.”
Nobody Likes the Dentist
She gets changed and meets the nurse in a hallway. They pass doors labeled “Allentown,” “Cairns,” “Dranesville,” “Siena,” and “Loveland,” and stop at “Wellington.” The nurse puts her hand on a panel that draws blood before permitting access. Gemma enters, undergoing the severance transition. She sees a dentist’s chair. Someone is whistling “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The doctor from Severance Season 2 Episode 5 “Trojan’s Horse” arrives with a cart of instruments.
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He insists she takes a seat in the chair and angles the light on her, telling her to open wide. She’s terrified as he brings the dental tool towards her mouth, and then suddenly, she’s in the hallway with the nurse. She holds her jaw tenderly and asks how long she was in there. It’s been two hours. They pass “Rhodes” and turn a corner. Gemma slows as she sees a door labeled “Cold Harbor.”
The Corners of His Mind
In Mark’s house, a tearful Devon watches him sleep and asks him to come back to her. In his head, he’s got a scruffy beard and rides an elevator with a smile. He finds Gemma in her office, and they agree they had fun the night before. He puts a gift on the table, an ant farm, because she’d said she likes ants. She says she likes plants. She hates ants. But she loves farms. They kiss.
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Time shifts to later in their relationship in their own house. She notices a box by the wall. It’s a crib. She is skeptical that he can assemble it but kisses him.
A montage of scenes speed by, scored with Jacques Brel singing “La Valse à Mille Temps.” Seated at a table with Devon and Ricken (Michael Chernus), Devon regales them with the horror of rock climbing with Ricken. Devon pours the wine, but Gemma blocks her glass. Devon asks if she’s not drinking. Gemma shakes her head meaningfully. Devon is quietly elated for her.
Darkness
Gemma’s face contorts in pain. She leans against the bathroom sink, blood running down her legs. She turns on the shower and sits down under the spray. Mark comes in and rushes to hold her. As she looks at him, the water droplets on her face reverse direction and fly up into the air.
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The scene shifts to the MDR department. Mark S. turns to find Ms. Casey standing behind him. She tells him she’s been sent to observe Helly R. (Britt Lower) on Ms. Cobel’s (Patricia Arquette) orders. The camera angle swings around and turns to the ceiling lights. The camera shot spins and follows a twist of the cables downwards. The shot leaves the cables at floor level, panning across green carpet to a tapping man’s shoe.
Watchers
A slow pan up reveals a dark-haired man staring at a computer monitor. On his screen, Mark S. looks back through the screen with Ms. Casey standing behind him. With the push of a key, the dark-haired man dumps a group of characters into a container in the “Dranesville” program, which sits at 14 percent complete. The screen flashes between images of Mark S.’s face and the MDR program, with the completion percentage rising to 100 percent, alongside 23 other “rooms” from Gemma’s Lumon corridors.
The camera pulls back, revealing three other people at computer monitors. The fast-forward effect continues, and the pans around to the other staff members. Each bears a resemblance to a member of Mark S.’s MDR team.
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Mr. Drummond’s (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) voice asks, “Are the severance barriers holding?” The doctor answers, “Yes, the technology is working.” Suddenly, they’re standing next to the dark-haired Mark S. variant.
Drummond comments that the doctor likes Gemma. The doctor insists she’s fond of him too. Drummond reminds him she tried to break his fingers. In the corridor, Gemma, dressed in a blue and white athletic onesie, enters a room.
Suffering
Gemma enters a waiting room with Mark. The Lumon doctor walks by, glancing at Gemma as he passes. Gemma looks at a little girl playing on the floor. She begins filling out a form for the Butzemann Fertility Center. (Fun fact: the Butzemann is the German bogeyman of folklore who attacks children who don’t go to bed on time.) The camera shot goes wide, revealing there is no child on the floor.
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In the Lumon residences, Gemma sits on a couch in her spartan living room, hugging herself. There is a jerky fast-forward montage of time passing, but she doesn’t move from the spot. The camera leaves her living space and moves down a dark corridor to an elevator that only goes up. Flashes of the outside world appear.
The elevator doors open, and the camera moves down a black hallway and through a door. Again, more images of the outside world can be seen as the shot moves through the Lumon corridor and finds Mark. Mark opens a drawer in a dresser improbably built into a Luman hallway wall. Gemma’s voice calls out, asking if he’s ready because it’s time. He opens a door where there was no door a moment ago.
Inside, Gemma stands in their bathroom holding the fertility drug syringe. She tells him she’s feeling nervous, but he’s not listening. When she repeats the sentiment, he assures her their child is out there waiting for them.
One More Room
Close-up of her eyes. Blink. When her eyes open, she’s sitting in a Lumon scanner. A camera films her face from the front while the scanner provides a real-time X-ray image of her profile, clearly showing a severance chip in her brain. She tells the doctor her mouth hurts, and he asks which room caused her mouth to hurt. She says it was “Wellington.”
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He asks how many rooms she visited that day. She says, “Six.” He lists “Billings,” “Lucknow,” “St. Pierre,” “Cairns,” “Zurich” and “Wellington” and asks if she remembers anything about what happened in the rooms. She asks about “Cold Harbor,” the one room she hasn’t been in.
The doctor tells her she’ll see the world again, and the world will see her once she’s seen all the rooms. She wants to know if she’ll see Mark. He replies, “Mark will benefit from the world you’re siring. Kier will take away all his pain, just as Kier has taken away yours.”
In their bathroom, Gemma stands looking at a pregnancy test. Mark calls her down for coffee. She closes the door.
Stable
Devon wakes up in the armchair when Asal sets up an IV drip beside Mark. Asal reports that he is stable and will wake up when he’s ready. Devon recalls the Damona Birthing Retreat and wonders if they could talk to his Innie if they take him there. Asal insists her way is the only way to get Gemma out.
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Devon offers to call Cobel to see if she can get in the cabin or get to Gemma. Asal starts packing up, saying she can’t be a part of this if Devon chooses to call Cobel. Devon tries to get her to stay to take care of Mark. Asal leaves. Mark begins to mumble, trying to say “chikhai bardo.”
In their home, Gemma explains the depiction of chikhai bardo on a card. Mark wonders why she’s wasting her time on a pop psychology quiz that came in the mail. They argue. She says she feels beaten up, and he suggests they quit. Then, silence.
Quitting
A surveillance camera records Gemma in her Outie clothes practicing yoga. The monitor switches to the “Cold Harbor” completion screen, and the doctor observes that Mark is stuck at 96 percent. Drummond asks the doctor why he’s wearing a stupid Christmas-patterned sweater.
Gemma laboriously writes Christmas thank-you cards by hand with a fountain pen while sitting on the floor by a coffee table. The doctor sits comfortably in an armchair watching her, dressed in the Christmas sweater. She stops to massage a hand cramp. The doctor encourages her to finish up, pointing out it’s the last one.
She asks how long she must keep doing this. The doctor responds that Christmas comes around every year. She replies that it’s always Christmas. At the door, he tells her he loves her. She scoffs and tries to walk out, but he stops her and prompts her to reply in kind before allowing her to leave.
I’ll Be Seeing You
Outside the room, flashes of images of Gemma seated at the top of a staircase appear superimposed on the sterile Lumon hallway. The nurse leads Gemma through the corridor, passing “Tumwater.” Gemma holds her writing hand gingerly. In her room, “I’ll Be Seeing You” plays on the stereo system.
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The music continues to play in the flashback of Gemma seated at the top of the stairs, listening to Mark struggle to assemble the crib. She walks down the stairs. Sitting in the dark dining room, she listens to him become more frustrated with the task, breaking the crib into pieces. She holds her head in her hands.
The doctor comes into Gemma’s room and asks how she feels. She says her hand hurts. When he asks what room caused her hand to hurt, she tells him, “Allentown.” She says she wants to go home. He tells her that her husband remarried a year ago and has a daughter now. Gemma doesn’t believe him. The doctor insists that Mark’s moved on and suggests that Gemma has as well. She attacks him with a chair.
Where’d You Go?
Grabbing his access card, she escapes her room. When she runs for the elevator, the nurse sees her and calls her name. Gemma gets into the elevator and transitions as it ascends.
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Mark types at his desk. Gemma invites him to come out with her. He doesn’t want to play charades. She offers to stay home with him. He insists that she go. She says, “I love you,” as she heads for the door. He doesn’t reply, and she turns back to him to repeat it, but he quickly corrects his inattention, saying, “I love you too,” and apologizing.
The elevator doors open on the black hallway leading to a door. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) opens it, gasping with exertion. He addresses her as Ms. Casey and tells her that her Outie visited and got in the wrong elevator. Ignoring her questions, he directs her to turn around and go back.
Denial
By the light of his desk lamp, Mark reviews his papers. A car drives up in the darkness outside. He stands up, realizing how late it’s gotten.
In the elevator, Gemma shifts back and panics when she realizes she’s back where she started. The doors open, and the nurse is waiting.
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Mark walks slowly to his front door. Through the glass, he sees two uniformed officers.
His look of disbelief and Gemma’s look of despair combine, so they’re facing each other. The scene shifts to the elevator, where she begins to cry and slides to the ground. She whispers Mark’s name as the nurse reaches in and forces her to her feet.
Mark stands in the shadows of his house. The officers are still outside. Fade to black.
Mark wakes up and sees Devon. She asks where he went. In his memory, he sees Gemma looking as she did the first time they met. His face crumples a bit. He remembers Gemma’s eyes when she smiles.
Severance streams on Apple TV+. New episodes drop every Friday until March 21.
