This text accommodates 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. Nevertheless, what the Apple TV+ thriller present has revealed of the corporate’s true goal to date is nothing wanting chilling, and “Woe’s Hole” would not precisely ease the viewer’s spirit.
The episode expands the present’s mythology in a variety 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 staff throughout their outdoor team-building retreat, the previously dependable workplace drone wanders into the woods to provide Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) a bit of his thoughts. Sadly, Irving loses his means and is pressured to sleep tough at nighttime 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 date. It exhibits a haggard-looking personification of Woe — one of many sequence’ Eagan-mandated “4 humors” — engaged on the Macrodata Refinement work station in the midst of the forest. When Irving investigates nearer, he sees a display screen with numbers that dance and type eerie patterns that resemble an eye fixed. Small textual content up prime 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 Undertaking, and what this previous conspiracy principle may imply for the poor innie characters of “Severance.”
Montauk is the present’s clearest conspiracy principle reference but
The almost certainly 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 Undertaking, to the purpose that the sequence’ working title was “Montauk.” The phrase refers to an alleged prime secret U.S. navy challenge that occurred at both the Montauk Air Drive Station or Camp Hero on Lengthy Island, New York. The Montauk Undertaking 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 Undertaking’s assorted shady antics bears vital similarities to the Philadelphia Experiment, a Forties U.S. Navy conspiracy principle that itself impressed “The X-Information” 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.
Realizing 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 challenge “SCP Basis,” as an illustration, it lends its identify to a terrifying however unspecified process that is used to comprise an entity referred to as SCP-231. Seeing the phrase on “Severance” and figuring out its historical past provides no small quantity of weight to the likelihood that Lumon’s severed ground is definitely a serious 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 ground 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 lifeless spouse Gemma (Dichen Lachman) continues to be alive and has an innie referred to as Ms. Casey. The present has additionally teased the significance of Chilly Harbor, an necessary macrodata file that hinges on Mark’s work and appears to be linked to Gemma. The usually reemerging give attention to Kier Eagan’s 4 Tempers — woe, frolic, dread, and malice — additionally appears to be linked to the Macrodata Refinement’s job of checking out numbers based mostly on the feelings they elicit.
It is value noting that most of the present’s extra ominous ideas have real-world significance. “Chilly Harbor” could also be a reference to a Civil Conflict battle that occurred in 1964, a 12 months 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 principle of 4 Humors.
Since these “Severance” ideas have sufficient connection to the actual 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 worldwide scale … or it could possibly be one thing even worse. No matter it’s, viewers ought to in all probability be comfortable that the Montauk course of in Irving’s nearly definitely prophetic dream is at present solely 3% accomplished.