The latest episode of Severance, "Chikhai Bardo," is all about Gemma, Mark Scout's wife who was assumed dead at the beginning of the show. Later, we learn that not only is she alive, but has been severed and was working on the severed floor at Lumon as Ms. Casey. In this form, she and Mark — who had also been severed — had no idea that they used to be husband and wife.
At the end of season 2, Ms. Casey walked down a long dark hallway and got into an elevator. We haven't heard from her since. In "Chikhai Bardo," we learn what she's been doing on the floor beneath the severed floor, which we'll call the sub-severed floor.
We still don't know exactly what happened to Gemma the night she was "killed" by a "car crash," but we know she's basically been a prisoner on the sub-severed floor ever since. Every day, she's taken to a series of rooms on the sub-severed floor, each with their own name. When she enters the rooms, she takes on a different severed personality. So while Mark has been severed only once — there's the Mark he is in his daily life and the Mark he is on the severed floor — Gemma has been severed many, many times, once for every room on the sub-severed floor.
We don't get a precise accounting of exactly how many rooms there are on the sub-severed floor, but we jotted down all the ones we saw. They are:
- Allentown (the one where Gemma writes thank-you notes at Christmas time...forever)
- Wellington (the one where Gemma goes to the dentist...forever)
- Cairns
- Dranesville
- Siena
- Loveland
- Tumwater
- Rhodes
- Billings
- Lucknow
- St. Pierre
- Zurich
- Cold Harbor
Cold Harbor is the only room that Gemma hasn't been into. That's also the name of the project that Mark is working on. When he gets to 100%, something important happens, but we don't know what. We also briefly see that Mark worked on Dranesville before this, so apparently the Macrodata Refinement team works on projects that correspond to rooms on the sub-severed floor. My guess is that their work has something to do with analyzing the reactions that Gemma has in each room, further helping to refine the severance technology until it gets to the point where Lumon wants it.
Exactly what point that is remains unclear. New episodes of Severance air Fridays on Apple TV+.
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