Severance season 2 takes viewers to a beforehand unseen space of the Lumon severed flooring: Mammalians Nurturable, the place a herd of goats is grazing and is tended to by a large workforce. The goat room additionally introduces us to an all-new character performed by visitor star Gwendoline Christie, the obvious senior member of the Mammalians group.
Mark and Helly’s tour to the goat room results in many new questions — primarily, What the hell is up with that goat room?
We beforehand noticed the room adjoining to the goat room in season 1, when Mark and Helly went on a “psychological well being stroll” in “The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design.” In that episode, Mark and Helly encounter a caretaker feeding a room filled with child goats. Wyatt the Goat Wrangler (performed by Brian Rock) tells Mark and Helly, “They’re not prepared. You may’t take them but. They’re not prepared. It isn’t time!”
Gwendoline Christie’s unnamed character greets Mark and Helly with the same assumption relating to their arrival: “Are you right here to kill me?” she asks whereas wielding an onion shear. Intriguingly, the goat room chief appears quite matter-of-fact about her attainable destiny, and later tells the MDR guests that the goat room workers isn’t afraid of them. Which is sensible: There are lots of people working there. Greater than 20 staffers — together with the return of the Goat Wrangler — look like concerned within the elevating and breeding of goats.
The goat room herders seemingly affirm they’re severed staff. One recounts a session with Ms. Casey during which he realized that his outie was expert at stargazing, at the least acknowledging that they don’t keep down right here eternally (to their information). However the innies of the goat room are far more raveled and soiled than different Lumon workers; some seem to have pores and skin circumstances. Like different elements of Lumon, a number of the herders look like holdovers from one other time interval, based mostly on their grooming and clothes.
Maybe most fascinating is the style of speech Christie’s character makes use of. Like Jame Eagan, who earlier this season scolded Helena Eagan with the insult “fetid moppet,” she makes use of anachronistic language. She speaks of not abiding “fripperies” and refers back to the sketch of Ms. Casey as a “web page of paper.” She warns that they’ve “[sent] a courier to tell Mr. Milchick of your inquiry.” Sure, many Lumon staff have uncommon talking habits, however Christie’s goat room character stands out in how carefully she echoes Eagan’s bygone vocabulary.
The goat room staff seem to have some reference to one other division at Lumon. Just like the Optics and Design crew, they put on inexperienced badges. They likewise suspect the Macrodata Refinement crew of being marsupials. And much like O&D, our first glimpse of their division again in season 1 belies their true measurement; we went from figuring out of 1 goat herder to just about two dozen, identical to the reveal of the expansive O&D group.
So the place does all that depart us? Goat imagery has proven up all through Severance. An grownup male goat-person seems within the portray of Kier Eagan taming the 4 tempers, with the goat representing the mood Malice. The identical mood was represented by a goat-masked dancer at Dylan G.’s waffle get together. There’s additionally a bust of a goat head in Devon and Ricken’s residence. One astute Severance viewer observed comparisons to the present’s themes and Arthur Machen’s Nineteenth-century novel The Nice God Pan, a reference to the Greek god of shepherds and hunters who is an element man, half goat. Different theories posit that the goats being raised on Lumon’s severed flooring are short-term hosts to the brains of useless Eagan relations, and that the Board that by no means speaks can’t as a result of they’re preserved in goat our bodies; or that if Lumon is experimenting with cloning expertise, it’s using goats. These Lumon goats definitely look like nicely cared for, free roaming and being hand fed by severed staff.
These theories definitely make an trade between Mark and Helly in season 1 extra fascinating. In “The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design,” after the encounter with the Goat Wrangler, Helly asks, “What if the goats are the numbers? Like, we’re deciding which goats dwell and which of them… Oh, God.” To which Mark replies, “I doubt it’s that.”
An earlier trade between these two could also be much more illuminating. When Helly R. is having her contentious orientation in Severance’s very first episode, she asks Mark S., “Am I livestock? Did you develop me as meals, and that’s why I’ve no reminiscences?” To which Mark incredulously responds, “You suppose we grew a full human, gave you consciousness… did your nails? No, you’re not livestock. Good lord!”
Just one factor’s for sure: As with many episodes of Severance, we’re left with simply as many new questions as we’re solutions.