Severance: More Than Just a Way to Eliminate Pain
The second season of Severance shows that Lumon’s chip goes far beyond separating personal life from work. The Cold Harbor Project reveals that the company can create multiple internal versions of the same person, each with its own consciousness. This places Lumon within the realm of transhumanism, where technology begins to interfere directly with what someone is.
Transhumanism is the use of technology to alter human capacities, including mental ones.
In this context, the series suggests an immediate effect: internal versions can be sent to endure pain while the original person remains protected.
But the narrative suggests another possibility.
Lumon does not want merely to reduce suffering. It wants to create a type of consciousness that obeys without conflict. For the company, this is “purity.” Elements such as the Chikhai Bardo exercise, the Nine Principles, and the temperaments show that Lumon acts less like a corporation and more like a religious order that uses technology to shape behavior.
Here is the evidence that Lumon’s chip may not be just a tool of separation. It may be the first step toward replacing the human with an ideal model of person, programmed by the company.
1. Narrative Evidence of Lumon’s Doctrine
Severance thrives in the subtlety of its mysteries. As creator Dan Erickson points out, the answers are there—but they require deeper interpretation.
Among many clues scattered throughout the show, three recurring elements highlight Lumon’s ideological nature: the books read by Mark and Gemma, the symbolic exercises promoted in Lumon’s clinic, and the doctrinal pillars shaping the innies. What starts as an experiment to relieve emotional pain evolves into a radical redefinition of the human mind.
Read more: Mark and Gemma’s first meeting revisited
Severance 2×07: Chikhai Bardo
1.1 – Mark and Gemma: Two Paths in the Face of Pain
In episode 2×07, Mark and Gemma meet at an event before their involvement with Lumon, each reading a different book:
Gemma is exploring spiritual conversion through The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy.
Mark, on the other hand, reads about soldiers using drugs to numb war trauma.
These choices reveal two of the show’s central archetypes:
Gemma seeks psychic transformation, transcending superficial ego.
Mark seeks to numb emotional pain.
Lumon identifies these tendencies and amplifies them strategically to shape its innies.
1.2 – Tolstoy’s Book as Gemma’s Mirror
Dr. Mauer after being hit by Gemma.
In episode 2×07, Gemma reads The Death of Ivan Ilyich inside Lumon while wearing herself down in the experiment. The novel tells the story of someone who realizes too late that he lived trapped by other people’s expectations. The series places Gemma in the same position: she understands that her life there has already been written as a lab case. Even Mauer’s joke about the book’s ending reinforces the idea that her destiny is not hers to command.
1.3 – The attack on Mauer as a refusal to be manipulated
Gemma’s reaction is not an isolated outburst. She is imprisoned, used as a test, and constantly humiliated by Mauer. When he belittles her pain and says that Mark has moved on, she breaks. Read alongside Tolstoy, the attack becomes a gesture of refusal: Gemma rejects the role Lumon tries to impose on her and refuses to be treated as a replaceable piece.
1.4 – The Chikhai Bardo Exercise
Card created by Lumon (O&D) and provided at the Butzemann Fertility Center.
Gemma also undergoes an exercise at Lumon’s clinic called Chikhai Bardo, a reference to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which symbolizes the dissolution of the ego. Gemma herself explains that the exercise aims to “defeat the psyche,” suggesting that the chip does not simply block memories, but encapsulates and dampens access to painful parts of one’s identity, as if simulating a partial death of the former consciousness. Lumon seeks to approach a supposedly more pure form of consciousness, with reduced access to personal history and to desires that could deviate from the company’s doctrinal goals.
1.5 – The Nine Principles and Classical Temperaments
Representation of the nine principles on the whip used by Dylan at the Waffle Party.
Right from the beginning, Lumon presents Kier’s Nine Principles as if they were commandments. Within this environment, the innies are:
rewarded for obedience
punished for any behavior considered excessive
The four classical temperaments appear rewritten as something to be:
corrected
smoothed out
tamed
At this point, the chip stops being technology and becomes direct control. It no longer exists only to separate memories, but to interfere with what keeps a person whole. Lumon uses the chip to weaken bonds, bend wills, and prune everything it sees as a problem. It does not seek to ease pain. It seeks to adjust identities until only the kind of human it accepts remains.
2. Does Lumon Value or Condemn Temperaments?
If Lumon seems intent on pruning human impulses, why does the series insist on elevating impulsiveness in certain characters? The key lies in the myth of Kier Eagan and in how the second season closes Helly’s arc.
2.1 – Kier and Dieter in the ORTBO Walk
Interns on the RAECE (ORTBO) walk.
In episode 2×04, innies partake in a corporate ritual called ORTBO, listening to a tale about Kier and Dieter. The story implies that Dieter represents Kier’s impulsive side—one later suppressed to reinforce an idealized, controlled image.
This ambiguity suggests that Lumon doesn’t want to erase impulse entirely, but rather isolate and harness it in a productive, safe way.
Read more: The tale of Kier and Dieter explained
Kier and Dieter’s Walk – Severance Mythology
2.2 – Jame Eagan’s Words to Helly
In episode 2×10, Jame Eagan tells Helly (as an innie): “I see Kier’s flame in you.” He praises her impulsiveness and emotional intensity, as long as they are dissociated from her original consciousness. Helly becomes a safe and replicable model of channeled energy. This logic unveils yet another layer of the relationship between Lumon and Transhumanism: the company keeps only what it can use and discards the rest. If something is unstable, deep, or hard to control, it cuts it out.
2.3 Temperaments as the Soul’s Control Panel
Lumon turns the temperaments into controls. Frolic, Woe, Dread, and Malice stop being human traits and become adjustments the company regulates as needed. The series presents distorted versions of the classical temperaments: acting without defiance, feeling without stopping, energizing without improvisation, maintaining stability without questioning. For Lumon, this is “purity”: not erasing will, but limiting its reach.
2.4 Between Gemma and Helly: Who Lumon Wants to Manufacture
When we place side by side Gemma’s apathy in Cold Harbor — unable to fully react before the cradle — and Jame’s excitement upon seeing “fire” in Helly, a pattern becomes clear. Lumon is testing a being that does not collapse in the face of deep trauma, yet can still respond with intensity when that energy serves the cult of Kier.
The company’s transhumanism, therefore, is not merely an enhancement of abilities. It is a curation of the soul: preserving useful impulses while amputating bonds, memories, and affections that might generate guilt, empathy, or true rebellion.
To better understand how the narrative demonstrates Lumon mythology
Read more: Lumon Mythology: Symbols, Doctrine, and the Rituals of Corporate Worship
3. Lumon: A Transhumanist Religion in Disguise
Frame used in episode 2×10 demonstrating Lumon’s expectations for the completion of Cold Harbor.
Gradually, Lumon’s symbols and rituals reveal that it’s not just an extreme company. It’s a religious order aiming for ego transcendence through technology.
3.1 – Kier Eagan as Prophet
Dylan wearing Kier Eagan’s mask at the Waffle Party.
In this setting, Kier is revered as a spiritual leader. His principles act as moral commandments, celebrated in rituals that reinforce his prophet-like image.
3.2 – Rituals of Purification
Helly in the break room facing punishment.
Lumon subjects its innies to forced confessions and symbolic rewards. These rituals echo initiation rites that not only control but morally reprogram participants.
3.3 – Ego Death as Salvation
As a consequence of this doctrine, the goal is not merely to destroy the ego, but to selectively empty everything that resists, questions, or forms bonds outside Lumon. The aim is to create an idealized consciousness: intense, obedient, and with its personal history filtered—achieved not through spirituality, but through technology.
3.4 – Dogmatic Transhumanism at Lumon
Unlike a more neutral transhumanism, which aims to improve human lives according to individual standards of well-being, Lumon redefines the very concept of humanity. It creates individuals who are emotionally amputated in certain dimensions—such as grief, guilt, and deep bonds—while simultaneously being trained to intensify whatever serves the cult, such as zeal, productivity, and doctrinal fervor. This is not merely about enhancing capacities, but about aligning the soul to a closed moral standard.
4. Severance as Replacement: The Cold Harbor Project
If before Lumon appeared as a form of transhumanism that edits the soul through symbols and rituals, in Cold Harbor this doctrine gains an explicit laboratory, aimed at testing how far the human mind can be rewritten.
The Cold Harbor Project does not merely separate consciousnesses for practical tasks; it also tests the limits of mind editing. Lumon experiments with human versions capable of facing extreme situations without fully accessing the corresponding traumas, while observing which combinations of temperaments and affects produce the behavior considered ideal by the doctrine.
These versions are not treated as individuals. They are test models. Lumon adjusts, compares, and discards what does not work. The apparent goal is to use these models to eventually replace the original person’s way of being. This involves erasing parts of their life, reducing bonds, and recalibrating emotions until they match the pattern desired by Kier.
In this way, severance does not only separate—it selects and refines. It prepares the ground for the real human to be redesigned into something more shaped, predictable, and devoted, without eliminating impulse entirely, but confining it to a doctrinal path.
Learn about the refinement processes carried out by the interns that led to the completion of Cold Harbor.
Read more: The Refinement Work in Severance: Everything We Know
Conclusion: What Is the Connection Between Lumon and Transhumanism in Severance?
Cobel reciting the Nine Principles in episode 1×04.
Everything the series presents — from Gemma’s readings to the way Jame Eagan sees Helly, including the rituals and Kier’s mythology — points to the same end. Lumon wants to edit the soul. It removes what it deems weak or dangerous and keeps only what can serve the cult.
The goal is not merely to ease pain by creating temporary versions of consciousness. It is to develop parallel identities that are more obedient and less tied to their own bonds. That is why Lumon acts like a spiritual order disguised as technology. It seeks to replace the human built on memory and affection with a model shaped to its ideal.
In Severance, this transhumanism becomes faith. Lumon believes technology can alter what a person is on the inside. The chip stops being a mere division of memories and becomes the center of this belief, designed to produce the consciousness Kier desires: someone who acts human, but with no real chance of escape.
Explore more Severance secrets on our thematic page
Available on Apple TV+
You can watch Severance exclusively on Apple TV+. Click here to access.
Posts Recomendados
Carregando recomendações...
