The mythological underpinnings of the season 2 finale of 'Severance' that NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Orpheus and Eurydice, the River Lethe, the marching band, and the LOOK 👀
Okay I fear this is too niche but I googled how popular the show Severance is and apparently it is Apple TV’s most viewed show ever, so I am taking a RISK and forging on 🤠 also, even if you don’t watch the show, I’m about to throw at least THREE different myths at you and a whole bunch of sexy terminology so you’ll still get something out of it.
Before we get into it, a reminder that my first ever substack-y event is happening this week!!!!!!!!!! (I can’t say it’s an official
event because they aren’t officially sponsoring it but consider this MANIFESTATION). Join me, , , and this Thursday for an intimate, edifying evening at a cosy bookshop in central London.Tickets/details can be found here: Historians on Substack: Storytelling in the Digital Era
Spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Including but not limited to the season 2 finale of Severance.
To sum up, Severance is weird as fuck. The show follows a bunch of employees that have been ‘severed’ i.e. their brain is split between who they are outside of work and who they are when they’re inside the offices of Lumon Industries, specifically the severed floor which is below ground. So already we’ve got some themes of dissociation, split personalities, conscious vs. subconscious, and the whole subterranean underworld thing, all wrapped in a work-life balance bow 🎀 These personalities are called ‘innies’ and ‘outies’ and they have no memory or connection to their counterpart. I am sorry if this is already hurting your brain but I promise it’s going to start making sense.
The severed employees who work in Macrodata Refinement not only have no clue who they are on the outside but they also have no idea what they’re doing for work. They literally look at random numbers, respond to the VIBE of the numbers and then “file” them. In season 2, however, we are finally told what these numbers are and what filing them does. Mark S, played by Adam Scott, has been filing away but what he has actually been doing is creating a whole BUNCH of split/severed personalities for the character Miss Casey. Every time he completes a file, he has created another personality or scenario for her, Lumon’s goal being to turn a person into a blank slate (also there’s a bit where someone’s wife gets severed while she gives birth and honestly, I don’t hate that conceptually). BUT, plot twist, Miss Casey is actually Mark’s WIFE Gemma in the outside world!!!! (I was told by my boyfriend, fervent fan of the show, that I should make it clear that the extra personalities are being created for Gemma NOT Miss Casey but honestly the whole damn show is so confusing this feels like the least of my problems). But of course his innie has no clue who she is. In fact, Mark signed up for the severed program BECAUSE his wife died in a car crash and he just couldn’t deal. But turns out she is very much still alive, she was just kidnapped by Lumon Industries to be their severed guinea pig in the basement.
Okay I think you’re vaguely up to speed so without further ado, and in no particular order, here are all of the mythological references in the season 2 finale of Severance.
Please try and enjoy each parallel equally.
Hades and Persephone
Now this one is pretty obvious if you’re familiar with the myth. Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld as his prisoner. Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and Persephone’s mum, loses her mind and causes a famine until Zeus finally steps in and tells Hades that he has to return Persephone to her mother and the upper world. But Hades was sneaky, feeding the unwitting young goddess some pomegranate seeds, which meant that (for whatever reason) Persephone had to stay put. Luckily they came up with a compromise, Persephone would spend half the year with her mother and half the year with her now husband, and this is how the Greeks explained the seasons (spring = happy Demeter, winter = grieving mother). So the whole below/above ground time-share thing has some pretty obvious parallels to being severed. Also at one point in the show Mark literally calls his sister by the nickname Persephone so they really spoon-fed us this one.
Orpheus and Eurydice
The main focus of season 2 is Mark’s quest to get his wife back. I wish I could claim that I’m the first person to make this connection but I’m really not, there’s a smattering of articles and it is ALL over TikTok. The ancient myth describes Orpheus’ mission to the Underworld to retrieve his wife Eurydice, who died tragically of a snake bite, and bring her back to the land of the living.
Here is a rather beautiful animated TikTok that retells the myth:
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The key moment in this story is the brutal, tragic inability of Orpheus to follow a SIMPLE instruction.
DON’T LOOK BACK
Orpheus, rather miraculously, manages to convince Hades and Persephone to release Eurydice back to the land of the living. The gods tell him that she is free to leave with him and that all will be swell as long as he doesn’t turn to look at her until they’ve fully exited the Underworld. Gods knows what possessed him, but he failed. He turned to face her and watched her get dragged back to the land of the dead (some people argue this is in fact more romantic because he couldn’t bear not to gaze upon her but come ON if my man had gone through all that to get me back and fumbled so egregiously at the last minute I would NOT be pleased).
Now given that this myth ends tragically, many viewers assumed that Severance would follow suit, with Mark ultimately failing to retrieve his wife and Gemma ending up stuck in the basement of Lumon. But the show flipped the script. Mark successfully gets Gemma out, she travels through the door that acts as a gateway to the outside world and is banging on it to get him to follow her so they can run off into the sunset. But. Mark looks back.
Just a reminder, this Mark that exists in Lumon has NO attachment to his wife Gemma who is literally screaming and crying for him to come with her. THIS Mark, innie Mark, happens to be in love with Helly (the gorgeous redhead above). So, by looking back and spotting her, our Orpheus decides to stay with Helly, consigning himself to bowels of Lumon rather than joining his Eurydice in the outside world. It takes a lot for me to yell at a TV, and my god I was SCREAMING at him during this scene. And I’m not alone.
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A MASTERFUL, if gut-wrenching plot twist. And a sensational inversion of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. No notes.
Now all of that, if you watch the show and have a vague grasp of Greek mythology, is relatively straightforward and obvious. But this is where it gets SEXY. The Greeks did not invent the trope of a journey to the Underworld, aka a katabasis (the word comes from Greek, specifically from katabainein to go down, from kata- cata- + bainein to go). They nicked it from Near Eastern mythology, specifically the descent of Inanna, a Sumerian poem that’s almost four thousand years old. THIS myth a) makes the various ordeals of Orpheus and Persephone look tame b) has so many insane Severance parallels it is actually mind boggling.
Take it OFF
The story goes that the goddess Inanna journeys to the Underworld to visit her recently widowed sister, Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Dead. Her sister decides that as she makes her way, Inanna has to take her kit off. Step by step, through 7 gates, the goddess removes her crown, her jewels, her breastplate, and her sceptre, by the time she rolls in she is fully naked. Inanna humbling herself before her sister, losing parts of herself to gain entry to the Underworld, is RATHER similar to how Gemma’s personality is broken down bit by bit over the many levels or rooms that Mark’s unsuspecting innie is creating for her.
The Marching Band
There is a rather surreal moment in the finale where a marching band comes to the severed floor, ostensibly to celebrate Mark finishing Cold Harbor, the final file, and to distract Mark from attempting to retrieve his wife (who will be killed after he completes the level). Luckily this doesn’t work and actually provides a great distraction, facilitating Mark’s escape. There’s a truly wild connection here to the myth of Inanna. When she first heads to the Underworld, she tells her loyal servant Ninshubur that if she hasn’t returned in three days to bang the drums, announcing where she is and telling the elders to retrieve her. So does the marching band in the finale weirdly operate in the same way, loudly announcing Gemma’s impending demise and serving as a call to action for Mark to rescue her?
You can keep him
Okay this parallel is just WILD. We know that Orpheus manages to leave the Underworld but Eurydice doesn’t make it out and we know that Mark decides to stay on the severed floor with Helly, leaving his newly freed wife Gemma on the other side of the gateway. Guess what Inanna does!!! She SACRIFICES her husband Dumuzi to facilitate her escape.
I’ll be the first to admit that some of these parallels are a smidge tenuous but goddamn if this one isn’t SOLID. In Inanna’s case, the reason she sacrifices Dumuzi is because he hasn’t even been grieving while she’s been stuck in the Underworld. Her sister demands a soul in exchange so she’s more than happy to offer up her better half. There’s been some TikTok chatter about whether or not Gemma fully understood the situation—i.e. which version of Mark she was dealing with—when she was stuck on the other side of the door, she just saw her husband turn around and run after another woman. So maybe there are some emotional parallels too. But he is, essentially, sacrificed or rather Mark sacrifices himself but still manages to free Gemma.
These last two are just bonus ones for fun.
The River Lethe
The River Lethe, aka the river of unmindfulness, is a river in Greek mythology that snakes around the Underworld. Named for Lethe, the personification of oblivion (and daughter of Eris, the goddess of strife), it was said that all who drank from Lethe would experience complete and utter forgetfulness. Initiates to the ancient mystery religion of Orphism were instructed to seek out her sister river Mnemosyne, the river of memory, upon their death to complete their spiritual transformation. It’s a bit of a red pill/blue pill moment (from the Matrix, NOT what the red pill means in 2025), whether you choose to drink the kool aid or learn the truth, something the characters in Severance grapple with constantly.
MR MILCHICK = OUR PSYCHOPOMP
And finally, let’s wrap it up with my favourite character (and one of my favourite bits of terminology). Mr Milchick, played by Tramell Tillman, is the manager of the severed floor AND Apple TV’s very own psychopomp. A psychopomp is a character from mythology who is in charge of guiding souls to the afterlife, one of very few figures that can actually move freely between the Underworld and land of the living. The Greeks have Charon, the ferryman who gets you across the Styx, as well as Hekate and Hermes. Mr Milchick manages the innies (and occasionally the outies) of his employees, ferrying them between their severed and un-severed selves via an elevator. He also, having drunk the kool aid, operates with a level of freedom that the others just do not have, much like his ancient equivalent.
If you’ve made it this far, I’m honestly impressed (and VERY grateful). We will return to regularly scheduled programming next week (I’m thinking the cult of Hekate or possible the emperor Nero, tbc).
Have a lovely Sunday xxxxxxxx
The finale dropped on the spring equinox so I was pretty confident Gemma was getting out 🌷
There is also a connection to Sisyphos. Gemmas innies have to complete those repetitive tasks and this is what they will be doing their whole life.