Contains spoilers about past episodes.
About halfway through Season 2 of “Severance,” Helly R. is rocked by a stunning betrayal: Helena Eagan, masquerading as Helly, has deceived Mark S. into having sex with her, believing he was sleeping with Helly.
The grift was not terribly difficult to pull off. Helly and Helena are the same person after all, albeit with a consciousness split in two by the “severance” procedure. That technology, meant to compartmentalize memories and — in theory — alleviate the painful or boring parts of life, is the foundation on which the hit show’s universe is built. The many ethical, moral and physical consequences that accompany it have helped make “Severance” one of the most dissected TV shows in years.
Helena is the “outie,” a fully realized human above ground; Helly is the “innie,” a “severed” employee essentially being held prisoner below ground in an office run by the mysterious Lumon Industries.
Helena’s sexual betrayal was just one in a series of tit-for-tat expressions of disgust, disrespect and resentment between the two women who are one woman (played by Britt Lower, who walks the fraught line between the characters with tremendous nuance).
In Season 1, Helly attempted to kill Helena in what would have amounted to a murder-suicide by hanging herself in an elevator that serves as a psychic breaker switch between the consciousness of innies and outies.
Before that, Helly tried to appeal to Helena, asking to resign from her post at Lumon. When management told her that Helena had declined, Helly didn’t believe her outie would allow her to suffer against her will. So as a warning to Lumon leaders — whom Helly believed must be responsible for holding her captive — she threatened to guillotine her own (and therefore Helena’s) fingers with a paper cutter.
She quickly learned her alter ego was responsible after all. Helena views Helly as subhuman and wants to keep her subterranean. “I understand that you’re unhappy with the life that you’ve been given,” Helena said icily in a recorded video message. “But you know what? Eventually, we all have to accept reality. So, here it is. I am a person. You are not. I make the decisions. You do not. And if you ever do anything to my fingers, know that I will keep you alive long enough to horribly regret that.”
Helly grows to detest the myriad ways in which Helena controls her, even down to her clothing. “She dresses me in the morning like I’m a baby,” she told Mark S. (Adam Scott) in Season 2. “It’s disgusting.”
Helena — as Helly and the audience learned in the Season 1 finale — is the daughter of the Lumon Industries C.E.O. and a prominent face of the procedure.
But more revealing than her stature above ground is that she’s the only one of the original four severed characters who is fundamentally at odds across worlds, both intensely hating her alter ego while being obsessed with it — her own worst enemy. She’s also the only woman.
While the three men — Mark S., Irving B. (John Turturro) and Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) — have also “met” their outies, they appear to have a basic respect, curiosity or even neutrality toward their other half. The dispositions and spirits of their innies and outies seem tethered to the same subconscious. Of course, Helly’s must be tethered, too, but what lurks there is a seething rage.
This brand of inner turmoil, familiar to many women, has long been mined for art, from great literary heroines of the 19th century to the stars of this month’s Oscars.
Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary were characters hungry for passion but, stifled by oppressive societies, ultimately overwhelmed by despair.
Elisabeth Sparkle — an aging beauty played by Demi Moore in last year’s body-horror allegory “The Substance” — whose self-worth so hinges on the adoration of strangers, opts to split her consciousness and her body in half to escape the inevitable.
Last week, we got Lady Gaga’s new album “Mayhem,” the cover art showing her reflection fractured in two by a cracked mirror. Her videos for the tracks “Disease” and “Abracadabra” are replete with imagery of various versions of herself battling each another.
Girls and women are conditioned to scrutinize and judge themselves harshly, inside and out, as others judge them; to pursue the moving target of perfection; to deprioritize their own needs; to value outside validation above all else. Along the way, our sense of self erodes.
Only on “Severance,” Helly is not beholden to the lifetime of conditioning that Helena has endured. That fact breeds jealousy in Helena, Lower told Variety in February, calling it an “unbearable admiration.”
“Helly R. has access to a way of moving through the world that is so alive, so awake, and it’s forward-moving,” Lower said. “Helena has to hold herself with so much composure. She has to wear all of these masks.”
Of course with a show as “mysterious and important” as “Severance,” each new episode could upend what we think we know. (As of publication, there are two left this season.) But there’s little doubt about whether Helena is a manifestation of Helly’s worst fears about herself — and vice versa.
After the murder-suicide attempt, Mark told Helly to forget about Helena. “Don’t focus on her. What do you want in here?” he asked.
“What I want,” Helly replied with a scoff, “is for her to wake up while the life drains out of her, and to know it was me who did it.”
