Mark Scout cannot bear the reality of his wife’s death.
When he’s alone with his thoughts, he ambles over to the fridge, cracks open a beer, and dozes off with the TV on. When he heads to the office, he sticks his phone in a locker, lets a security officer wave him down with a wand, and enters an elevator that activates a chip in his brain, cutting off his access to any memories outside his workplace’s basement.
This is the premise of Apple TV’s hit Severance, a mash-up of The Office and Lost, complete with a quirky cast, rich character development, and mysterious details that lend themselves to Reddit theories. (Warning: spoilers ahead.)
Few of us would trust a corporation to insert allegedly irremovable hardware into our skulls, bifurcating our beings into “innies” (work selves) and “outies” (life selves). But many of us have experienced heartbreak so profound it tempts us to drastic measures in pursuit of relief. “Do you ever think that maybe the best way to deal with a f—ed-up situation in your life isn’t to just shut your brain off half the time?” a minor character asks Mark in season 1. It takes most of the first season for him to really consider the question.
Mark’s reason for electing to undergo the severance procedure is sympathetic. But the show immediately disabuses its viewers of any naiveté; this technology isn’t just an innocuous reprieve for depression. Midway through season 1, we learn that severance has also been extended to those undergoing excruciating physical pain, like a woman who wants to avoid experiencing labor. In season 2, Lumon, the corporation behind the technology, is testing it as a means to avoid the uncomfortable (going to the dentist) and the inconvenient (writing thank-you cards). In a recent episode, we visit the hometown of the technology’s creator, a desolate village where Lumon once manufactured ether, the medical anesthetic and dissociative drug.
Severance fans have speculated for years about the nature of Lumon’s business. (Among the popular ideas: cloning and conscience transference.) But recent episodes suggest the corporation has a far more relatable objective: a distress-free world.
“We don’t want to experience anything unpleasant,” said Dichen Lachman, the actress who plays Mark’s late wife (and Lumon’s test subject) in a recent interview. “We kind of want to get on a prescription of not having to suffer.”
The Christian life both acknowledges the inevitability of suffering and offers consolation. “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God,” says the Lord through the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 41:10). “I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Of course, the presence of God does not mean a pain-free life—nor is pain always to be avoided. “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope,” writes Paul (Rom. 5:3–4).
Paul’s words emphasize just how long these excruciating seasons can endure. It’s no wonder that Christians too find escapist “fixes” appealing. I’m reminded of this quote from priest Henri Nouwen in his 1975 book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life:
Our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain as well. We not only bury our dead as if they were still alive, but we also bury our pains as if they were not really there. We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game which makes us believe that everything is fine after all.
Nouwen lists prosaic coping mechanisms like hanging out with friends and reading and watching TV. Some of us have also turned to sex, alcohol, or drugs. As Christians, we might be prone to judge each distraction on its own merits, labeling some healthy, like in-person connection, and others unhealthy, like sleeping around or smoking pot. But harmful escapism can happen anytime we pursue solutions to suffering beyond what Scripture preaches as the path to peace.
That journey always starts with drawing closer to God, as the psalmist reminds us: “Pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge” (Ps. 62:8). Over and over, Scripture insists we must turn to God when we are anxious, weary, and debilitated (Phil. 4:6–7; 1 Pet. 5:7; Matt. 11:28).
It’s this kind of dependence that allows us to see deeper aspects of God’s character, as Paul famously reminds us in 2 Corinthians 12:9: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” For Christians, maturing in our faith and working through our pain often look like two sides of the same coin. “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings,” writes Paul in Philippians 3:10.
When we escape sufferings instead of participating in them, we pursue a kind of false relief—relief that neither positively forms our character nor helps us work through our underlying needs.
When the Pews Hold Pain
As we wrap up Severance’s second season, it’s clear that whatever “solution” Lumon has created for outies isn’t a solution after all. Debates about the personhood of innies run through the show; though a combination of outie self-interest and corporate objectives brought them into the world, innies emerged with their own thoughts, feelings, and desires. At times, their lack of agency triggers despair and even spurs one innie to try to end her own life. In episode 9, one innie who had briefly met his outie’s child and spent several hours with his outie’s wife as a reward for his work spirals after she ends things with him, enraged to the point that he decides to quit his job.
If philosophers and theologians posit that the human experience demands suffering, Severance both underscores and inverts this truth: Suffering demands a human experience. At Lumon, every attempt to rid one’s life of pain merely begets another human whose existence will be defined by that pain.
It’s like the billions of pounds of plastic waste that we’ve created and thrown away, ending up “everywhere from the Mariana Trench to the top of Mount Everest and from human breast milk to human blood,” said archaeologist Sarah Newman in a discussion of her book about the history of waste.
“The biggest myth about trash is simply that we talk about throwing things ‘away,’” she explains. “There is not, nor has there ever been, an ‘away’ for things to go.”
We know this, and yet we continue to produce and consume plastic even as it poisons us and our world. We understand this about hardship and pain, and yet, overwhelmed or devastated, we distract ourselves—and many of us would get severed if we could.
Henri Nouwen offers a different vision, one that goes beyond commanding us to avoid escapism, buckle down, and heal ourselves.
“Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually,” he writes in a quote attributed to The Wounded Healer. “The main question is not ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’”
In the bleak world of Severance, this vulnerability remains elusive. In episode 8, Mark’s former boss and neighbor returns to her hometown and asks someone she used to know for a favor. In their first conversation in years, they hint at a traumatic relationship forged while working at Lumon as young children. But most of this reminiscence manifests as anger before the boss draws a line. “I’ll not be your punching dummy for your resentments,” she tells her old colleague.
He comes around to helping her out. But he doesn’t elaborate on the ways that the company has battered him emotionally. She doesn’t bare her soul about her grief over her mother’s death. Instead, he inhales ether. And then he hands it to her.
Morgan Lee is the global managing editor at Christianity Today.
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