If last week’s explosive Apple TV+Severance episode helped answer our season one finale questions and ground us in the outside world, this week’s episode three is all about teasing the theme of the season: Reintegration and Mark (Adam Scott) coming back to Lumon with his outie (at least partially) along for the ride.
There’s a lot to unpack here—race, poop, men in goat suits—but I’ll start with one fan theory that finally started to gel for me: color has meaning.
Dating back to early in the first season, fans have spotted the importance of color in the show, with Lumon represented by cool blues and sickening pea greens and the outside world as a muddier mix of rust, red and browns. Some eagle-eyed redditors have even talked about what crossover colors represent: maroon as “the impulse toward integration, rebellion, and the struggle to take action and regain agency,” as one person says. These sleuths have likewise noted the moments when red and blue overlap, like when Petey (of reintegration fame) dies under the haze of red and blue police lights…after wearing a red and blue striped bathrobe.
Season two, which is ripe with all sorts of new puzzle pieces, opened with the biggest color clue of them all: purple! Indeed, when Mark starts running around the halls in episode one, we encounter a purple conference room. We also see purple seats in the new break room and learn about Mark W. and Gwendolyn Y.’s old office, which had purple (or puce) keyboards. What’s with all the primary color mixing? Well, I think this episode confirms it: Reintegration!
Purple, it would seem, is what happens when your innie and outie come back together after severance. (Take note! Gwendolyn Y. wears a grape-colored dress and Mark W. dons suspenders with blue and red stripes. Have they been reintegrated?) So far, we haven’t seen any of our main characters wearing straight-up purple, but we’ve got clues that they soon might be. And, in general, I’m noting any time we see red or maroon in the Lumon offices: The crimson ball in the season two premiere, Ms. Casey in a burgundy dress back in season one when she passes Mark on his way to the break room, Mark—at the end of this most recent episode—flashing out of his blue suit jacket and into a maroon sweater vest.
Since I, like many fans, think Helly has come back reintegrated, I’m waiting for her to show signs of purple. But mark my words: Any time red is allowed up the elevator, it’s evidence that an outside memory is infiltrating an innie mind.
More episode three thoughts:
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