If you haven’t been to ‘Woe’s Hollow’ yet, go back and watch Episode 4, Season 2 of Severance with an Apple TV+ subscription before diving into this story.
There have been a ton of creepy and unsettling characters, reveals and plot points in the episodes of Severance that have aired on the 2025 TV schedule. However, nothing made my skin crawl more than the innies' trip to Woe’s Hollow, as we learned more about Kier, Irv realized the truth about Helly, and it was ultimately revealed that Helly was actually her outie, Helena. So, I asked John Turturro about this haunting trip, his character’s nightmare, and how that all led to the big reveal about Britt Lower’s character at the end.
Like many fans, Irv had been suspicious about Helly since the second she mentioned that night gardner. Then, on the trip to Woe’s Hollow, his suspicions were confirmed. Part of that confirmation came after Irv left camp and fell asleep in the snow. He proceeded to have a terrifying nightmare that featured Christopher Walken’s Burt and a horrifying zombie-like seemingly computer-generated woman. I asked Turturro how this horrific nightmare played into his realization about his co-worker, and he explained:
Well, the dream informs that he's sort of maybe been, you know, set up. It clarifies something in his brain that he suspects and it sort of cements, ‘I know what's going on,’ you know? I think it helps, not in a literal way, but it's a piece of the puzzle.
Overall, it seemed like this dream more than confirmed Irv’s doubts about Helly. I think it also highlighted and possibly solidified his ongoing issues with Lumon as a whole. Now, there are still a lot of questions to be answered on this front – like who that scary lady was. However, we 100% know that the dream was the final straw that got Turturro’s character to act against Helena.
Speaking to that point, the Barton Fink actor told me that after the dream, he went to find Helly and call her bluff. He needed to act on what he had been questioning, and he turned out to be right, as Turturro told me:
So then when he comes back and he looks at her, you know, he pushes it a little further, you know, to say, ‘Let's see this person reveal themselves [for] who they really are.’ And I think he's kind of speaking for the group then, and he's also speaking for Helly in some ways too. This is an outsider, and we're all at, you know, risk here, and that's what kind of pushes him, you know, to go that far.
In the same interview, Britt Lower, who plays Helly/Helena, called this “a rescue mission,” and the Do the Right Thing actor said this was the point where he really wanted to “get to the bottom of it.” So, he tried to drown her to prove his point, and that happened after this ambiguous dream.
This moment felt like Irving’s breaking point, and he knew it. His actions against Helena led to him being fired and basically killed Irv’s innie. Maybe seeing Burt, his love whose innie also left the company, drove him to finally act. Maybe he finally figured out what those numbers meant. While we don’t know that for sure, we do know his night in the snow ultimately led to the reveal that Helly was actually Helena, which will change the game of Season 2 for good.
Ultimately, this dream and Helly reveal caused more questions than answers. Along with characters like Gemma, Miss. Huang and Gwendoline Chrstie’s Lorne and things like the goats and the numbers, we can add Irv’s dream and Helena’s motivations to the list of things we need to be constantly questioning.
However, all this mystery and intrigue is what makes Severance one of the best shows on Apple TV+. And as it continues airing on Fridays, you better believe I’ll be hyper-fixating on this dream, Irv’s firing and Helena’s choice to go to the severed floor as herself and not as Helly.
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