Spoilers for Season 2 of Severance are in play! If you want to watch the series, you can do so with an Apple TV+ subscription.
Ever since watching Severance’s Season 2 finale, I can’t stop thinking about the line “You’ll kill them all.” It’s screamed by Dr. Mauer at Gemma and Mark as they’re about to leave in an elevator, and while I have my assumptions about what it means, I needed to know more. Thankfully, CinemaBlend had the chance to ask Gemma actress Dichen Lachman about it, and her explanation of this quote’s meaning will haunt me until Severance Season 3.
In the final episode of Severance to air on the 2025 TV schedule, we finally saw Gemma escape that hellish testing floor with Mark. During the season, we learned that Lumon was trying to tamper with her emotions with various rooms that contained her biggest fears or things she loathed. This required her to be severed well over 20 times.
However, she managed to escape when Mark came down to get her from the Cold Harbor room. As they were running out, though, Dr. Mauer yelled, “You’ll kill them all.” And that left me spiraling…Thankfully, CinemaBlend’s Mike Reyes got the chance to ask Dichen Lachman about this fateful moment and powerful line of dialogue. In response, the actress said:
Well, in terms of Gemma's understanding, I think he's referring to the innies right? The many innies. And that's what's interesting about this show: a death isn't how we understand it in its literal sense. But it could be that version of the person who changes once they go past that threshold. So that's how I interpreted it. And what an incredible scene. Robby Benson is just a wonderful actor, and he just stole every scene.
Lachman’s comments seem to imply that the doctor was referring to the various versions of Gemma that existed on the floor she was living on for so long. By choosing to leave with Mark, she was killing all the other versions of her that existed down there. That by itself is spooky and quite morbid to think about.
However, the longer I think about this, the more I wonder how it will impact all the severed employees.
To me, this whole sequence that includes this line and ultimately ends with Mark leaving Gemma outside the severed floor to run back into it with Helly is showing that all innies are in danger over what’s going down in Lumon. They don’t want to die, and the outies deciding to try and escape or free them could lead to a life where the innies no longer exist.
That’s kind of terrifying to think about, and I think it will have massive implications come Season 3.
In Season 2, we saw Irving get fired from Lumon, effectively killing his innie. They even honored his life on the severed floor later. While his character isn’t technically dead, it’s only his outie’s conscious that is currently living. The same thing happened to Gemma.
By leaving the floor she was on, the doctor screamed, “You’ll kill them all” to signal that her choice will kill all the other versions of her.
However, I also think this line applies to Lumon as a whole. This conflict between the innies and outies really started to ramp up in the final episode, and Mark’s innie choosing to stay in with Helly solidified that tension as an even bigger issue going into Season 3.
So, yeah, this idea of killing innies haunts me, and it’s going to continue to until we get Season 3, because I have a feeling this conflict and ethical dilemma will be a major part of it.
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