Ricken Got Lumon-ed

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I’m excitedly sharing some spoiler insights from the second season’s “Trojan’s Horse” episode of Severance, which aired on Apple TV+ on Valentine’s Day. As a devoted fan, I simply can’t resist delving into the latest twists and turns!

If a fan from the first season of Severance was told that Harmony Cobel, the dedicated Lumon follower, had left the company founded by Kier Eagan, and Ricken Hale, the skeptic, willingly joined Lumon’s expanding network, they might find it hard to believe. In addition, it would have been difficult to imagine at that time that Severance wouldn’t return for another three years. However, the series has moved swiftly in this season, reshuffling alliances and uncovering hidden intentions, particularly as they relate to Lumon’s ambition to control its external and internal image.

For instance, we saw this with the season premiere, where Lumon manipulated the MDR team’s overtime contingency into fake news headlines and the “Lumon Is Listening” propaganda video. This theme is reinforced in this week’s episode, “Trojan’s Horse,” as self-help author, family man, neti-pot user, and turtleneck enthusiast Ricken takes on a new role: willing participant in Lumon’s brainwashing scheme.

Lumon’s specific products or services might be unknown to us, but what we do understand is that they operate under a strict hierarchy. This structure was emphasized internally with the initiative “Lumon Is Listening” and now extends beyond Branch 501 into the external world through the expansion of “Trojan’s Horse.” Lumon’s recruitment of Ricken for their propagandistic mission and tasking him to write an Innie-oriented version of “The You You Are” is a chilling, disconcerting move. This action offers insight into Lumon: it’s less about what they produce, and more about how they manipulate and influence.

From the onset, Lumon’s enigmatic nature has been a significant element of the series Severance, serving as a means to explore striking aesthetics and unusual anomalies such as chambers filled with goats and festive waffle gatherings graced by Tempers, while deliberately keeping ambiguous and obscure about the specific industries Lumon actually operates in. (Recall from season one: “What don’t they not produce?”) Occasionally, new details about Lumon emerge, such as its global presence in 206 countries (which is nine more than the combined count of our world’s 195 recognized nations, plus Palestine and Vatican City), suggesting a larger number of severed employees than we’ve encountered (consider all those names in Outie Irv’s research), and hinting at a concealed “exports hall.

Contrasting Ricken’s skepticism towards Lumon, where employees risk both workplace oppression and social exclusion post-employment, is a significant theme throughout the series. Ricken, who is connected to Mark through marriage, has consistently been critical of the company his brother-in-law works for. In season one, he labels Mark as a “captive” and scolds him for trapping his Innie counterpart at Lumon. Later in season two, he adds a mocking tone when referring to Mark’s Innie as his “workie.” This antipathy towards Lumon is one reason the Innies’ unexpected and humorous adoption of Ricken’s self-help book, “The You You Are,“, is intriguing. Outie Mark finds the book filled with Ricken’s corporate criticisms and personal complaints about not feeling valued tedious, but Innie Mark and the MDR team seem drawn to resistance statements like “Your job needs you, not the other way around” and “They cannot crucify you if your hand is in a fist,” as if they had discovered an oasis amidst endless white hallways.

Perhaps some of Ricken’s rhetoric bore a resemblance to Tyler Durden’s provocative demeanor, coming from a man who seemingly dwells in a cozy, wooden-paneled environment. However, the ideas presented in “The You You Are” unintentionally resonated with the Innies, helping them grapple with their identity dilemmas vis-à-vis their Outies and Lumon employers. When Irv advocates for destroying Lumon and Innie Mark expresses that Ricken’s book expanded his perspective, both have been impacted by “The You You Are“‘s assertion that “the difference between man and machine lies in the fact that machines cannot think independently.” (Perhaps also influenced by the subsequent, immature statement: “Additionally, machines are made of metal, while humans are made of skin.”) Ultimately, Ricken’s words have succeeded in reaching an audience eager to improve themselves, and his craving for recognition is precisely what Lumon knows how to exploit.

In the third episode titled “Who Is Alive?”, when Natalie unexpectedly visits Ricken and Devon’s house, she showers him with compliments for his deep book, suggesting he rewrite The You You Are using language that Innies find more appealing. This is the recognition he’s yearned for all along. However, Ricken, who was once critical of such things, ought to be wary of this organization that consistently advocates against what he warns about. Yet, flattery from within its mysterious confines is a well-established tactic by Lumon to win people over, and it proves effective on Ricken just as it has on others.

It’s clear that “Trojan’s Horse” indicates that the new writing is not well-received by Devon, as she expresses her disdain through her tone when reading phrases such as “The workers were diligent, focused on their tasks” and “You should be content with the ticking of the clock, since it belongs to your boss but you get to hear it.” This contrasts sharply with Innie Mark’s amazement upon reading the original book, which resonated deeply with his feelings of solitude and fury. Moreover, the new text portrays Ricken as observing the workers from a position of privilege, implying that he is involved in Lumon’s secrets. However, this is far from the truth, as Ricken would never have access to the severed floor or interactions with actual employees, who are merely seen as “hands and numbers” by Lumon. For a significant salary, Ricken has followed in Mark’s footsteps, exploiting the Innies through the severance process, disregarding any harm it may cause them. Essentially, what Ricken is doing now mirrors what he once accused Mark of doing: using the severance for personal gain, regardless of the damage inflicted on the created Innies. Similarly, Lumon has transformed the Innies’ use of the overtime contingency into self-glorifying mythology through “Lumon Is Listening,” and they have refashioned “The You You Are” into a text that echoes Lumon’s language, as Devon points out.

The title “Trojan’s Horse” is a reference to how Ricken compares the new “The You You Are” to Devon; he’s hoping it will ignite a change. However, unlike Odysseus’ Trojan Horse, which didn’t instigate an uprising but was a weapon of war, “The You You Are” is no longer a catalyst for rebellion. Instead, it has been reduced to corporate jargon, as lifeless and devoid of soul as the “Compliance Handbook,” a text that was meant to be the only knowledge employees were aware of. Ricken once wrote, “If you find yourself adjusting to fit a system, dear reader, question if it’s really you who should adapt or the system itself.” The title “Trojan’s Horse” shapes Ricken and his words to Lumon’s will, whose intentions have always been clear.

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2025-02-14 19:56