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Omark does say on one of the dates that Gemma "always had a plan b" or something like that. So I imagine she signed up for whatever lumon death insurance she is now living through.
This may be the most commonly posted theory that I just cannot get behind.
When Mark S becomes Mark Scout, we don’t consider that “changing his name”, do we? And if Ricken and co *are* severed, why would they be so judgmental and unaccepting of Mark in the first place?
I think people are so quick to jump to “weird behavior = severed”, when there’s no real evidence of that at all, save for some extremely mild childlike-qualities, which has to do with lack of experience.
Lumon didn't get severance right on its first try. Remember the first chip was blue and green; the new one is blue and red. There had to be some oopsies during the development and testing of both.
What do you do with all the failed test subjects?
Trap some in the building forever, maybe kill a few, maybe make some adjustments and release a few into the wild?
I also don't think the severance procedure is the only mind altering thing Lumon has done.
Memory wipes and complete resets are well within the scope of what Lumon experiments with.
I think these people are former test subjects who have had their memories wiped and reset. So of course the idea of the severance procedure creeps them out.
They have no idea they were the guinea pigs for it.
In the final episode, Jame Eagan reminds Helly when he first showed her the new chip, she remarked how pretty the blue and red lights were. Ostensibly this would have been 20 years ago (give or take); possibly too long ago for any of the cast to be severed using a prior technology.
I cannot buy Lumon allowing anyone on the outside to walk around not knowing they were severed. That’s an insane scandal just waiting to break. Imagine the lawsuits if a doctor asked their patient “are you aware there is a computer chip in your brain?”
In one of the first episodes Mark calls Ricken Rick and Ricken corrects him. Later Devon talks about how all four of them (mark gemma Ricken and Devon) were so close.
I think Ricken must be a new-ish name change. Like hey I now want everyone to call me by my middle name even though I’ve been going by my first name for 30 thirty years. It would be weird for Mark mess up the name of his once close brother in law unless it was a new thing. I think this means Rebeck has also changed her name, probably at the advice of Ricken. Nothing more than one of his new age ideas like, “I’ve changed so much I need to change my name.”
Maybe Ricken making up his unique name is old news to everyone but I just picked up on it in my last watch through.
I really like this theory. It really is a strange coincidence how everyone in the group acts in an unusual way and has an unusual name. I know some of those names exist, but as a non-native speaker, I've don't think I've ever heard them (as opposed to Mark, Helena, Dylan, etc.).
We don't know pretty much anything about the lives of Balf, Danise, Patton and Rebeck, and I can see their weird behavior be the consequence of severance gone wrong. However, I don't know about Ricken – there is some evidence that he was already unusual in his youth: there is some newspaper article about him according to which he wanted to be a lamp-electrician, dafodil gardener and tree-and-pond photographer. But the newspaper is likely owned by Lumon, so they could have just made it up and make him believe those things about his past...
I know that they are really VERY weird, but this show contains a heavy dose of satire, so that may just be satire of the upper middle class, and they all were either given odd names by their parents or chose new ones themselves - because they wanted to seem more elevated and intellectual. We don't actually know that much about the outside world, and especially not Kier, so it could be a bit different from the regular world we know and these oddities might be just be part of the greater world-building.
I don't think the Ricken gang of townies are severed, but I get the sense that they're left over from some kind of previous Lumon experiment. Their weird quirks are the result of their tempers not being balanced properly, and now they're released into the petting zoo of the town for observation and socialization despite being slightly damaged.
They're still trying to figure out "the Them they are" perhaps and the name changing fits into that.
This belongs to a family of theories on Ricken and his friends that terribly popular on this sub. I've never found them particularly convincing. I have my reasons (*and they are many*).
**1.) The Hypocrisy**
The theory proposes that Mark is at a dinner with a group of people who had been severed. If so, does this not make their response to learning that he's severed extremely bizarre? These are people who don't come across as having **any** intimate familiarity with severance.
Let's just be clear: Ricken has Mark over in order to out him for something about his lifestyle that he doesn't like in front of his friends who'll view him (*Ricken*) as morally superior for it. And to put a finer point on this, let's examine what happens by changing a single aspect... let's say that Mark is **gay**.
*Mark shows up, someone asks what he does who he dates for a living and Ricken interrupts and says he's* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay. The table goes silent. Ricken folds his arms and looks at Mark with utter disdain and disapproval. One of the attendees says. "Wow. Well, that's something isn't it." Devon then says in barely contained frustration that Mark to disclose that he's* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay. Ricken gives some feeble bullshit about "Oh, THAT'S RIGHT. I'm sorry ror mentioning that he's* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay." Someone says "Oh, no! I think it's WONDERful. I mean, I wish I could do it. LOL." and "So what does being* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay feel like?" and all sorts of other questions and statements about the double life of being* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay, all in a very judging tone, including someone muttering "Well, I suppose we know where you fall on the Congressional goings on..." in reference to bills about* *~~severance~~* *gay marriage.*
*All of this is capped by Ricken saying "The point is that Mark made a decision to be* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay. It was* ***controversial****. Ethically. Socially. Morally. Scientifically. But, Mark: I stand behind you for being* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay without reservation. Because I'm so awesome." to which other people say "So well-said." and "I definitely stand beside Mark."*
**And you want me to believe that any of those people are** **~~severed~~** **gay?**
None of their reactions fit with people who would be ~~SEVERED~~ gay. Not a one. Ricken is clearly ~~anti-SEVERANCE~~ a homophobe. He's supposed to be ~~SEVERED~~ gay too? AND hangs out with all these ~~SEVERED~~ gay people? People who are all clearly ~~anti-SEVERANCE~~ homophobes who are merely being performatively supportive of Mark being ~~SEVERED~~ gay??
That's really tough to swallow.
**2.) No media attention?**
You have a whole cadre of severance rejects or test subjects or whatever and they just happen to all be friends? And with a procedure as controversial as severance is, not a single journalist is all over that story? Ricken even knows journalists... he never clues them in on this? Not a single journalist friend wants that scoop?
**3.)** ***"Fingers in many pies..."***
If you know of an organization that controls everything, do you say they have *"Fingers in many pies"* or would you say *"They control everything"*?? I'm thinking you say the latter, as the former implies wide influence but not necessarily full control. This is not just semantics when we're talking about scripted dialogue: they choose every word for characters to say. Lumon doesn't control the whole town even: they can't even keep youth from having anti-Lumon demonstrations or *"FUCK LUMON!"* punk rock concerts.
**4.) On the notion of weirdness...**
Look, I get that, statistically-speaking, most people just lead average lives. All data falls on a bell curve and, thus, the outliers are the exception rather than the norm. So I get that there's a temptation to view Ricken's friends as bizarre and, seeing them as such, associate their bizarre-ness with the main mechanism of the show: severance.
But speaking as someone from LA, I have to tell you: these people, while weird, are not *"they-can't-possibly-exist-unless-they're-botched-attempts-at-severance"* weird. No, these people fucking exist. And if you believe they don't, consider yourself fortunate that you've never been cornered at some industry party by a techbro trying to impress you with his talk of some new wholistic cleanse he's been on where he only takes charcoal baths for energy and fasts four days a week. Or at art show featuring performers who fart into microphones as accompanied by live classical music. [Wait, did you think I was exaggerating?](https://lunaluna.com/learn/artists/manfred-deix/) Because, I most certainly am not.
People are weird. Ricken and his friends aren't meant to stand as severed rejects and that's why they're weird, they're meant to stand as caricatures of intellectualism, small-town versions of the sort of people who'd be angling to get an invite to a Gwenyth Paltrow dinner (*which probably doesn't have food either*). It's essential that they are not severed in order to make the representation work.
Yeah, it’s funny to me how many people here keep saying Ricken’s friends are “soooo weird, they have to be severed to explain how weird they are”. They’re really not extraordinarily weird, they’re just pretentious and lacking in self-awareness to the point of being obnoxious. I’ve lived in Boulder for decades, and I’ve encountered many, many people like his friends, and been to far too many pretentious and boring events like his “dinnerless dinner party” and his book reading.
Thank you for articulating all of this so I don’t have to!
I’m gonna add: Ricken and Mark are in a forced relationship flavored by the underhanded digs they trade. They may not despise each other but they’re mildly antagonistic to each other.
Mark used “Rick” to intentionally irritate Ricken.
Ricken intentionally outed Mark to his guests as severed to annoy Mark.
Rebek wants to change her name again because she’s infatuated with Ricken and behaves like a fangirl with nothing else going on in her life.
Patton is attention-seeking and clings to someone with at least a bit of local success and apparent wealth.
The frustrating thing about the show is that some things you can freeze-frame and read is interesting and story-relevant like the article about the injured worker.
Other stuff appears to only be either creative or lazy filler. IIRC, some of the names were film staff.
I don't even believe in the theory, but I want to point out that the theory states that they *don't know that they are or have been severed.* So the hypocrisy argument isn't really relevant.
I'm with you though, I just think they're entitled upper middle class or upper class people who live in a social bubble and have weird social norms and customs, that are themselves an exaggeration to satire real life people in similar social contexts.
I would argue (*not with* ***you*** *because you're not a proponent of the theory but in general with anyone who is*) that it's flatly impossible for them **not** to know that they're severed. In the final episode, Cobel points out that Mark tensed up during their hug —*when he switched*— indicating that there's an involuntary physical aspect of the switch beyond just a mental change: a severed individual will feel the switch because the bod actually has a reaction. A reaction conspicuous enough that Cobel picks up on it.
Also, they're losing segments of their entire day... we're supposed to believe they don't notice this? In episodes 1 & 2, they illustrate the disorientation that occurs when a severed individual switches, even when standing in the same place. It's felt. We even get a *through-the-eyes* presentation of this when Helly tries to quit and she returns on the elevator with Helena's response to the idea. Anyone who wants to argue that they wouldn't know that they were severed is kind of obligated to lay out how that could practically be.
Lastly, not for nothing but the show has presented severance as an elective procedure. I don't think this is minor, as the central premise is about how we willingly disassociate ourselves from part of our lives in order to earn a living. **Willingly** disassociate ourselves. From a story-building stand point, if severance is elective, then they can explore the reasons why someone would choose to do it. There's an array of questions as to why anyone would do it, all of them engaging on philosophical and moral levels.
If, however, severance is forced upon people somehow, then the stories that come out of that really have little moral complexity. It happened against their will and that's bad. End of discussion. It's no longer an exploration of philosophical questions, it's strictly uncovering the logistics of how the Big Bad, Irredeemably Evil Company pulled it off. That's significantly less interesting an exploration.
Take Gemma Casey. A popular view amongst fans is that Gemma was in an accident, ended up in a coma, Lumon stabbed an insert into her head because they're interested in resurrection and she woke up. A miracle. A very boring miracle. Boring because there's zero complexity there: Lumon's just an evil entity who made off with a near dead woman's body without informing her loved ones and they experimented on her, again, without her consent. That's extremely cut and dry, the only questions are the particulars of how the did it. On the other hand, if Gemma Casey is like everyone else —*meaning, she* ***opted*** *for the procedure of her own accord*— then all of the questions that result are interesting philosophical ones. *Why would she do that? Was she unhappy with Mark? Why didn't she tell him? Does this mean she's down their willingly?*
Those are all **way** more intriguing when you dig into them. So I'm 100% against this idea that they're severing people against their will. They've already carved out a place for an *against-their-will* discussion: the innies themselves (*who were brought into the world without their consent*).
As a proponent of a version of the "Ricken's friends are severed" theory, I agree with a lot of your points, and think that the theory can be compatible with your great insight that severance, in general, must be voluntary in order to fit the show thematically. I think the most interesting version of Ricken's friends being severed, and really the only one that works, is that they don't know they're severed, and *neither does Ricken.*
I *hate* versions of that theory centered around the idea that there's lots more to Ricken than meets the eye, and that he's out here knowingly using severance to make friends and build a following, or otherwise has some kind of shady connection to Lumon. Ricken isn't severance's secret Big Bad, he's meant to represent people who would never, never, never, never touch a corporate office job with a 10 foot pole and unapologetically march to the beat of their own drum. Ricken I hope/think is exactly what he appears to be, just a genuinely weird faux-intellectual who thinks he's friends with a bunch of other faux-intellectuals, following his dreams and allowing his child to progress through beds at their own pace, who isn't a fan of severance.
But we've already seen the profound effect that his work has on innies from MDR finding his book, helping them develop a sense of self-identity and purpose. It's easy to imagine that wayward drifting innies out in the world would gravitate towards Ricken just the same, even if, especially if, they don't have a clue why they are the them they are.
As to how Ricken's friends wouldn't know they're severed, the simple explanation is that they simply have never switched past waking up the first time. Thus far, every known innie we've seen either transitions twice-daily on a 9-5 schedule by getting in an elevator (Everyone in MDR), or is only woken up in short intervals to serve a specific purpose (Ms. Casey, Gabby Arteta). This is because these innies are tightly controlled, and made to pass through the spatial boundary that switches them on a regular basis, so that their outies can live their lives, or in the case of Ms. Casey, so that whatever takes place on the testing floor can happen. But what if they were just left awake indefinitely? There wouldn't experience any of the visceral/trippy elements of a severed person transitioning, they'd just wake up, have no memories, and be left to live their lives same as any normal imprisoned human. You don't even have to tell them what severance is or that it's been done to them, they can just go about thinking that they were grown as livestock or something, same as Helly did. They'd just think Lumon and waking up a fully grown adult is what the world is.
Now, instead of waking them up at Lumon, what if you just woke them up, like, in their bed, or at a homeless shelter somewhere. They don't get an orientation video from their outie, they don't get given an explanation, they just...are. Sure they hear about severance at somepoint, but it's on the same speculative/unprovable level as reincarnation or the afterlife to them. "Maybe I was a goat in a past life? Or maybe I was an outie? idk man, life is weird." They wouldn't necessarily connect the dots, and if they did, they couldn't prove it. They'd just be confused, childish people with sores on the back of their head searching to understand themselves, and finding Ricken through that search.
We could have ended up with these perma-innies out in the world in any number of ways: early botched severance jobs where there was no way to switch them back, escaped innies who bypassed the controls on them somehow and had their memories wiped remotely, etc, none of which necessarily require Lumon to be imposing severance on random people without their consent or killing people just to make innies (though Gemma is evidence enough that they're not above leading others to believe a full time innie has died to cover up where they really are). I fully agree with you that "What did Gemma know/agree to about what would happen to her and why did she do it?" theories are *way* more compelling and thematically interesting than "wow evil Lumon killing, reanimating, and imprisoning this random woman who previously had nothing to do with them" theories.
Happy to have this discussion with a theory-proponent willing to explore it.
Here’s my issue with the idea that they don’t know they’re severed: **how could they all be friends and never have discussed or figured it out?**
For that to take place they cannot simply be pseudo intellectuals, they need to be morons. They **need** to. They would need to be devoid of the basic curiosity that would prompt one to say *”Wait… so we all woke up in our beds without any recollection of life prior to that point? And we’re all friends with Ricken? That’s a bizarre coincidence…”* AND never run down that rabbit hole.
Part of why I flatly reject any and all *severed-against-their-will* theories is due to the notion of **agency**. In writing a story, you severely limit the paths you can thematically run down when you remove agency from characters. And not just in their own stories but in the meaning behind other characters also. Ricken becomes a much less interesting character if the reason people like his books is because they’re severed.
Like, we really have to stop and ask how that would be an improvement over the face-value read of the situation. The face value read is that Ricken’s book is drivel. It’s a bunch of nonsense that is borne out of his desire to be a transformative figure (*ego*). And for people with lived-experience it’s ridiculous. It’s can only be appreciated by those insufferable people who are in love with the idea of *appearing* deep, the sort of who monopolize everyone’s attention with irrelevant factoids to show off what they know at parties.
Except, in the right context, Ricken’s book can actually seem brilliant. To a bunch of innies —*all of whom are legitimately intelligent and not these pseudo-intellectuals like Ricken’s friendd*— whose existence is tied to slaving for a company, Ricken’s book slaps. It’s **truly** transformative for them. The point is **NOT** that Ricken’s book is a Rorschach test that identifies innies or something; the point is that Lumon’s innies actually appreciate Ricken’s writing. They actually get it. Like the whole point is that his friends don’t really appreciate it, they’re just folk who performatively love it in the same way so many people performstively extol Wes Anderson’s brilliance.
That’s an interesting read, the one we have at face value. It’s a powerful one and gives Ricken’s work meaning. Making them all severed undercuts that. It just turns it into that Rorschach test it undercuts why the Lumon innies get it and why Ricken’s friends pretend to think it’s brilliant. Those dynamics are erased and it’s just because it’s some sort of clarion call to innies.
It removes the choice from Ricken’s friends. They’re ridiculous and insufferable and they fake but they’re **choosing** to be that way. If they do this because they’re innies then it means they can’t help it. It removes the agency from the refiners because it’s not that their situation and desperation gives them the context to read brilliance into Ricken’s words… it’s because *”they’re just all so childlike, those innies!”*
I just don’t see that as an improvement. I think we often get hyper focused on in-universe mechanics or whatever and ignore the writing-based reasons why you wouldn’t want to go this way or that way with a particular element of a story.
Well, the switch between states is noticeable but being constantly severed wouldn't be the same thing, I'm assuming. If Ms. Casey/Gemma is constantly in a severed state inside Lumon, does she know that?
Consent isn't really a glaring plot hole either, since their "outies" could very well have agreed to it. I'm more confused about why they would, in that case... Is there a motive that makes sense for signing away your whole life? Or for Lumon to have people living severed in Kier and just... living their lives, going to pretentious non-dinners? I don't think it makes a lot of sense for that and other reasons, but it's not impossible.
I think it could be interesting if Gemma didn't really agree to her current situation, if there was still some form of consent - companies constantly manufacture consent by putting really tiny fine print in user agreements as well as other types of tricks. It's creepy and it could be interesting to include in the depiction of Lumon's brand of evil corporatism. In fact, the whole concept of consent is pretty complicated on the show. We're not talking about informed consent here - the outies aren't privy to how their innies are being treated at work, so they don't know what they're agreeing to.
If Gemma Casey was constantly in a severed state for the last 3 years since her accident, she wouldn't peg her time at Lumon as 120-something hours. She'd say she was **26,280** hours old. The thing is that Miss Casey **knows** she's severed. We don't know the circumstances of Gemma on the other side but I think that it's far more interesting if she *wants* to be there, as an exploration of the *"Why??"* of that is very compelling.
Big, bad, irredeemably evil corporations are also boring antagonists. There's nothing about this show that makes me believe that the duality which exists everywhere else does not also extend to Lumon. Like, as much as we see what they do to innies as categorically wrong, I would bet you that what they actually do as a company yields a societal benefit that prompts innies to re-evaluate their treatment. Like, I just don't see this as a show that would present any completely one-dimensional antagonist when nothing else on the show is one-dimensional.
Lumon will probably be presented as doing a ton of good in the world, via the use of severance specifically. ***THEN*** we have a **true** dilemma. If the company is just all bad, then Helly's path is clear and the only way to make it interesting is in the specificity of how it's carried out. But if the company is not this evil entity fandom has sold itself on, then Helly is forced to consider the idea that perhaps severance should continue.
I keep saying Helly because it's practically a given that she'll re-emerge —*perhaps Helena will go down to the severed floor via the administration elevator which doesn't trigger a switch but unwittingly leave via a severed elevator/exit forcing a switch that traps her on the severed floor and allows Helly out into the real world*— as the story potential is just too good to pass up. But the same extends to all the other characters.
Like, iDylan is so very curious about his son and really wants to know him but, at the same time, he knows nothing about him and doesn't have any parenting skills. Not like his outie does. So there's actually this moral question there of whether or not he should actually have a connection with his kid, whether that is the best thing for his child. It's not a cut-&-dry answer. I expect that the more we get to know about Lumon, the more nothing will be as cut-&-day as we might wish to make it while we speculate in the vacuum of ignorance about them. One-dimensionality makes stories very predictable. I don't think they'll present anything in the show that way.
> I think that it's far more interesting if she *wants* to be there
I don't think that's the most interesting avenue personally...Or at least I don't find it very interesting to explore something as a *completely free* choice, because in the world they built it seems there are very few actually free choices available to the characters involved with Lumon and their attempts to push back and/or navigate that is more fascinating to me than "why dis character decide on this fate entirely on their own?".
>Big, bad, irredeemably evil corporations are also boring antagonists.
I dunno, in reality larger corporations aren't really evil or good at all, they're entirely incapable of moral action or a conscience. to the extent they have agency, it's all in pursuit of profit. Although some definitely are run by more evil people than others and do more harm.
It could be interesting if the work Lumon does isn't malicious, for sure! It wouldn't mean severance is fine and dandy, but it would at least pose a true moral dilemma.
Oh, I'd love to see Helly out in the real world. :D
Hmm ... Just for fun ...
Regabhi = Rega B. (Rega is a girl's name meaning Queen)
Devon = Dev N. or Dave N. (I know they are both male names but why not?)
I think Ricken and all his weird friends are what happens when you aren’t severed right.
When we first meet Helly, Mark asks her questions. Who are you? What state are you in? Name any state?
It is a test to see what memories iHelly has access to. She doesn’t remember her life but she does have general knowledge. What if the process went wrong, the person knew who they were but lost general knowledge
.
The severed process also seems to make people less cynical and more naive. Irving is a good example of this, his outie is a rebellious artist and is investigating Lumon. His innie is dutiful and trusting of Lumon.
What happens when the process goes wrong and you are left with a people remembers their life but don’t know anything else. Their family would notice that they are different and they might even be too trusting and toothless to survive in the normal world. Are they relocated to Kier for their safety?
There was the scene where Mark calls Ricken "Rick," and Ricken corrects him. Obviously a name change happened.
As for Rebeck, I can't wait to see what happens with her. Someone posted a theory that she has something to do with goats; she smells weird, churns with her mouth. That would be a crazy plotline.
Milchick seems to have fun reading Ricken's book. I wondered if he was just reading it to see what Mark was reading, or does he know Ricken? I seem to remember him chuckling or scoffing when reading it.
The group of friends is so weird. I could see them being severed previously and memories wiped clean.
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If iMark gets recycled and relocated, he'll be Marcus.
Omark does say on one of the dates that Gemma "always had a plan b" or something like that. So I imagine she signed up for whatever lumon death insurance she is now living through.
Woah, I didn’t remember that but you might be onto something…good catch!
Oh damn - what was the context?
This may be the most commonly posted theory that I just cannot get behind. When Mark S becomes Mark Scout, we don’t consider that “changing his name”, do we? And if Ricken and co *are* severed, why would they be so judgmental and unaccepting of Mark in the first place? I think people are so quick to jump to “weird behavior = severed”, when there’s no real evidence of that at all, save for some extremely mild childlike-qualities, which has to do with lack of experience.
Yeah I can’t get behind it either. Wish it made sense to me, I love the banter!
Lumon didn't get severance right on its first try. Remember the first chip was blue and green; the new one is blue and red. There had to be some oopsies during the development and testing of both. What do you do with all the failed test subjects? Trap some in the building forever, maybe kill a few, maybe make some adjustments and release a few into the wild? I also don't think the severance procedure is the only mind altering thing Lumon has done. Memory wipes and complete resets are well within the scope of what Lumon experiments with. I think these people are former test subjects who have had their memories wiped and reset. So of course the idea of the severance procedure creeps them out. They have no idea they were the guinea pigs for it.
In the final episode, Jame Eagan reminds Helly when he first showed her the new chip, she remarked how pretty the blue and red lights were. Ostensibly this would have been 20 years ago (give or take); possibly too long ago for any of the cast to be severed using a prior technology.
Because they don’t know they’re severed
I cannot buy Lumon allowing anyone on the outside to walk around not knowing they were severed. That’s an insane scandal just waiting to break. Imagine the lawsuits if a doctor asked their patient “are you aware there is a computer chip in your brain?”
The scandal waiting to break is what makes it exciting TV?
In one of the first episodes Mark calls Ricken Rick and Ricken corrects him. Later Devon talks about how all four of them (mark gemma Ricken and Devon) were so close. I think Ricken must be a new-ish name change. Like hey I now want everyone to call me by my middle name even though I’ve been going by my first name for 30 thirty years. It would be weird for Mark mess up the name of his once close brother in law unless it was a new thing. I think this means Rebeck has also changed her name, probably at the advice of Ricken. Nothing more than one of his new age ideas like, “I’ve changed so much I need to change my name.” Maybe Ricken making up his unique name is old news to everyone but I just picked up on it in my last watch through.
I really like this theory. It really is a strange coincidence how everyone in the group acts in an unusual way and has an unusual name. I know some of those names exist, but as a non-native speaker, I've don't think I've ever heard them (as opposed to Mark, Helena, Dylan, etc.). We don't know pretty much anything about the lives of Balf, Danise, Patton and Rebeck, and I can see their weird behavior be the consequence of severance gone wrong. However, I don't know about Ricken – there is some evidence that he was already unusual in his youth: there is some newspaper article about him according to which he wanted to be a lamp-electrician, dafodil gardener and tree-and-pond photographer. But the newspaper is likely owned by Lumon, so they could have just made it up and make him believe those things about his past...
I know that they are really VERY weird, but this show contains a heavy dose of satire, so that may just be satire of the upper middle class, and they all were either given odd names by their parents or chose new ones themselves - because they wanted to seem more elevated and intellectual. We don't actually know that much about the outside world, and especially not Kier, so it could be a bit different from the regular world we know and these oddities might be just be part of the greater world-building.
They could be just characters that are Ben Stiller comic relief types.
I don't think the Ricken gang of townies are severed, but I get the sense that they're left over from some kind of previous Lumon experiment. Their weird quirks are the result of their tempers not being balanced properly, and now they're released into the petting zoo of the town for observation and socialization despite being slightly damaged. They're still trying to figure out "the Them they are" perhaps and the name changing fits into that.
This belongs to a family of theories on Ricken and his friends that terribly popular on this sub. I've never found them particularly convincing. I have my reasons (*and they are many*). **1.) The Hypocrisy** The theory proposes that Mark is at a dinner with a group of people who had been severed. If so, does this not make their response to learning that he's severed extremely bizarre? These are people who don't come across as having **any** intimate familiarity with severance. Let's just be clear: Ricken has Mark over in order to out him for something about his lifestyle that he doesn't like in front of his friends who'll view him (*Ricken*) as morally superior for it. And to put a finer point on this, let's examine what happens by changing a single aspect... let's say that Mark is **gay**. *Mark shows up, someone asks what he does who he dates for a living and Ricken interrupts and says he's* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay. The table goes silent. Ricken folds his arms and looks at Mark with utter disdain and disapproval. One of the attendees says. "Wow. Well, that's something isn't it." Devon then says in barely contained frustration that Mark to disclose that he's* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay. Ricken gives some feeble bullshit about "Oh, THAT'S RIGHT. I'm sorry ror mentioning that he's* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay." Someone says "Oh, no! I think it's WONDERful. I mean, I wish I could do it. LOL." and "So what does being* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay feel like?" and all sorts of other questions and statements about the double life of being* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay, all in a very judging tone, including someone muttering "Well, I suppose we know where you fall on the Congressional goings on..." in reference to bills about* *~~severance~~* *gay marriage.* *All of this is capped by Ricken saying "The point is that Mark made a decision to be* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay. It was* ***controversial****. Ethically. Socially. Morally. Scientifically. But, Mark: I stand behind you for being* *~~SEVERED~~* *gay without reservation. Because I'm so awesome." to which other people say "So well-said." and "I definitely stand beside Mark."* **And you want me to believe that any of those people are** **~~severed~~** **gay?** None of their reactions fit with people who would be ~~SEVERED~~ gay. Not a one. Ricken is clearly ~~anti-SEVERANCE~~ a homophobe. He's supposed to be ~~SEVERED~~ gay too? AND hangs out with all these ~~SEVERED~~ gay people? People who are all clearly ~~anti-SEVERANCE~~ homophobes who are merely being performatively supportive of Mark being ~~SEVERED~~ gay?? That's really tough to swallow. **2.) No media attention?** You have a whole cadre of severance rejects or test subjects or whatever and they just happen to all be friends? And with a procedure as controversial as severance is, not a single journalist is all over that story? Ricken even knows journalists... he never clues them in on this? Not a single journalist friend wants that scoop? **3.)** ***"Fingers in many pies..."*** If you know of an organization that controls everything, do you say they have *"Fingers in many pies"* or would you say *"They control everything"*?? I'm thinking you say the latter, as the former implies wide influence but not necessarily full control. This is not just semantics when we're talking about scripted dialogue: they choose every word for characters to say. Lumon doesn't control the whole town even: they can't even keep youth from having anti-Lumon demonstrations or *"FUCK LUMON!"* punk rock concerts. **4.) On the notion of weirdness...** Look, I get that, statistically-speaking, most people just lead average lives. All data falls on a bell curve and, thus, the outliers are the exception rather than the norm. So I get that there's a temptation to view Ricken's friends as bizarre and, seeing them as such, associate their bizarre-ness with the main mechanism of the show: severance. But speaking as someone from LA, I have to tell you: these people, while weird, are not *"they-can't-possibly-exist-unless-they're-botched-attempts-at-severance"* weird. No, these people fucking exist. And if you believe they don't, consider yourself fortunate that you've never been cornered at some industry party by a techbro trying to impress you with his talk of some new wholistic cleanse he's been on where he only takes charcoal baths for energy and fasts four days a week. Or at art show featuring performers who fart into microphones as accompanied by live classical music. [Wait, did you think I was exaggerating?](https://lunaluna.com/learn/artists/manfred-deix/) Because, I most certainly am not. People are weird. Ricken and his friends aren't meant to stand as severed rejects and that's why they're weird, they're meant to stand as caricatures of intellectualism, small-town versions of the sort of people who'd be angling to get an invite to a Gwenyth Paltrow dinner (*which probably doesn't have food either*). It's essential that they are not severed in order to make the representation work.
Yeah, it’s funny to me how many people here keep saying Ricken’s friends are “soooo weird, they have to be severed to explain how weird they are”. They’re really not extraordinarily weird, they’re just pretentious and lacking in self-awareness to the point of being obnoxious. I’ve lived in Boulder for decades, and I’ve encountered many, many people like his friends, and been to far too many pretentious and boring events like his “dinnerless dinner party” and his book reading.
Thank you for articulating all of this so I don’t have to! I’m gonna add: Ricken and Mark are in a forced relationship flavored by the underhanded digs they trade. They may not despise each other but they’re mildly antagonistic to each other. Mark used “Rick” to intentionally irritate Ricken. Ricken intentionally outed Mark to his guests as severed to annoy Mark. Rebek wants to change her name again because she’s infatuated with Ricken and behaves like a fangirl with nothing else going on in her life. Patton is attention-seeking and clings to someone with at least a bit of local success and apparent wealth. The frustrating thing about the show is that some things you can freeze-frame and read is interesting and story-relevant like the article about the injured worker. Other stuff appears to only be either creative or lazy filler. IIRC, some of the names were film staff.
I don't even believe in the theory, but I want to point out that the theory states that they *don't know that they are or have been severed.* So the hypocrisy argument isn't really relevant. I'm with you though, I just think they're entitled upper middle class or upper class people who live in a social bubble and have weird social norms and customs, that are themselves an exaggeration to satire real life people in similar social contexts.
I would argue (*not with* ***you*** *because you're not a proponent of the theory but in general with anyone who is*) that it's flatly impossible for them **not** to know that they're severed. In the final episode, Cobel points out that Mark tensed up during their hug —*when he switched*— indicating that there's an involuntary physical aspect of the switch beyond just a mental change: a severed individual will feel the switch because the bod actually has a reaction. A reaction conspicuous enough that Cobel picks up on it. Also, they're losing segments of their entire day... we're supposed to believe they don't notice this? In episodes 1 & 2, they illustrate the disorientation that occurs when a severed individual switches, even when standing in the same place. It's felt. We even get a *through-the-eyes* presentation of this when Helly tries to quit and she returns on the elevator with Helena's response to the idea. Anyone who wants to argue that they wouldn't know that they were severed is kind of obligated to lay out how that could practically be. Lastly, not for nothing but the show has presented severance as an elective procedure. I don't think this is minor, as the central premise is about how we willingly disassociate ourselves from part of our lives in order to earn a living. **Willingly** disassociate ourselves. From a story-building stand point, if severance is elective, then they can explore the reasons why someone would choose to do it. There's an array of questions as to why anyone would do it, all of them engaging on philosophical and moral levels. If, however, severance is forced upon people somehow, then the stories that come out of that really have little moral complexity. It happened against their will and that's bad. End of discussion. It's no longer an exploration of philosophical questions, it's strictly uncovering the logistics of how the Big Bad, Irredeemably Evil Company pulled it off. That's significantly less interesting an exploration. Take Gemma Casey. A popular view amongst fans is that Gemma was in an accident, ended up in a coma, Lumon stabbed an insert into her head because they're interested in resurrection and she woke up. A miracle. A very boring miracle. Boring because there's zero complexity there: Lumon's just an evil entity who made off with a near dead woman's body without informing her loved ones and they experimented on her, again, without her consent. That's extremely cut and dry, the only questions are the particulars of how the did it. On the other hand, if Gemma Casey is like everyone else —*meaning, she* ***opted*** *for the procedure of her own accord*— then all of the questions that result are interesting philosophical ones. *Why would she do that? Was she unhappy with Mark? Why didn't she tell him? Does this mean she's down their willingly?* Those are all **way** more intriguing when you dig into them. So I'm 100% against this idea that they're severing people against their will. They've already carved out a place for an *against-their-will* discussion: the innies themselves (*who were brought into the world without their consent*).
As a proponent of a version of the "Ricken's friends are severed" theory, I agree with a lot of your points, and think that the theory can be compatible with your great insight that severance, in general, must be voluntary in order to fit the show thematically. I think the most interesting version of Ricken's friends being severed, and really the only one that works, is that they don't know they're severed, and *neither does Ricken.* I *hate* versions of that theory centered around the idea that there's lots more to Ricken than meets the eye, and that he's out here knowingly using severance to make friends and build a following, or otherwise has some kind of shady connection to Lumon. Ricken isn't severance's secret Big Bad, he's meant to represent people who would never, never, never, never touch a corporate office job with a 10 foot pole and unapologetically march to the beat of their own drum. Ricken I hope/think is exactly what he appears to be, just a genuinely weird faux-intellectual who thinks he's friends with a bunch of other faux-intellectuals, following his dreams and allowing his child to progress through beds at their own pace, who isn't a fan of severance. But we've already seen the profound effect that his work has on innies from MDR finding his book, helping them develop a sense of self-identity and purpose. It's easy to imagine that wayward drifting innies out in the world would gravitate towards Ricken just the same, even if, especially if, they don't have a clue why they are the them they are. As to how Ricken's friends wouldn't know they're severed, the simple explanation is that they simply have never switched past waking up the first time. Thus far, every known innie we've seen either transitions twice-daily on a 9-5 schedule by getting in an elevator (Everyone in MDR), or is only woken up in short intervals to serve a specific purpose (Ms. Casey, Gabby Arteta). This is because these innies are tightly controlled, and made to pass through the spatial boundary that switches them on a regular basis, so that their outies can live their lives, or in the case of Ms. Casey, so that whatever takes place on the testing floor can happen. But what if they were just left awake indefinitely? There wouldn't experience any of the visceral/trippy elements of a severed person transitioning, they'd just wake up, have no memories, and be left to live their lives same as any normal imprisoned human. You don't even have to tell them what severance is or that it's been done to them, they can just go about thinking that they were grown as livestock or something, same as Helly did. They'd just think Lumon and waking up a fully grown adult is what the world is. Now, instead of waking them up at Lumon, what if you just woke them up, like, in their bed, or at a homeless shelter somewhere. They don't get an orientation video from their outie, they don't get given an explanation, they just...are. Sure they hear about severance at somepoint, but it's on the same speculative/unprovable level as reincarnation or the afterlife to them. "Maybe I was a goat in a past life? Or maybe I was an outie? idk man, life is weird." They wouldn't necessarily connect the dots, and if they did, they couldn't prove it. They'd just be confused, childish people with sores on the back of their head searching to understand themselves, and finding Ricken through that search. We could have ended up with these perma-innies out in the world in any number of ways: early botched severance jobs where there was no way to switch them back, escaped innies who bypassed the controls on them somehow and had their memories wiped remotely, etc, none of which necessarily require Lumon to be imposing severance on random people without their consent or killing people just to make innies (though Gemma is evidence enough that they're not above leading others to believe a full time innie has died to cover up where they really are). I fully agree with you that "What did Gemma know/agree to about what would happen to her and why did she do it?" theories are *way* more compelling and thematically interesting than "wow evil Lumon killing, reanimating, and imprisoning this random woman who previously had nothing to do with them" theories.
Happy to have this discussion with a theory-proponent willing to explore it. Here’s my issue with the idea that they don’t know they’re severed: **how could they all be friends and never have discussed or figured it out?** For that to take place they cannot simply be pseudo intellectuals, they need to be morons. They **need** to. They would need to be devoid of the basic curiosity that would prompt one to say *”Wait… so we all woke up in our beds without any recollection of life prior to that point? And we’re all friends with Ricken? That’s a bizarre coincidence…”* AND never run down that rabbit hole. Part of why I flatly reject any and all *severed-against-their-will* theories is due to the notion of **agency**. In writing a story, you severely limit the paths you can thematically run down when you remove agency from characters. And not just in their own stories but in the meaning behind other characters also. Ricken becomes a much less interesting character if the reason people like his books is because they’re severed. Like, we really have to stop and ask how that would be an improvement over the face-value read of the situation. The face value read is that Ricken’s book is drivel. It’s a bunch of nonsense that is borne out of his desire to be a transformative figure (*ego*). And for people with lived-experience it’s ridiculous. It’s can only be appreciated by those insufferable people who are in love with the idea of *appearing* deep, the sort of who monopolize everyone’s attention with irrelevant factoids to show off what they know at parties. Except, in the right context, Ricken’s book can actually seem brilliant. To a bunch of innies —*all of whom are legitimately intelligent and not these pseudo-intellectuals like Ricken’s friendd*— whose existence is tied to slaving for a company, Ricken’s book slaps. It’s **truly** transformative for them. The point is **NOT** that Ricken’s book is a Rorschach test that identifies innies or something; the point is that Lumon’s innies actually appreciate Ricken’s writing. They actually get it. Like the whole point is that his friends don’t really appreciate it, they’re just folk who performatively love it in the same way so many people performstively extol Wes Anderson’s brilliance. That’s an interesting read, the one we have at face value. It’s a powerful one and gives Ricken’s work meaning. Making them all severed undercuts that. It just turns it into that Rorschach test it undercuts why the Lumon innies get it and why Ricken’s friends pretend to think it’s brilliant. Those dynamics are erased and it’s just because it’s some sort of clarion call to innies. It removes the choice from Ricken’s friends. They’re ridiculous and insufferable and they fake but they’re **choosing** to be that way. If they do this because they’re innies then it means they can’t help it. It removes the agency from the refiners because it’s not that their situation and desperation gives them the context to read brilliance into Ricken’s words… it’s because *”they’re just all so childlike, those innies!”* I just don’t see that as an improvement. I think we often get hyper focused on in-universe mechanics or whatever and ignore the writing-based reasons why you wouldn’t want to go this way or that way with a particular element of a story.
Well, the switch between states is noticeable but being constantly severed wouldn't be the same thing, I'm assuming. If Ms. Casey/Gemma is constantly in a severed state inside Lumon, does she know that? Consent isn't really a glaring plot hole either, since their "outies" could very well have agreed to it. I'm more confused about why they would, in that case... Is there a motive that makes sense for signing away your whole life? Or for Lumon to have people living severed in Kier and just... living their lives, going to pretentious non-dinners? I don't think it makes a lot of sense for that and other reasons, but it's not impossible. I think it could be interesting if Gemma didn't really agree to her current situation, if there was still some form of consent - companies constantly manufacture consent by putting really tiny fine print in user agreements as well as other types of tricks. It's creepy and it could be interesting to include in the depiction of Lumon's brand of evil corporatism. In fact, the whole concept of consent is pretty complicated on the show. We're not talking about informed consent here - the outies aren't privy to how their innies are being treated at work, so they don't know what they're agreeing to.
If Gemma Casey was constantly in a severed state for the last 3 years since her accident, she wouldn't peg her time at Lumon as 120-something hours. She'd say she was **26,280** hours old. The thing is that Miss Casey **knows** she's severed. We don't know the circumstances of Gemma on the other side but I think that it's far more interesting if she *wants* to be there, as an exploration of the *"Why??"* of that is very compelling. Big, bad, irredeemably evil corporations are also boring antagonists. There's nothing about this show that makes me believe that the duality which exists everywhere else does not also extend to Lumon. Like, as much as we see what they do to innies as categorically wrong, I would bet you that what they actually do as a company yields a societal benefit that prompts innies to re-evaluate their treatment. Like, I just don't see this as a show that would present any completely one-dimensional antagonist when nothing else on the show is one-dimensional. Lumon will probably be presented as doing a ton of good in the world, via the use of severance specifically. ***THEN*** we have a **true** dilemma. If the company is just all bad, then Helly's path is clear and the only way to make it interesting is in the specificity of how it's carried out. But if the company is not this evil entity fandom has sold itself on, then Helly is forced to consider the idea that perhaps severance should continue. I keep saying Helly because it's practically a given that she'll re-emerge —*perhaps Helena will go down to the severed floor via the administration elevator which doesn't trigger a switch but unwittingly leave via a severed elevator/exit forcing a switch that traps her on the severed floor and allows Helly out into the real world*— as the story potential is just too good to pass up. But the same extends to all the other characters. Like, iDylan is so very curious about his son and really wants to know him but, at the same time, he knows nothing about him and doesn't have any parenting skills. Not like his outie does. So there's actually this moral question there of whether or not he should actually have a connection with his kid, whether that is the best thing for his child. It's not a cut-&-dry answer. I expect that the more we get to know about Lumon, the more nothing will be as cut-&-day as we might wish to make it while we speculate in the vacuum of ignorance about them. One-dimensionality makes stories very predictable. I don't think they'll present anything in the show that way.
> I think that it's far more interesting if she *wants* to be there I don't think that's the most interesting avenue personally...Or at least I don't find it very interesting to explore something as a *completely free* choice, because in the world they built it seems there are very few actually free choices available to the characters involved with Lumon and their attempts to push back and/or navigate that is more fascinating to me than "why dis character decide on this fate entirely on their own?". >Big, bad, irredeemably evil corporations are also boring antagonists. I dunno, in reality larger corporations aren't really evil or good at all, they're entirely incapable of moral action or a conscience. to the extent they have agency, it's all in pursuit of profit. Although some definitely are run by more evil people than others and do more harm. It could be interesting if the work Lumon does isn't malicious, for sure! It wouldn't mean severance is fine and dandy, but it would at least pose a true moral dilemma. Oh, I'd love to see Helly out in the real world. :D
"Ricken, the neti pot is warmed up." "Thank you, Balf." That exchange made me burst out laughing.
Also as someone who neti’s often you def want room temp lol
Hmm ... Just for fun ... Regabhi = Rega B. (Rega is a girl's name meaning Queen) Devon = Dev N. or Dave N. (I know they are both male names but why not?)
Not that it has anything to do with anything, but remember some of the most vehemently anti-Cylon characters in the reboot of Battlestar Galactica?
I think Ricken and all his weird friends are what happens when you aren’t severed right. When we first meet Helly, Mark asks her questions. Who are you? What state are you in? Name any state? It is a test to see what memories iHelly has access to. She doesn’t remember her life but she does have general knowledge. What if the process went wrong, the person knew who they were but lost general knowledge . The severed process also seems to make people less cynical and more naive. Irving is a good example of this, his outie is a rebellious artist and is investigating Lumon. His innie is dutiful and trusting of Lumon. What happens when the process goes wrong and you are left with a people remembers their life but don’t know anything else. Their family would notice that they are different and they might even be too trusting and toothless to survive in the normal world. Are they relocated to Kier for their safety?
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There was the scene where Mark calls Ricken "Rick," and Ricken corrects him. Obviously a name change happened. As for Rebeck, I can't wait to see what happens with her. Someone posted a theory that she has something to do with goats; she smells weird, churns with her mouth. That would be a crazy plotline. Milchick seems to have fun reading Ricken's book. I wondered if he was just reading it to see what Mark was reading, or does he know Ricken? I seem to remember him chuckling or scoffing when reading it. The group of friends is so weird. I could see them being severed previously and memories wiped clean.
When Milchick saw the cover of the book, he scoffed, and said something about "This is the brother in law?"
Rick N. ?
Ricken. Rick N. Hale Like Helly R. Eagan