Warning! This article contains spoilers for Severance season 2’s episode 1.Severancemaintains an air of ambiguity surrounding the true nature of the Macrodata Refinement Department’s job but drops enough clues to prompt viewers to theorize and speculate. Since season 1,Lumon’s Macrodata Refinement (MDR) Departmenthas been instrumental to the show’s mysterious central storyline.Severance’s four main characters, Dylan, Helly, Irving, and Mark, are all severed employees who work in Lumon’s MDR department, with no clue about the true purpose of their jobs.
They are expected to arrive at work each day and “refine” a data set appearing on their computer screens. The four workers have their theories on what they are doing, but none seem plausible enough to offer a clear explanation. This raises many questions about the end goal of their work in the MDR department and whether sorting the numbers on their screen has any overarching purpose.
Macrodata Refinement Finds “Scary” Numbers In Lumon’s Files
The Workers Are Refiners, Working To Seemingly Improve Something
On the surface, the job of an MDR employee is fairly simple: they have to look for impurities in data and reorganize them based on their feelings. As Mark tells Helly on her first day at the Lumon office, she is expected to follow her intuition and look for “scary” numbers before sorting them into bins at the bottom of the screen of their computers. According to “The Macrodata Refiner’s Orientation Booklet” inThe Lexington Letter,the MDR workers are intentionally told nothing about the numbers' true meaning because it could inhibit their natural intuition.
How Severance Works (& Why It’s Terrifying)
Severance season 1 slowly revealed how Luman Industries' severance process worked, with each new revelation being more sinister than the previous one.
First, the employees are given access to a file on the computer that their superior has carefully selected. The sea of numbers on the file may not initially make sense to them. However, the numbers have been divided into four categories, each eliciting a different feeling. Based on how the numbers make them feel, the refiners must fill the five bins at the bottom of the screen,ensuring that each bin is evenly filled with the four number clusters. The file has a progress bar, which reaches 100% only when every bin has been correctly filled.
MA
Although the show does not dive too deep into what the four categories of numbers are,The Lexington Letterprovides some answers. On the screen, the categories are represented as WO, FC, DR, and MA. While the WO numbers elicit “melancholy or despair,” the FC ones represent “joy, gaiety, or ecstasy.” Meanwhile, DR numbers instill feelings of “fear, anxiety, or apprehension,” and MA is associated with anger or a desire to harm. If the numbers do not match the bin they are assigned to, a “thumbs down” appears on the employee’s screen, prompting them to try again.
Severance Hints The Data & Numbers Don’t Actually Have A Purpose
The MDR Department’s Work Can Be See As A Metaphor For Many Real-World Jobs
Towards theend ofSeveranceseason 1, Mark and his MDR team care little about their work in their department as they set out to find the truth about Lumon. Although Cobel later reminds Mark that they are behind on their deadlines, prompting Mark and the team to focus on their work, it is hard not to see the MDR’s job as a metaphor for the state of work in many real-world organizations. It highlights how ground-level employees often have little to no clue about the true nature of their jobs but are expected to produce results.
The repetitive and isolating nature of the MDR’s work inSeverancecan be seen asa critique of how roles in massive organizations are often compartmentalized and narrowed to a point where employees know little about the big picture. This could mean that the data and numbers do not mean anything. However, a closer look at details fromThe Lexington LetterandSeveranceseason 2’s episode 1suggests there is more to the department’s work than meets the eye.
Severance’s MDR Numbers Could Be Linked To Real-World Events
A Severed Worker Has Already Connected The Numbers To A Terrifying Event
InThe Lexington Letter, a former severed employee, Peg Kincaid, describes her experience working at Lumon to a journalist. She reveals she and her innie started communicating with each other using a language that involves the use of symbols and not actual alphabets. Peg used the language to communicate with her sister when they were much younger, which is why it is deeply ingrained in her and her innie’s brain. In one of the messages from her innie, Peg learns that she managed to successfully refine one of her files as an MDR employee.
…A truck from Dorner Therapeutics, Lumon’s major competitor, had blown up in New York at 2:32 pm, precisely two minutes after her innie completed her MDR file.
Although Peg initially feels happy for her innie, she notices a strange connection between her work and a real-world event. She learns that a truck from Dorner Therapeutics, Lumon’s major competitor, had been blown up in New York at 2:32 pm, precisely two minutes after her innie completed her MDR file. This makes her wonder if the file completion could have something to do with the attack on the truck.
InSeveranceseason 2 episode 1’s ending moments, Mark returns to work and starts refining data. Before the episode ends, the camera zooms in on the progress bar on Mark’s screen before switching to another one, with the same progress bar, featuring Gemma’s picture. Although the credits start rolling before the show reveals the scene’s significance,it seems to confirm that Mark is working on Gemma’s fileand somehow refining her. This could explain why Gemma was sent to the testing floor inSeveranceseason 1’s ending.
What Is Lumon Really Using The Macrodata Refinement Department For In Severance?
They Are Seemingly Preforming Machine Learning
Although there is an air of ambiguity surrounding the purpose of the MDR department’s work inSeverance, a common theory suggests thatthe employees are performing machine learning. The entire nature of the department’s work represents model training, given how they are expected to classify numbers based on emotions, which can later be used by Lumon to train algorithms. While it is unknown what Lumon is using the numbers for, the refined data may help them improve the severance chips or even create more efficient employees in the future.
The MDR workers on 16-bit Data General Nova devices inSeverance.
Ms. Casey seems incredibly robotic inSeveranceseason 1 and shows little to no emotions. This could mean that her chip was either been refined to a point where she had become an ideal Lumon employee, or she needed more refinement to become a better fit for Lumon’s agenda. Given how she was sent to the testing floor inSeveranceseason 1’s ending, and Mark works on her file inSeveranceseason 2’s episode 1, the latter seems more likely.
Severance
Severance is a psychological thriller series featuring Adam Scott as Mark Scout, an employee at Lumon Industries who undergoes a “severance” procedure to separate his work and personal memories. However, as work and life personas mysteriously begin to collide, it quickly becomes clear that not all is as it seems. Created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle.
