Warning: Multitudinous spoilers follow for the hit Apple TV+ series “Severance.” If you haven’t yet watched “Severance” through season 2 episode 4, “Woe’s Hollow,” do not proceed further!
Ever since episode 1 of the hit Apple TV Original’s second season landed on one of the world’s best streaming services, fans have suspected that something was amiss with Helly R. Many of us believed that she hadn’t returned to Lumon alongside her fellow ‘innies’ and that Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon’s current CEO, had infiltrated the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team to spy on them for the nefarious biotech corporation. That’s one of seven big theories I proposed following the release of Severance season 2’s first episode.
Well, it turns out I and many others, including Irving B, were right. Irving B has been suspicious of Helly R since MDR discussed what they saw in the outside world in Severance’s season 1 finale. Thanks to a weird dream he has (more on this later), plus the fact that Helena cruelly mocks him during a tense campfire conversation midway through this episode, Irving B determines that Helena is masquerading as Helly R. Confronting her the next day near Woe’s Hollow’s waterfall, he almost drowns Helena in a last-ditch, desperation-filled attempt to force Lumon’s hand and confirm his suspicions.
Long story short: Irving B is right. Helena was planted as a mole within MDR to keep tabs on them and seemingly woo Mark S (the ‘innie’ of Mark Scout), so he gives up on finding Gemma, the wife of his ‘outie’, and uncovering more of Lumon’s sinister working practices.
MacDailyNews Take: There’s tons more in the full article (the Glasgow Block, Dieter Eagan, the Montauk Project, Irving B’s “retirement,” and more) here that explains many elements of “Severance” and, yes, also contains a bunch of spoilers.
WARNING: This video also contains “Severance” SPOILERS!
Note: Woe’s Hollow’s waterfall is not the “tallest waterfall on the planet.” Angel Falls (Salto Angel) in Venezuela is the tallest waterfall on the planet with a height of 979 meters (3,212 ft.) 😉
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I believe most watching the show figured it would need to be Helena pretending to Helly R. Why? Pretty simple: What would happen if they all returned to work and Helly R returned? She would instantly dealers “I’m a f*#%^ Eagan guys. I’m Helena Eagan!!!”
She would pain the coming out Severance promo part, filled with billionaires, Senators, how it’s a huge push to get Severance passed as some type of legal standing law.
She would then – probably (considering she is probably the Malice worker of the 4) – suggested they all help her killer her and end Helena “… caucused if you guys don’t help me I’m gonna do it myself!”
Her apartment and night gardener story was the total too who it was down there. Helly wouldn’t ever cover up who she is to save herself – how many times did she try to kill herself in season one? She has no filter, she can act impulsively she can be violent and she has no care really if she lives down there or dies, she hates it…
They’re just many tips tip offs if you watched it that way, which totally validated it was always, Helena.
As for episode 4? Why did Helena choose to have relations with Mark? No I don’t think that it’s because she’s in love with what she views is a simpleton slave tool of a person… It was to test out the severance chip. It was to see if emotions, strong emotions would cross over the chip and for a moment, we did see a glitch…
Helena Egan is on mission. Always. And while she may have wishes, she had a richer life or she had fun feeling free while on the severance floor pretending to beHelly R. She was still always on task.
Irving, who is likely the Woe of the 4, he may be gone for a while, but he’s gonna be back. I have very little doubt of that… And his comment to Dylan.”Hang in there!!!” Dylan has little muscle cartoons of himself in his office, and a poster of sorts that says”Hang in there!”
I believe Irving left directions to the export hall behind that picture for Dylan… When Irv went down to optical and design and ran into Bert‘s old coworker and she asked Irving how he knew about the export hall… Well, I’m assuming they had a nice conversation about that and he now knows where it is and that’s what he put behind Dylan’s hanging in their poster…
As for Mark and reintegration? I’m hopeful that episode five will jump us back to the professor and Mark. We need answers about that… I have two theories:
We will discover that while she tried to get them to reintegrate Mark has maybe one of the latest and greatest chips that they have designed and it’s different than what she’s been working with before… It has some kind of a block that she doesn’t know how to get around yet so while she can get Mark to glitch back-and-forth for a brief moments of time, she cannot reintegrate him
My second theory is that she was able to fully reintegrate him, and she like lumen now has the ability to turn on full integration or turn it off… If that is the case, we’ll probably see how she and Mark discussed how she will turn off full reintegration when he is Mark on the severed floor to not tip. Anyone off about anything… Upon coming back up onto the surface, she can turn integration back on and they can discuss what’s going on down there and how to burn lumen to the ground ..
Two last tidbits: when Irving’s dream is taking place and he looks across his cubicle diagonally… Who is sitting there? The little Woe temper… who normally sits there at the office? That would be Helly R. This was Rose’s mind confirming that it was not Holly R anymore.
And when Irving follows her or runs into her at the waterfall… You’ll notice Hall is looking at the waterfall with a bit of a smirk… perhaps she is thinking what a bunch of dumb, stupid separate people thinking this is the tallest waterfall all these stories they can actually believe them… maybe she’s pondering something else, but it seemed like a smarty, cocky, type of smirk. Then Irving arrives… and what does Irving say??
“Hey kid.”
Helena turns around shocked he’s there” oh hi” or something to that effect… That was Irving’s last test to see if she even understood the reference to which she had no clue… she did not respond with something about stop doing that all the time, she did not respond with a sarcastic. What’s for dinner? Nothing. She had no clue what that was in reference to. At that point, Irving was over the top and knew it was not Holly.