Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the final entry Daredevil: Born Again — An Unexpected Connection to the Netflix Series Could Right a Decade-Old Wrong.
This column accommodates spoilers for Severance Season 2.
Earlier this week, I wrote about Severance Season 2’s penultimate episode being rather a lot darker than it appeared. Dylan G’s resolution to successfully die by suicide is a fairly jarring second, even when it’s tough to wrap our heads round resulting from him (presumably) persevering with on within the collection as his outie. There’s much more to the episode, with our boys Burt and Irving having what appears like however most likely isn’t a final farewell and Mark coping with all the things happening together with his mind for the time being. But there’s one thing exterior of all of that that I actively can not cease eager about.
WTF is happening with Helena and Helly R.?
We begin the episode with a short swim earlier than Helena (Britt Lower) heads to her father’s property for breakfast. As is at all times the case with the Eagens, actually each second of their encounter is bizarre. Helena eats a hard-boiled egg, to which her father says “I want you’d take them uncooked” within the creepiest method humanly attainable. This is adopted in a while within the episode by an equally unnerving encounter, this time on Lumon’s severed flooring. As Helly R. tries to memorize the instructions left by Irving to get to the darkish hallway, she is interrupted by Jame (Michael Siberry). He tells his daughter’s innie that she “tricked” him, and calls her “My Helly.” True to character, Helly responds with a easy “WTF?” But, expensive reader, “WTF” is one way or the other not sufficient for regardless of the hell is happening right here.
There is one thing mistaken happening with each variations of Helly on this episode, I can’t put my finger on it, and it’s driving me mad. The chance of all of this being simply defined isn’t small, however for some motive I want that reply. The goats don’t even drive me into this sort of hyperfixation spiral.
As talked about, conferences with any Eagan are at all times on the unnerving aspect. But there’s something totally different about Helena at the start of this episode. At first, I assumed the episode title “The After Hours” was a touch towards the additional time contingency moderately than simply the cabin Cobel (Patricia Arquette) was taking Mark (Adam Scott) to, implying that Helly R. one way or the other discovered a solution to take over her outie’s physique for the morning. I’d discuss myself out of it one second, after which discuss myself proper again into the idea the subsequent. But this proverbial mind tennis finally took me in a very new route.
What if it isn’t Helly R. pretending to be Helena? There’s one thing too easy about that concept. It feels too clear. What if, as an alternative, they’re not flipping the sooner story of Helena taking Helly’s place on the severed flooring, however coming again to it? Stick with me right here.
At first, this line of considering appears absurd. Nothing’s occurred to nudge the girl – who was actually homegrown inside a cult – exterior of her loyalist tendencies, proper? Wrong!
Two inciting incidents have occurred which will have snapped Jame Eagan’s daughter out of her Lumon fugue state. The first is the aforementioned additional time contingency. A lady who has, so far as we all know, by no means rebelled a second in her life received the chance to be free. To dissent. To communicate up and communicate out about one thing she didn’t help. We additionally know that she was following Helly R.’s rise up in Season 1. How refreshing (and probably terrifying) that have to be for somebody who grew up an Eagan!
The second inciting issue was attending to dwell as Helly when she was masquerading as her innie. Adventures, rebellions, intercourse?! Helena has grown up in a world that appears down on laborers, however doesn’t look like the kind of one who has ever been confronted by the thought of being free, even when that freedom was occurring whereas trapped in a dead-end job.
Two non-Eagan centered scenes in “The After Hours” appear to corroborate this line of considering. All Helly R. has carried out from the second we met her is arise and/or defy each authority determine she encounters. Still, there was an odd spark in her when she appeared Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) within the eye after he accused her of insubordination and she or he responded “yeah, no shit,” with a smile earlier than slamming the door to his workplace. Additionally, Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) might have been unnecessarily imply to his buddy throughout his heartbreak, however he has a line throughout their dialog the place he brings up the truth that nobody can inform when Helena takes over her physique, not even Mark.
The last salvo on this unusual line of theorizing comes by means of Jame Eagan himself. At first, Helly’s “WTF?” to her dad (who she had by no means met) satisfied me that Helly and Helena had been every the place they belonged, Helena along with her father in his compound, and Helly on the severed flooring. But, as soon as I spotted the chance that we spent the entire episode with Helena moderately than Helly, all of it made sense.
“What the fuck” isn’t actually an inexpensive response from Helly R., who from her perspective would simply be assembly a stranger. However, “what the fuck” is a fully cheap response to seeing your father in a spot the place he completely doesn’t belong.
Jame’s little “you tricked me” confounded me for days, nevertheless it appears Daddy dearest might have cracked the code on Helena’s little recreation.
If it is Helena dwelling her alternate life as a lady unbeholden to anybody and on a newfound mission to say “eff the person,” then the follow-up query turns into “to what finish?” Has Helena had a change of coronary heart after experiencing a short style of what it’s wish to dwell exterior of her household’s monotone cult, or is it only a section?
To that, I don’t have a solution simply but. But I can say that all of it has me rattling excited for subsequent week’s Season 2 finale. What are your Helly R. theories?
