From Chikhai Bardo’s Meaning To Robby Benson And Sandra Bernhard

After Mark (Adam Scott) and Helly (Britt Lower) “shared vessels,” Irving (John Turturro) had dinner with Burt (Christopher Walken) and Fields (John Noble), and Dylan (Zach Cherry) kissed his outie’s wife Gretchen (Merritt Wever), the sixth episode of Severance‘s sophomore season ended with Mark having a reintegration-induced seizure.

When Mark fell to the floor in front of Devon (Jen Tullock) and Reghabi (Karen Aldridge), fans couldn’t help but flash back to Petey’s (Yul Vasquez) severe reintegration sickness and eventual death in Season 1. As we wait to learn his fate in Season 2, Episode 7, Severance takes us inside Mark’s head, down to the testing floor, and back in time to the day when he and Gemma (Dichen Lachman) first met.

Spoilers for Severance Season 2, Episode 7 ahead.

Written by Dan Erickson and Mark Friedman, Season 2, Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” is an episode fans have been waiting for since 2022. The ambitious installment also marks cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné’s directorial debut, and is one of the most gorgeous, affecting, thought-provoking 50-minutes of television you’ll ever behold.

The episode features three different timelines, which directly relate to and interact with each other in beautiful fashion. In present-day, we watch Devon and Reghabi nervously monitor an unconscious Mark. In his head, flashbacks show snippets of him and Gemma’s love story — from meet-cute to news of her death. And the final jaw-dropping story that unfolds takes us down to the testing floor to reveal what fresh hell Lumon’s been putting (a still alive!) Gemma through.

Since Severance is such a meticulously-crafted show, every Friday until the March 21 finale, Decider will be taking a closer look at each episode and highlighting five moments that deserve to be put under the microscope. Whether they’re blink-and-miss-it details or major scenes that need to be talked through in greater depth, we’re here to obsess, hypothesize, and dissect the series alongside you.

From Robby Benson as Dr. Mauer and the Butzemann Fertility Center to the Damona Birthing Retreat, the meaning of Cold Harbor, and more, here are five things you may have missed in Severance Season 2, Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo.”

1. Dr. Mauer And The Butzemann Fertility Center

   Episode 207 introduces us to Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson), a creepy man running tests on and monitoring Gemma’s progress down in Lumon’s terrifying basement. We’ll get into what exactly he’s doing later on in the article, but for now, here are some things to know about his past.

   “Chikhai Bardo” confirms that Dr. Mauer is indeed the same man who was whistling “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and picking up dental tools from O&D in Season 2, Episode 5. Beyond his work in the Lumon building, however, Mark’s flashback reveals that Mauer also works (or used to work) at The Butzemann Fertility Center, where Mark and Gemma sought fertility assistance after her miscarriage. Shortly after Mark and Gemma entered the office, Dr. Mauer quickly walked by in a blink-and-miss-it moment. It’s unclear if Mauer was actually Gemma’s doctor back then or he simply worked at center, but we did take three things away from the waiting room scene.

   In case you had any doubt, the center is affiliated with Lumon, just like the Mark/Gemma meet-cute blood drive. We see Lumon’s classic teardrop logo in the upper lefthand corner of Gemma’s new patient intake form, and the upper righthand corner reads “Butzemann Fertility Center.” Because there’s intention behind everything on Severance, I researched Butzemann and found that — wait for it — the word is German for BOGEYMAN, which means “a monstrous imaginary figure used in threatening children” or “a terrifying or dreaded person or thing.” (When I tell you I screamed!)

   Remembering that Lumon’s nefarious fertility clinic intentions are sometimes hidden in plain sight, I took a closer look at the office and noticed that all the artwork hanging in the waiting room depicts bodies of water, which brings us back to those Edmund Fitzgerald/Great Lakes/Lumon water theories!!! As for why Gemma and Mark were targeted or how many others at the center suffered Lumon’s wrath, we’ll have to wait and see. But we’re not done with Mauer quite yet…

2. Damona Birthing Retreat Revisited

   Before Mark has a reintegration-induced seizure and collapses in Season 2, Episode 6, Devon starts to float a potential plan by him, saying, “I have had an idea that is a little dumber. Do you remember the rich lady from baby camp? The one that I kind of had a crush on?” For those who need a refresher, “the rich lady from baby camp” is Gabby Arteta, the wife of the pro-Lumon senator we meet in Season 1. After she and Devon both gave birth in the cabins at Damona Birthing Retreat, we learned that Gabby received the severance procedure so her outie could avoid remembering the pain of childbirth.

   In Episode 207, Devon brings up Damona Birthing Retreat again to Reghabi, saying, “There’s an innie cabin, a cottage where severed people become their innies. If we go to the cabin, maybe we can talk to [Mark’s] innie.” It surprisingly sounds like a solid idea, but Reghabi shuts it down in favor of continuing reintegration. With the newfound Episode 207 info on Lumon’s ties to the fertility center and Dr. Mauer, we remembered something crucial from Devon’s time at the “innie cabin” in Season 1, Episode 5. Before Devon approached Gabby to ask for coffee, she saw a mysterious man in all white leave her cabin. We never saw his face, and he turned away from Devon, completely ignoring her calls from afar. If that was Dr. Mauer, how many pregnant women is he treating at Lumon’s “innie cabin”?! How many duties does his job entail?! Just how far-reaching are Lumon’s fertility operations? And now that Reghabi is gone, will the cabin really help Devon access Mark’s innie?

3. Chikhai Bardo’s Meaning (And The Card Dylan Stole In Season 1)

   While Mark is unconscious in Episode 207, he starts muttering a word that a flashback reveals to be “Chikhai Bardo” aka, the title of the episode. Ahead of 207’s premiere, fans learned that the term is one of six bardos, or transitional experiences, in Tibetan Buddhist tradition that references the “moment of death.” Because Gemma was in between life and death after her accident and is now believed to be dead but is actually trapped in Lumon alive, the term could apply to her. Because Mark is hovering between life and death after his seizure, he’s also experiencing his own Chikhai Bardo. But 207 offers another meaning, which ties back to a major Season 1 storyline.

   The flashback to Mark and Gemma’s past shows Gemma sitting at a table covered with green ideographic cards like the ones Dylan found in O&D. If you recall, in Episode 6, “Hide and Seek,” Dylan stealthily pocketed one of the mysterious cards, and Milchick was so desperate to retrieve it that he triggered the Overtime Contingency Protocol to wake Innie Dylan in his outie’s home so he could learn its whereabouts.

   In the 207 flashback, Mark picks up the same card that Dylan swiped, examines it, and says, “Chikhai Bardo. I don’t know, it looks like two guys fighting.” Gemma replies, “No, it’s the same guy fighting himself, defeating his own psyche. Ego death.” When Mark asks how she knows it’s the same guy, she notes that they have the same hair, adding, “It’s one of those things where you have to draw a duck or a rabbit or whatever. I think I got onto the mailing list at the clinic.”

   “A duck or a rabbit” refers to philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous duck-rabbit illustration, which — depending on perception — can be seen as either a duck or a rabbit. Eagle-eyed Severance fans may have noticed that Milchick has a duck-rabbit sculpture on display in his Season 2 office. And the idea that the duck and the rabbit exist as one, but possesses a duality that prevents them from being perceived simultaneously, sounds a hell of a lot like severed innies and outies — as does Gemma’s definition of Chikhai Bardo. The same guy fighting himself? Defeating his own psyche? Ego death? It’s giving Helly vs. Helena. It’s giving Mark’s reintegration. It’s applicable to any innie’s fight to exist and desire for an identity separate from their outie. As for why the clinic sent Gemma the cards and why it was such a huge deal when Dylan stole one, we still need more info…

4. The MDR Watchers And The Meaning Of Cold Harbor

   From the show that brought you MDR’s creepy “Woe’s Hollow” twins comes the “Chikhai Bardo” MDR watchers! In case all the testing floor reveals weren’t chilling enough on their own, “Chikhai Bardo” also introduces a creepy security room with four desks, four heavy duty monitors, and four new MDR lookalikes who track the progress refiners make on their computers in MDR. Are the clone theories back? We don’t know! But we do know the Mark Watcher has access to a livestream of Mark’s desk and eyes on all 24 of Mark’s completed files — from Allentown to Zurich — plus, his Cold Harbor progress.

   So what is Cold Harbor? While we still don’t have all the details, 207 gave us much more clarity on the mysterious file that everyone’s anxiously waiting for Mark to complete. From the looks of the episode, a severed Gemma spends her days on the testing floor entering different rooms named after Mark’s files. (It’s worth noting, though, that not all the rooms are named after Mark files. Siena is Helly’s and Tumwater is Dylan’s, so what’s going on in those rooms? And if Mark’s refining his/Gemma’s memories and tempers, what is the rest of MDR refining?!)

   Each room appears to activate Gemma’s severance chip and call forth a new consciousness, or innie, who exists solely in that room. In an interview with Decider, Robby Benson (Dr. Mauer) said the purpose of these rooms — from the dentist office to the flight simulation — is to “try to put her in situations where she doesn’t feel comfortable to see how she behaves.” The tests and extreme emotional triggers help Mauer and Lumon higher-ups like Drummond ensure the severance barrier is holding and learn what, if anything, transcends it. Gemma confirmed she remembers nothing from inside the rooms after she leaves, and it’s clear she’s severed from her outie persona/memories while inside the rooms. (In the Christmas room, for instance, she scribbles barely legible thank-you cards with her left hand, while flashbacks to her pre-Lumon life show her right hand is dominant.)

   During 207, Gemma notices the only room she hasn’t been to yet finally has a name on it: Cold Harbor. When Mark finishes sorting the four tempers and completes the file, Gemma will presumably enter the Cold Harbor room and, per Dr. Mauer, “will see the world again” and the world will see her. Mr. Drummond also noted that when Cold Harbor is complete Mauer will have to say goodbye to her “for Kier.” But would they really let Gemma return to the outside world after all of this? Or is the post-Cold Harbor fate that awaits far darker? What Gemma will find in the Cold Harbor room is still unknown, but based on what we learned in this episode, there’s reason to imagine it might be the ultimate severance barrier test.

5. “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Tolstoy, And 207’s Many Parallels And Callbacks

   “Chikhai Bardo” gets better with each and every rewatch, in large part because there’s no way to possibly pick up on all the meticulous details, parallels, and callbacks the first time around. We’re not sure to what extent Lumon was watching Gemma and Mark before her accident vs what they learned from her on the testing floor and Mark’s refining, but from the episode kicking off with Mark asking Gemma “Who are you?” (the first line of the series, which he asked Helly) to the episode closing with Devon asking Mark “Where did you go?” (the same question the nurse asked Gemma when she started daydreaming about Mark) 207 is jam packed with special nods.

   In the Allentown room (Mark’s freshman fluke file, which he got his crystal head cube for refining so well) the Christmas tree resembles his and Gemma’s, her hatred of writing thank-you notes is referenced, and the “I said I love you” scene between Mauer and Gemma is reminiscent of the one between Gemma and Mark. Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Hadji Murat reappear throughout the episode. Milchick and Ms Casey have another heartbreaking export hall meeting. And, of course, Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” — which played twice in Season 1 when Mark was thinking of Gemma — plays as Gemma’s remembering Mark disassembling the crib following her fertility struggles. Next time you watch the episode, you’ll find something else new. It’s a masterpiece, damn it! We’re not OK!

BONUS: Sandra Bernhard As A Testing Floor Nurse

Your eyes did not deceive you, Sandra Bernhard stans. In a surprise Season 2 appearance, Lumon introduced its testing floor nurse, played by the actor, comedian, singer, and author with nearly 100 IMDb credits — everything from Roseanne and The King of Comedy to American Horror Story, Pose, and more — to her name. While we didn’t see learn much about Bernhard’s Severance nurse in 207, we know she’s worked closely with Gemma on the testing floor, and works alongside Dr. Mauer and Mr. Drummond. So here’s hoping we haven’t seen the last of her in Season 2.

Mark And Gemma’s Office Details

If you’re a trueSeverance superfan, you’re going back to that gorgeous Mark and Gemma flashback montage and pausing approximately 97 times to scope out their home office. Their Banque Nationale De Crédit poster features “aidez moi!” (aka “Help me!”) which feels appropriate. Gemma is seen reading Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat again. And some standout books piled up include Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Secret History of the American Revolution, and The Transformation Of Virginia. What else did you spot?

New episodes of Severance premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.