Innies see red, Innies wear blue: Severance’s use of color to seed self-discovery

With Apple’s most beloved show back on the airwaves after three long years, DO’s film columnist pens a valentine to all the ways season one used red to spell Innie liberation.

Editor’s note: This essay contains spoilers for Severance season one.

Severance gives new meaning to “my better half.” 

Created by Dan Erickson and largely directed by Ben Stiller, the show follows four “severed” employees of Lumon Industries, a mysterious and omnipotent presence that might be a pharmaceutical company but is likely something much more nefarious. Mark S. (Adam Scott) leads the macrodata refinement (MDR) team made up of sensitive Lumon devotee Irving B. (John Turturro), wisecracking star refiner Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), and rebellious newcomer Helly R. (Britt Lower). 

Like many of Lumon’s employees, the refiners have undergone an elective severance procedure that drills a microchip into their brain to divide their consciousness into two distinct selves: the “Innie” and the “Outie.” The Outie doesn’t experience work. The Innie doesn’t experience sleeping, or shopping, or driving, or human connection or, you know, life. 

The changeover happens in the Lumon elevator each morning and evening, meaning the two never meet. That is, until one consequential evening when the Innies band together to trigger the Overtime Contingency Protocol (OTC), allowing them to live as their Outies for 39 minutes.

It’s the satisfying culmination of a season spent probing existential questions: Is an Innie their own person, or just the (lesser) half of another one? What does work-life balance really mean when work is the totality of one’s existence? How about worker rights? Human rights?

Color helps light the path toward clarity.

Lumon employees dress in blue blazers and sweaters, ties, and skirtsuits. The shades are specific: Cobalt, indigo, and royal — never sky, turquoise, or Robin’s egg. Forest and emerald greens run the carpets and cubicle walls. Occasional abnormalities puncture this careful color story: MDR members Helly and Dylan sometimes wear pale yellow; an abandoned office space is decked out in purple.

But the most illuminating interruptions are those that leap across the color wheel: Pops of red lead the Innies down their path to self-actualization, crescendoing in that glorious final act of camaraderie and rebellion in season 1 — initiating the OTC. 

Ahead are three such artifacts from season one, discussed in the order they’re introduced, that seeded Innie solidarity, self-discovery, and liberation — and paved the way for a hell of a season two.

Helly’s red hair

The show opens with an aerial view shot of Helly lying prone on a chestnut conference table. Her still figure wears a royal blue sweater tucked into a blue pencil skirt. As the camera pans level with the table top, it reveals that Helly’s hair is red. A shock of fire in an otherwise placid forest.

Helly’s hair is often the only warm color in the frame. It’s no coincidence that she also instigates the season’s Innie plot.

From the moment Helly gains consciousness, she resists Lumon’s insistence on compliance. Her Innie emerges with an uncanny intuition that something is not quite right on the Severed Floor: As Mark tries to orient Helly to her new existence, she throws an intercom at his face. (The mention of “work-life balance” really sets her off.) 

Helly’s refusal to accept an unending loop of mundane office work in a highly surveilled windowless room has a marked effect on how her MDR teammates see their lives. Before her arrival, Mark, Dylan, and Irving kept their co-worker relationships surface level and accepted their severed existence for what it was. As Helly becomes more entrenched in the group, however, the dynamic evolves. The four come to depend on each other for survival as the original three become increasingly disenchanted with their employer. Without Helly and her bouncing red locks lighting a fire under their asses, it’s safe to say that the macrodat Innies would have continued to obediently organize inexplicable numbers until the end of their Outies’ natural lives. 

The You You Are by Ricken Hale (Outie Mark’s brother-in-law)

A copy of Ricken’s book makes its way onto the Severed Floor during episode three after Ms. Cobel steals Outie Mark’s advance copy from his doorstep. She instructs Seth Milchik (the Severed Floor manager, played by Tramell Tillman) to review it for secret messages, but Mark and Dylan discover it when Milchik abandons it in a conference room. The book, in both its content and cover art, is a shock to the Lumon system. The orange, yellow, and red cover is as loud and obnoxious as its writer. The edges of its pages are dipped in red, furthering its maximalist design and distance from the Lumon norm. 

To Outie Mark, his brother-in-law’s manual on self-actualization is a published list of Ricken’s narcissistic, nonsensical maxims, like those a modern viewer might find scrolling through Instagram. To Innies Mark and Dylan, The You You Are is a revelation. Ricken’s reflections include anti-work sentiments like, “you think you need your job… but it’s your job that needs you,” “our job is to taste free air,” and “your boss may own the clock on the wall, but the hour is yours.” 

The book becomes MDR’s guide for resistance and liberation. Over the next six episodes, Dylan and Mark secretly devour the book’s advice for living life on your own terms. In some scenes, the pages begin to scrawl over Lumon’s walls in a soft light, their wisdom a beacon on the journey to the Overtime Contingency.

Ms. Casey’s red dress

Episode seven ends with a slow pan to a photograph of Outie Mark’s late wife, who we suddenly realize is Lumon’s wellness coordinator Ms. Casey. The delicious reveal is also the best test of the severance procedure’s totality. Outie Mark believes his wife (known to him as Gemma) died in a car accident two years earlier, while Innie Mark has only known her as the woman who facilitates wellness sessions at work. That is, until he discovers Outie Mark’s wedding photo while he’s awake during the OTC.

For her part, Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) feels an unexplainable familiarity with Innie Mark. When Ms. Cobel arranges for her to meet with Mark in the eighth episode, she greets him in a dark red sheath dress. 

She starts the session by telling him that she’s being asked to retire, which for an Innie is a fate equivalent to death. A sincere urgency breaks her normally robotic voice as she tells Mark that, of the 107 hours she’s been alive, the 8 she’s most enjoyed are the ones she spent in his department. “I suppose those are what you could call my good old days,” she whispers. 

The scene ends with Ms. Casey stepping onto the elevator at the end of a dark corridor. A red “down” arrow flickers on as the doors close, setting the stage for season two’s quest to save a fallen Innie — and missing Outie. 

Severance season two is now streaming on Apple TV+. New episodes air Fridays.