Did we get Lumon’s version of Severance’s The You You Are?

Severance is the kind of show that begets speculation. Some fans have theories about the show’s central mysteries (it’s gotta be a cloning thing!); others have strong opinions on various ships (what if Helly and Gemma both leave Mark for each other??). And then there’s me. I’m over here thinking about the seminal work of one Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale, Ph.D.

In the world of Severance, Mark Scout’s brother-in-law, Ricken, wrote a self-help book titled The You You Are. An advance copy meant for Mark made its way to the severed floor in season 1, inspiring MDR to rise up and trigger the OTC — you know the story. In season 2 episode 3, Natalie from Lumon visits Ricken to pitch an “innie” version of The You You Are, edited specifically for severed workers. Not suspicious at all.

Out here in our world, we were also blessed with a version of The You You Are. It was released on Apple Books on Jan. 31, the same day as the third episode of season 2. And this version… well, dear reader, it doesn’t quite match what we saw of the book in season 1 of Severance. 

Surely it’s just a continuity error, I hear you saying. It would be really time-consuming to write a whole book just for a few shots in a TV show. It’s probably half lorem ipsum. I mean, sure, if you want to Occam’s razor it. But the team behind Severance is pretty detail-oriented. According to Patricia Arquette, showrunner Dan Erickson wrote 30 pages of The You You Are for the prop in the show. The writers released another tie-in on Apple Books in 2022, The Lexington Letter, so it’s not like this is their first rodeo. And it’s a lot more fun to imagine they’re fucking with us. What if… this is the edited version of The You You Are?

Let me present the evidence.

The Apple Books version of The You You Are is incomplete. It opens with a note from Ricken explaining that, while “the book was meant to release nationwide this week,” he has hit a snag: “Unfortunately, events beyond my control have led to a brief delay as I liaise with several corporate parties as to precisely where and in what form the book should be released.” Curious. In the meantime, he’s released the first eight chapters, plus the introduction, which is what’s available for us to read.

In episode 4 of season 1, “The You You Are,” after MDR finds the book in a conference room, Mark secretly reads it in a bathroom stall. He’s reading the beginning of chapter 9, “The Quitting Bell” — and we can see the previous page, which is presumably the end of chapter 8. There’s no lorem ipsum; it’s all Ricken. And it is nothing like the end of chapter 8 in the real-world version of the book. It doesn’t seem related to our chapter 8 at all.

However: In episode 5, “The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design,” we’re treated to select quotes from Mark’s time reading The You You Are. Not every quote in the montage is present in the Apple Books version, but a few of them are, word for word, including this insightful tidbit: “What separates man from machine is that machines cannot think for themselves. Also, they are made of metal, whereas man is made of skin.”

And where do we find this quote in the Apple Books version? In chapter 8, of course, only a few short paragraphs before it concludes. Are we to believe that the writers of the real-world The You You Are paid enough attention to the show’s version to include exact quotes, but not enough to check if the end of chapter 8 had been written already?

Other parts of the Apple Books version line up with the show’s version exactly. The introduction matches what Ricken reads aloud in the season 1 finale — he reads the first two paragraphs before it cuts to a different scene. Later in the episode, he reads the last few lines of the first chapter before stopping for a break, at which point Innie-Mark is able to talk to him. (Ricken then mentions the Crest Hike and the “funny bees,” which are discussed in the real-world chapter 2, to a confused Innie-Mark.)

Dylan also reads a section of the book in that episode — chapter 5, titled “Destiny: An Acrostic Poem Experience by the Author, Ricken Hale.” The real-world chapter 5 is a perfect match for what Dylan sees, down to the font for each letter of “destiny.”

What is it about chapter 8? Why stop there, and why change it from what’s shown on screen?

Before MDR finalizes its plans for the OTC at the end of season 1 episode 8, Mark begins to read a quote from The You You Are that inspired him, which Dylan completes from memory: “Our job is to taste free air. Your so-called boss may own the clock that taunts you from the wall, but my friends, the hour is yours.” Dylan adds that “page 197 slaps,” so it’s fair to assume this quote comes later than chapter 8 (on my phone, the book ends with page 73, and that’s at a rate of maybe three paragraphs per page).

In episode 5 of season 2, “Trojan’s Horse,” Devon reads and critiques Ricken’s Lumon-driven rewrite of that very same line: “Your sovereign boss may own the clock that greets you from the wall, but you get to enjoy its ticking, and thus should be happy.”

Obviously, Lumon would want to edit out any overtly pro-labor sentiments from The You You Are, retaining only enough to give innies an illusion of empowerment. (As Ms. Cobel says in season 1, apparently quoting Kier, “The surest way to tame a prisoner is to let him believe he is free.”) And the eight chapters on Apple Books don’t really have much in the way of pro-labor, anticapitalist ideas. As far as we know from the show, anyway, the first commentary on the subject comes in chapter 9, which Mark reads aloud:

You think you need your job. But I’ve lived abroad as a vagrant, abstaining from my own money to rely on the charity of strangers. Most were beggars themselves, yet they were happy, and so, for that summer, was I. Your job needs you, not the other way around.

It’s exactly the kind of thing Lumon would want heavily edited, if “Trojan’s Horse” is anything to go by, and it’s not something the company would want the general population to think too hard about, either. But that still doesn’t explain why chapter 8 would need to be different in the edited version.

The next paragraph of chapter 9, as seen on screen, goes on to reference “our tragic concessions worker (whose name, I have since learned, is Alan Miller)” — as if this concessions worker was mentioned in a previous chapter. Alan Miller, in this paragraph, is used as an example of a worker with the power to withhold his labor. That’s also something we’d expect Lumon to want changed. And if the concessions worker was brought up in a previous chapter, that chapter would have to change, too.

Some may say it’s a continuity error. But I say it’s evidence that the real-world version of The You You Are has Lumon’s fingerprints all over it. I don’t think it’s meant to be the innie version — mainly because chapter 3 features an extended critique of the 1992 movie Sister Act, which no innie would have heard of — but I do think that Lumon gave Ricken a publishing deal he couldn’t refuse. After all, his author’s note says that he’s liaising “with several corporate parties as to precisely where and in what form the book should be released.” And this Apple Books edition of the book was published the same day we saw him meet with the ultimate corporate party: Natalie. Maybe, in exchange for publishing the innie version, Lumon required a few tweaks to the outie version as well.

Or maybe the Severance writers are just fucking with us.