Helly Helena, Helena Helly

I love Severance. It's pulled me out of my Big Thinking About Movies

Severance gets a lot of things right when it comes to working. I used to drag my ass to work and slump inside of the elevator. When I got out of the elevator, I was a worker. Not particularly a good one but I always got the job done well enough to get pretty flowers and cake on my birthday and thank you notes for my efforts. That elevator trip straightens you out. We see this with Mark, Irving, and Dylan. Mark is a grieving husband, Irving is cool as hell, and Dylan is also pretty depressed. When Helly lands on the table, she’s different from them. She’s clearly unhappy to be there, she’s not really a team player, she has no real work ethic, and she’s not very subservient. This isn’t the ideal Lumon worker and her co-workers know this. They likely could’ve worked for another 20 years (not Irv, tho) without any disruptions like this. They did choose to be cogs in a machine, after all. The boys go into the elevator as what could be considered “not their best selves” and emerge as this occupational ideal, a CEOs wet dream. They’re not Jim Halpert¹. Even Dylan at his goofiest isn’t Jim. Is Helly? She is, in a sense, the same personality type. However, they all have it worse than Jim, who could’ve just quit and applied for another job. He’s conscious all day long, he has autonomy. Helly wants to kill herself at work and comes home believing there’s something severely wrong with her “innie”. Her “outie” is the worst person this could happen to— for Lumon and her co-workers.

Helly is an experiment. Helena Eagan is the company daughter, the beautiful daughter of the company that has made the brave and bold choice to become a Severed employee to show people that it’s not so bad after all. Helena does this to prove herself, to show her father that she’s got what it takes to be the big boss someday. Similar to Shiv Roy from Succession, Helena is a redhead with a mean dad who is the boss of a legacy company that’s often the topic of controversy. Helena believes that she can remedy this and that by doing so, she’ll become irreplaceable to him/Lumon. Given what we’ve seen of Helena (Not Helly, but Helena and not Helena acting as Helly), she’s uptight, all business, and very insecure. She grips onto what power she has but yearns for something more. One must assume she’s been groomed for role her entire life and has little autonomy in her day-to-day life. She’s lived the life of a severed employee all her life. Her innie is what her outie could have been. The repressed personality of someone who is curious, unafraid to question things around her, is fun and has friends who love her enough to rebel and “die” for her.

Helena makes the mistake of thinking she’s Helly. No matter how hard she tries, she’s not Helly. Granted, she doesn’t try that hard. She’s driven by her repressed Eros², whereas Helly, at times, is driven by her Thanatos³. Helena is seemingly not allowed to “live”, or at least not in the sense that she believes Helly is. Helena is captivated by the footage of Helly kissing Mark. This passionate, desperate kiss goodbye before Helly returns as Helena gives her a new kind of drive. Her innie is in love, therefore she must be. Negating how the whole process works, becoming the thing that Lumon fears, Helena is above the law because she is an Eagan and an Eagan is the enemy in the eyes of Helly’s loved ones. Her life is infinitely more interesting just based on a few seconds there. Helena “becomes” Helly for Lumon and returns because she is driven to return to experience what she sees as a pleasurable life. She has friends and she has Mark, who loves her. Helly tries to kill herself, she tries to escape, she begs to leave. She does not want to be subservient. She wants to be whatever “herself” truly is, not knowing she’s spiritually freer in the confines of her office. Helly throws things at people, she agitates people on purpose whether it’s for fun or for destruction. She wants to destroy, or at least she does initially. She is taught to love life by her co-workers and that love for life causes all of them to try to leave, which Helena can’t really understand. Why leave when you’ve got it so good here? They love us.

Helena has become Jekyll and Hyde. Helly is “never cruel” and is beloved by those who know her. She even charms Milchick, who knows actual Helena. He knows Helena as cold shell of a person, the business side of her. As Helly, Milchick is finally above Helena Eagan. For the better part of the day, he’s not at her mercy but they are both under the Board’s, per Kier’s guidance. Helena’s life is run by her duty to serve Kier, not for anything else. She had purpose but that’s no great purpose. Helena sees what Helly had and thinks, “This is purpose. I am loved and I am capable of love. I don’t need permission. There’s no script to follow.” But she is not Helly. She is not capable of that love, not truly. She attempts, poorly, to do this because she gets Helly. She’s done her homework. Helly is funny. Helly makes jokes. Helly takes a stab at making a dick joke around the camp fire after hearing that fucked up story about Kier and his brother, who is her ancestor. You gotta imagine the thrill she felt hearing that story. Kier is a god but also like, what? Her great-great-great-great-great grandpa? She’s raised to love him like God, more than God. He’s a legend. He’s everything to the Eagans and their followers… and that’s gotta be so fucking annoying. Everyone has a breaking point. She’s tasted the good life hanging out with the boys and Kier is not one of those boys. How do you make them, especially Mark, laugh? Dick joke. That’s Helly. That’s her attempt at Helly. Likely Irving would’ve scolded her, but only lightly, and before he rebelled. Irving knows she’s not Helly almost immediately because he loves Helly. Mark, yes, does love Helly, but Irving is their patriarch. He’s good, innie and outie. Realizing his Helly isn’t as good on the outside further breaks him. She makes him the snow seal, a cute apology, something Helly might’ve done, but it’s not enough. She couldn’t come up with a better lie, she couldn’t be a better Helly.

Helena fears the rejection of her father. When Helly goes live at Lumon Con and announces that the innies are being tortured, her father Jame⁴ calls her a Fetid Moppet. Before this, Helena got to hear things from him like:

"Thank you for going through with this. The Grandfather would cherish what you've done. And one day you will sit with me at my revolving."

and,

"I cried in my bed when they told me what she tried to do to you."

But Helena didn’t hear that, did she? Helly did. Helena got to hear “Fetid Moppet” and was forced into a sham of an apology, a humiliation ritual to atone for what she did to the cult. Helly just got to hear how cuckoo the Eagans are.

But then she gets to go back to microdata and see Mark. Helena doesn’t “get” her friendship with Dylan and Irving and that’s why she almost gets got by not her father, but Helly’s father. Irving’s kind nature warms Helly and makes her feel safe. He encourages her and teaches her how to take care of the scary numbers. She cares for him, his love for Burt. She wants him to succeed too, to go back to his true self even if it means goodbye forever, just as it would with Mark. Jame clearly loves his daughter Helena because she is his daughter, an Eagan, and his likely future successor. She’s loyal, she’s motivated. She makes a great sacrifice for Kier, for Lumon, for Jame. “I cried in my bed when they told me what she tried to do to you,” in regards to Helly’s suicide attempt in the elevator makes her feel irreplaceable as both his daughter and as a worker. Helena suffers from the Father Complex⁵, but Helly doesn’t. She doesn’t have to beg for a kind man’s love or even seek it out. Helly is free from the idea of a father, cruel or kind. Her introduction to a father figure is Irving and the follow-up is Jame, whose affection conceals the whole corporate cult thing. Helly, because she can identify paternal Good thanks to Irving, likely awakens the unconscious conscious of the negative Father Complex. This can only further her hatred for the Eagans and likely cause some self-hatred as she lives within the vessel of an Eagan. The truly irreplaceable personality, much like Dr. Jekyll, is Helly even though she is not technically the organic personality within the vessel. Helly, as a worker, can be replaced and quite literally is in the first episode of season two. It’s Mark who demands she returns because who she is as a person is irreplaceable.

Helena abuses her power when she has control of the vessel. As captain, she acts not as herself but Helly. She is able to identify the difference between herself and her innie. She knows they prefer Helly but either:

a) Lacks the awareness to realize that she is not really Helly, as in she is not the idealized version of herself. She most definitely would like to be Helly but she has never been able to let that repressed part of herself surface. Therefore, she can pretend to be Helly and because she is in control of the vessel that is both she and Helly, there is no difference.

b) She knows and just doesn’t care because she wants Mark and she wants to be liked and free and have a good fucking time even if that means sitting at a desk doing some weird task. She is superficial and abuses her power with the vessel to get what she wants, which is Mark. It’s a careless, reckless act that almost gets her killed. Episode four is the first time we see Helena act on her Thanatos, and perfectly so, she almost actually dies for it.

Because I’m a romantic in the sense of loving tragedy and shit, I like option A. I think that it would make most sense for her to lack the awareness to realize it actually does matter who is in control of the vessel. As Mark, Dylan, and Irving come to terms with the abuse of their vessels, they’re able to gain access to their outie’s psyche, helped by Ms. Casey’s vague tidbits that give the employees hope. Helena has hope because she abuses that system. She knows who she is and she thinks she knows who Helly is simply because they share a body. Mark likes the body but he loves Helly. In the office, he’s preoccupied with finding Gemma/Ms. Casey because that’s his wife and he loves her. Leaving the office awakens something in Mark. We see a car car of Eros and Thanatos with him. He, as are the others, are seeing things that were once only in their wildest imaginations. He has a newfound lust for life that momentarily frees him from the “stress” of work, which is finding his wife. Irving sees this and condemns him for this. The literal fire between them, the fire dazzles Mark and gives him a bit of confidence. There are bright and beautiful dangers in the world other than the sharpness of office supplies, he can defy the patriarchal figure and defend his desire for something that is wrong. It’s not that it is so terribly wrong for him to love Helly. he thought Gemma was dead and maybe she is and her vessel can only exist within the confines of the building. This is something Helena may know and her attempts to help Mark find him are simply just to humor him, gain his trust, and spend more time with him. His innie is somewhere strange and a bit scary. He’s faced with all of these new things and he’s witnessing them with Helly, who he knows he loves. In the same way that people often seek comfort in one another after a tragic/traumatic event, all of these wonders of the outside world for innie Mark are, to him, shared with Helly. So yeah, he wants to be inside her. It’s one more new thing to share with someone he loves.

But that wasn’t Helly he was inside and I really do hope he didn’t stay inside her. However, this is something I will talk about simply because there is the possibility and it also shows a darker side to Helena and her ambition to be Best Girl for Jame and Lumon and Kier while also having the satisfaction of getting what she wants. Just give me a paragraph. At the end of episode four, he’s clearly in shock. Irving just tried to kill Helly, who is really Helena. He also just learned that Mr. Milchick’s name is Seth. That would also take away my ability to speak and it did as I sat on my couch. He’s fraternized with the enemy. He did not make love⁶ to Helly, who he loves and is his equal. Helena is not his equal, she is not his friend. Sure, they had some fun times but he was deceived. He fucked the wrong bitch! Got too big for his britches out in the wilderness and forget himself. Shame! Shameful! Sorry about all that though, like I do recognize that’s essentially assault. However… that was not Helly and it was pretty obvious so maybe it was the vessel he’s really into.

To finish this up, I’ve seen theories, and many several but here’s just one because I don’t care that much, that Helena will be pregnant because Mark busted in her. Here’s the thing: I know that you don’t get pregnant every time you have sex. I’d like to believe that Mark’s innie would know how to pull out. I think there’s a perverted romanticism in wanting her to be pregnant for the shock and drama of it rather than the betterment of the plot. Sure, it kinda seems like it would make sense if that was the path they were taking but I don’t know, I think it’s gay until I see how the real writers execute it. I just kinda think a lot of fans aren’t writers for a reason. Me? I’m a fucking genius and always right so all of my theories are right. I actually don’t have any, I just have like actual theory and assumptions. Maybe that’s worse because anyone can do that. You see that all the time. Like on Tumblr and those who are on Twitter but should’ve stayed on Tumblr, where it’s okay to be wrong and horny. On Twitter, a serious place for educated minds, the hub for intelligentsia, not everything is gay! Sorry, nerds!

Once again, did not edit this didn’t re-read it. Don’t care to either. I’m sure it’s perfectly fine and I didn’t make a single mistake! xoxoxo please share with your friends

1. And thank fucking god, am I right?

2. Eros is the desire (or “drive”) to live. Living is all about fucking, having fun. Technically, the life drive is described as having a tendency towards survival, procreation, general creation, and just plain ole sex.

3. Thanatos is the opposite. It’s the death drive. It’s considerably more subconscious than Eros because you get off more on the desire than you do the whole actually dying thing. It’s fun to self-destroy and to destroy things, to sabotage yourself and others, get pissed off and piss others off. For some, of course, it’s a real serious thing and they will allow themselves to let this desire overcome them.

4. It’s Jame. I wish it was James, I really do. I Googled it a billion times in the process of writing this and it’s very much Jame. I’m sorry too. Cool evil guy name though!!

5. The Father Complex, not Oedipus Complex. It’s not about sex but rather the fear of your dad, or a guy you’d like to be your dad, not loving you back because you’re a failure in his eyes.

Interestingly enough, this comes as a collab of Jung and Freud which is kind of like my own personal Watch The Throne. However, much like Jay-Z and Kanye, there was a split. See below for some crazy shit.

6. When characters have sex that’s really slow and we see their faces more than their bodies, that’s making love. When it’s fast and we see some ass and boobies, that’s fucking. Both are good and cool with me. I hope we all make it, you know? Fucked up that Helena did, though. Sometimes we lie to get laid but I think the stakes are a bit higher here.