Severance Episode 3: Our Best and Worst Goat Theories

This Article contains spoilers for Severance Season 2.

Severance is a series shrouded in mystery, with each passing episode often raising more questions than answers while still managing to be incredibly satisfying. Still, in a series swimming in untold secrets, there is one question that we keep coming back to: WTF is the deal with the goats?

Said goats made their triumphant return in this week’s episode as Mark S. (Adam Scott) and Helly (Britt Lower) make their way through the hallways of Lumon’s severed floor trying to get answers on Mark’s formerly believed to be dead wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman). On their quest, they find themselves in a goat room with a small horde of goat herders who seem completely out of place in a Lumon facility and also somehow seem to outnumber the very goats in their charge.

So, you know, again we have more questions than answers.

Because of this, we decided to open the question wide to our staff: what the heck do you think is going on with the goats?

Amelia Emberwing, Streaming Editor: The most demonic thing I’ve ever done (OK, the most demonic thing I’ve done this year…) is ask folks to fit these theories into a paragraph, and now here I am: hoisted by my own petard. This week’s episode might not have given us any new answers, but it did shift my focus from the goats to the goat people. I’m with most of the world in that I believe the goats are tied to the longevity of Kier Eagan in one way or another, but what the heck is going on with Gwendoline Christie’s character Lorne and her group of nomads? Does her outie wonder why she leaves her work in an office building every day smelling of goats and with straw in her hair? And what is this pouch situation all about?

Michael Peyton, Director of Events and Partnerships: Since the beginning of the series, the actual work of the Macrodata Refinement Team has been shrouded in mystery. What exactly are they doing by moving those numbers into all of those little digital boxes? Fan theories abound that it has something to do with keeping members of the Eagan family, particularly Helena’s father Jame, alive - possibly with the ultimate goal of reincarnating Lumon founder and quasi-deity (in the Severance world at least) Kier Eagan. The goat room (specifically the fact that the room seems to be filled with baby goats) plays right into it. It’s entirely possible that the team in that room is conducting scientific experiments aiming to preserve the lives of goats long past their natural lifespan, cloning goats, or even (somehow) bringing deceased goats back from the dead in service of their ultimate goal of “bringing back” their leader, Kier.

Ryan McCaffrey, Senior Executive Editor of Previews: I’m going to keep this one simple and not get too carried away with what I think the explanation will be for what is one of those outlandish moments from Season 1. My theory is that there’s something in the goats when they mature to a certain age – remember, the goat herder in that room said, “They’re not ready yet!” – that’s needed for the severance procedure. And Lumon does want to make severance a much bigger and more common thing than what we’re seeing in the show so far. So whether it’s that their DNA somehow goes into the severance chips or something else, I’m betting it has to do with scaling up the severance procedure on a global level.

Leanne Butkovic, Editorial Project Manager: I think it has something to do with some form of genetically engineered breeding in the pursuit of the indefinite longevity of consciousness (a company with a “Perpetuity Wing” isn’t exactly subtle) and/or building a perfectly docile and complacent workforce with the ideal ratios of Kier’s Four Tempers. In Lumon’s vision of late stage capitalism, dying is no longer a good excuse to not come into work. This is relevant because I think the goats are connected, but a Season 1 theory I liked a lot posits that the MDR team’s role in bucketing seemingly meaningless numbers is actually quite consequential to Lumon’s goals. The numbers represent patterns of personality traits – given that certain nodules have specific feelings in the eye of the microdata refiner – that are funneled into five bins each containing shorthand for the tempers: Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice. Lumon has the technology to sever a brain’s consciousness; surely, they could develop it further to mold optimized human personalities from categorized data. To that end, I feel like the experiment of creating perfect goats has finally reached a point of semi-stability to move onto humans, and the new child supervisor Ms. Huang is the beta release. Maybe this is going a bridge too far, but wouldn’t you agree that she looks suspiciously like what might have been the daughter of Mark and his wife Gemma/Ms. Casey if they had a kid? (Didn’t Dolly the sheep age unusually fast?)

Dan Stapleton, Director of Reviews: I don’t think what we’re seeing from the innies’ perspective is reality. The numbers on the computers aren’t actually numbers and the goats aren’t actually goats. Anyone with the brain implant technology needed to sever a person’s memories would plausibly have the technology to alter their perception so that they aren’t aware of what they’re truly doing, which could be something super messed up. What that is, I dare not venture to guess.

Scott Collura, Associate Director of Features: DO THEY HAVE POUCHES. That’s what the one and only Gwendoline Christie (and her coworkers) want to know about Mark and Helly when they find a new goat room in this week’s episode of Severance. As the apparent head of her department – Mammalians Nurturable, of course – Christie’s character has a lot on her mind it seems, not the least of which is the question of whether or not the pair from Macrodata Refinement is there to kill her. (With their pouches maybe?) But while more questions are raised than answered by the visit to this expanded goat room, one thing is now clear: The goats are being tended to for something other than typical animal husbandry. Are they integral to the severance process? Does severance involve pouches? How can Christie’s character be certain that Mark and Helly don’t have pouches? They only showed her part of their bellies! And come to think of it, does Christie have a pouch? Do Christie’s rough-around-the-edges colleagues sleep in goat pouches!? How big are goat pouches? Wait, what… goats don’t have pouches?

Never mind.

Erik Adams, Entertainment Reviews Editor: When it comes to my TV puzzle boxes, I’m much more Leftovers than Lost: My preference is to let the mystery be, so I’d be perfectly satisfied if we never get a straight answer about the goats. But I did get the feeling from this week’s episode that the goat room could be some sort of probationary purgatory between standard (using that term very loosely here) work on the severed floor and retirement – the break room, but the break lasts a lot longer. The hostility of Christie’s character, the generally feral appearance and attitudes of her co-workers – this says to me that Lumon has a way of dealing with innies who aren’t a good culture fit (barf) but aren’t yet ready to return to a 100 percent outie existence.

Obviously, we want to hear your theories too! Drop 'em in the comments.