Severance Gets Lost in Time

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The Severance episode “Chikhai Bardo” is a lot of things. It’s a love story about a couple separated by time and space. It’s an untraditional narrative that dispenses with chronological storytelling. It’s a Christmas episode. It is also an episode that, as those descriptors suggest, has a lot in common with another exceptional piece of television: “The Constant,” the season-four episode of Lost often cited as the best in that mythologically dense drama’s history. Severance creator Dan Erickson declined to confirm to Vulture whether “The Constant” influenced “Chikhai Bardo,” but there are enough parallels to suggest there is at least some value in considering them as complements and how that may shed some light on where Severance is headed from here. (One probably coincidental — but maybe not? — connection: “The Constant” first aired on ABC on February 28, 2008; “Chikhai Bardo” dropped on Apple TV+ on February 28, 2025.)

For those who don’t remember Lost very well or don’t mind 17-year-old spoilers: “The Constant” follows a central figure on the series, Desmond Hume, as his consciousness gets knocked off its axis and starts toggling between two time periods. One is in 1996, where he’s serving in the Scottish Army and estranged from the love of his life, Penelope Widmore. The other is in December of 2004, the show’s current-day timeline where Desmond has landed on a freighter several miles offshore from the island where Oceanic Flight 815 crashed. After taking a helicopter through a thunderstorm to that freighter, Desmond loses his mental bearings, unable to remember people he knows in the present. Eventually, he gets pinballed between the two decades long enough to understand how and why they intersect.

“Chikhai Bardo” has a similarly nonlinear structure, but hopscotches between several time periods and perspectives instead of just two: the present for Mark; the (seeming) present for Gemma at Lumon; the flashbacks to the relationship between Mark and Gemma in the real world; and what could be perceived as time jumps within each different room that Gemma visits as part of her role at Lumon. The fluid transitions between scenes, also a hallmark of “The Constant,” imply that all of these moments exist on a continuum even though they are seemingly disconnected from each other chronologically. In one sequence, for example, Mark and Gemma’s past appointment at a fertility clinic ebbs and flows between the experience Gemma has with the unnamed doctor who supervises her at Lumon. Watching this episode is like looking at jigsaw pieces fitting together, then coming apart, then locking into place again, without the puzzle ever being complete.

In “The Constant,” Desmond realizes that his 1996 self must tell Penelope he’s going to call her on Christmas Eve of 2004, thereby establishing her as his “constant,” a stabilizing force in both timelines that will stop his brain from ping-ponging between the two. The entire episode builds up to the moment when Desmond finally calls Penny from the freighter on that fateful Christmas Eve, she takes the call and they finally get to say “I love you” after years of separation, thereby reintegrating Desmond’s bifurcated mental state.

If the words reintegrating and bifurcated are setting off alarm bells, they should. What happens to Lumon’s severed employees is sort of a twist on what happens to Desmond in “The Constant.” Albeit for a much briefer time, Desmond starts existing in two realities and, initially, is unsure how they relate to each other, which is true of the members of the Macrodata Refinement team, too. Only when he finds his constant — someone or something that is important to him in both eras — can he feel like his whole self, a feeling that Mark, Helly, Dylan and Irving have been chasing since they decided to activate the overtime contingency at the end of season one. Yes, they want to understand what’s really going on at Lumon. But even more than that, they’re seeking a fuller picture of their identities, in both innie and outie form.

Within the context of “Chikhai Bardo,” Mark and Gemma are, like Desmond, on the verge of becoming less fractured. Mark is asleep, recovering from the reintegration surgery performed by Reghabi and therefore on the verge of being “complete.” Gemma is under the impression that she’s almost finished with her tasks at Lumon, i.e., going in and out of various rooms in the deepest recesses of the office complex for reasons that remain opaque by episode’s end. She’s led to believe by those guiding her that she can return to a “normal” life.

“What happens once I am done with all the rooms?” she asks the doctor who supervises her, as played by Robby Benson. (You know what, let’s call him Dr. Robby, as an homage to The Pitt.) “You will see the world again,” Dr. Robby tells her. “And the world will see you.” It sounds like a promise that someday she’ll get to leave Lumon. But Dr. Robby sucks at keeping promises.

That is confirmed by the Christmas scene later in the episode, where Gemma writes an obscene number of thank you notes and asks him how much longer she has to keep doing this. While that question seemingly refers to the notes this man is forcing her to write, she’s also clearly exhausted by what appears to be a repetitive bit of play-acting where she pretends to be Dr. Robby’s wife during the holidays, over and over. (Potential time loop, anyone?)

“I told you,” Dr. Robby says. “You’re done. But Christmas has a funny way of coming back around each year.”

“It’s always Christmas,” Gemma responds, implying that this room is a place she keeps having to come back to again and again.

Where Christmastime offers hope and promise to Desmond — on Christmas Eve, he finds out that Penny still loves him, and that maybe she’ll even be able to rescue him and everyone else on the island — it is a prison for Gemma, one where she’s forced to pretend to be in love with Dr. Robby and kept from Mark, the man with whom she genuinely fell in love. Even in Gemma’s outtie world, Christmas has a sad connotation; her memories of sitting with Mark in front of a tree draped in tinsel are steeped in their difficulties having children, and seem to bleed into her yuletide experiences with Dr. Robby like one huge memory bubble of seasonal sadness.

Where “The Constant” leads up to a borderline Hallmark Christmas movie ending, “Chikhai Bardo” does the opposite, spending close to an hour slowly tearing Mark and Gemma apart. The opening scene places them literally side-by-side, flashing back to the first time Mark very cutely met Gemma, while donating blood. Hooked up to IVs, they introduce themselves by awkwardly clasping hands instead of shaking them, a gesture that suggests their bodies already know they are going to be a couple before the coupling has even begun. By the end of the episode, the innie Gemma realizes that Mr. Milchick is making sure she stays stuck at Lumon, allegedly because her outtie has infiltrated the premises. She also seems to briefly gain awareness that Mark was told she had died in an accident. In the episode’s final scene, Mark opens his eyes, finally awake and integrated. He sees an image of Gemma’s eyes, and then tears well up in his own. It’s as if he understands that, unlike Penny and Desmond, he and Gemma may not be able to find their way back to each other. “Chikhai Bardo” is a love story, but it’s a sad one, unlike “The Constant.”

As memorable as the romance in “The Constant” is, though, the most important thing that episode does for the larger Lost mythology is establish the significance of how time passes on the island versus off of it. Daniel Faraday, a professor and physicist with a deep understanding of the island’s scientific properties, says that time progresses at a different pace off the island, which explains why it seems like the helicopter that took Desmond, Sayid and Frank to the freighter has been gone for a long time to the people on the island.

“Chikhai Bardo” does not outright explain that time moves differently inside Lumon vs. outside of it, but there are several pointed references to time discrepancies that suggest it’s worth considering. When Gemma visits Dr. Robby in his dentist’s office, located in the Wellington Room, he tells her it’s been six weeks since she’s been there. “But I was just here,” she insists.

When Gemma leaves that room, she asks the nurse, played by Sandra Bernhard, how long she was in there. “Two hours,” the nurse replies. Gemma looks confused, as if more time has definitely elapsed

Are the hours, months and years moving differently for Gemma when she’s at Lumon? All the clues point to yes, and that includes the fact that Dr. Robby seems to age over multiple decades during his interactions with Gemma, while she appears to stay exactly as she’s always been.

Are all of the innies on a timeline out of sync with the outside world? Is it just Gemma? Is Dr. Robby controlling Gemma’s sense of time because he’s in love with her, perhaps blocking the possibility for Gemma and Mark to truly reunite? These are questions that the episode raises without coming close to answering. But like “The Constant” did for Lost, “Chikhai Bardo” highlights how important it is for the audience to study the “whens” in Severance for clues that could help explain what’s really going on at Lumon. Within the context of its love story, this extraordinarily ambitious piece of television tells us the same thing, in a different context, that “The Constant” did: In relationships, timing is everything. And sometimes, time is simply not on your side.