In 2025, the must-see Apple TV show Severance still has its claws in everyone. Central to the series is Lumon Industries, a shadowy, sinister corporation that employs an unorthodox procedure called “severance” to categorize employees’ work and personal memories. Throughout the series, Lumon’s nefarious secrets and duplicitous practices serve as a grim commentary on corporate power, worker exploitation, and the loss of individual autonomy.
What is Lumon Industries?
Severance is a show about a fictional corporation called Lumon Industries. At first glance, it looks like a novel biotech company providing workers a one-of-a-kind perk: the opportunity to “cut” their memories about work from their personal lives. This means when the VFX workers are at work they remember none of their out-of-work lives, and vice versa. The procedure is presented as a means of achieving perfect work-life balance, but it quickly becomes apparent that Lumon has something far darker in mind.
The company’s headquarters, a sprawling and sterile office complex, is home to cryptic rules, bizarre rituals, and an ever-present sense of surveillance. Employees, so-called “innies,” are separated from their “outies” (their out-in-the-world personae) and live under absolute control and manipulation.
The Dark Side of Lumon
Lumon Industries is more than a job; it’s a dystopian hellscape. What the company is after is a mystery, but throughout the series, clues emerge that it is performing unethical experiments on its employees. The severance process raises profound ethical challenges in itself because it replicates consciousness creating two distinct beings in one body. The “innie” is embedded in a relentless and sterile corporate landscape, but the “outie” has no idea what unfolds during the working day.
Lumon’s power isn’t limited to the workplace. The firm tracks its workers’ every move, no matter if they are inside a building or outside of work hours. It relies on fear, manipulation, and even psychological torture to exert its hold over its workers. For instance, workers go through “wellness sessions” that feel like interrogations, and they are never allowed to forget what horrible fate awaits those who break the rules.
Themes of Corporate Exploitation
Severance presents Lumon Industries as a metaphor for the soullessness of modern corporate life. The show reminds us that in the world of corporate America, profit measures higher than people—making employees and their personal lives mere pawns to be manipulated when necessary. Lumon’s severance process is an extreme form of how many companies expect their employees to be wholly devoted and to sacrifice everything — and, in a lot of situations, their mental and physical well-being.
The series also plays on the loss of identity and individuality in the workplace. The Lumon employees are rendered devoid of personal histories and relationships. This begs the question of what work is worth and how much of their humanity people will sell for a paycheck.
Real-World Parallels
Although Lumon Industries is a figment of the imagination, its practices are not far-fetched. For decades now people have been voicing concerns that technology and corporate policies are undermining privacy and the freedom to do as one wishes in all sorts of spheres.
The show is also worth a watch for the ethical questions surrounding new technology such as brain-computer interfaces and memory manipulation. These increasingly sophisticated technologies bring us to a place where fiction treads the threshold of reality, granting Severance its timely and provocative exploration of what might happen if corporations possess this unchecked power.
The Fight for Freedom
Nevertheless, the employees of the Macrodata Refinement department at Lumon start to question their reality and revolt against the system. Guide by Mark Scout (Adam Scott), the team finds hints of Lumon’s real goals and begins to assemble the truth about their lives. Their journey serves as a poignant reminder of the power of resistance and solidarity in the struggle against oppression.
And the show’s second season, which started in early 2025, explored more about Lumon’s secrets and the expanding resistance movement.
Why Severance Matters
Severance is more than a riveting drama; it is also a warning about the perils of untrammeled corporate power and the need to safeguard individual rights. As a metaphor, the show depicts a stark and harrowing portrait of a world where peoples’ identities and agency are hollowed out, and viewers are compelled to confront the uncomfortable truths about the modern workplace, and what might happen with technology.
