I can't stop thinking about the Severance timeline.

Let's engage in some old fashioned mystery tv show nit picking to help me soothe my brain.

I just watched tonight's episode of the excellent Apple TV show Severance, which if you haven't seen it you should. The first season is fantastic, and I'm so hoping they can keep up that quality.

But I ran into something that, as far as I can work my head around it, seems to be a weird incongruity, for a show that seems to pride itself on sweating the details. Perhaps you can help me work it out.

This has to do with the timeline in the show, and I warn you, it's pretty nerdy, and you may very well end this post thinking "That's what's bothering you? Who the hell cares?"

Regardless, it is bothering me.

I have a blog. What else is blogging for?

So, at the end of season one the three "innies" use the Override Contingency to wake themselves up on the outside of Lumon. As far as I can tell this happens on a Friday.

In season 2, we see Mr. Milchick then visits the innies that night, fires two of them, and tells Mark Scout "In the meantime, I hope to see you on Monday."

Mark appears to then think things over, with some prodding from his sister and Milchick, and decides to work on Monday. At which time he's confronted with three new co-workers which Milchick refers to in S2E2 as "a floater from Overseas, and a pair who were laid off from 5x", explaining that he "only had 48 hours to pull this together." Which makes sense, if it's only been two days since the innies triggered the Override Contingency.

In tonights episode, we see Monday where outie Mark W goes down the elevator at 8:06 and outie Mark S goes down at 9:04.

We see his innie work a full day his first day back, meeting his new team, being told by Milchick that he's been gone for five months, and that they are the "face of Severance reform". Which I think, based on what we can see from episode 2, is a lie, including the bit about five moths. But we'll get to that. Then we see outie Mark leave for the day at 5:12 in outie Marks episode.

We don't see mark go down the elevator again in S2E2, but we see him exit the elevator again at 5:20. Presumably after we saw innie Mark work a full day that day, ending it by slipping a note into the jacket of Mark W. So that's Tuesday.

The next day, Wednesday, we see outie Mark go into the elevator at 9:03. Then innie Mark is confronted by Milchick who discovered the note that was trying to frame Mark W. Innie Mark runs to Milchicks office and talks to the speaker trying to reach the board. Milchick then kicks him out of work early. Which lines up with outie Marks episode where we see him leaving the elevator at only 9:15, just a few minutes after he went in, but he doesn't notice.

In outie Marks episode we see Lumon folks listening to innie Marks call to the baord. They decide to try and get all the fired severed workers back to appease Marks innie so that he can finish his project. We don't know when for sure this is, but I think we learn that it's likely that same day in the next scene.

Next we see outie Mark returning to work. I think it's safe to assume this is Thursday, because we see Mark W on the steps yelling about how he was let go after only 3 days, which makes sense if since he was only brought in on Monday, after Milchick only had 48 hours to get him after Fridays Override Contingency was triggered.

We then watch all of our favorite outies go down the elevator one at a time, Mark, Dylan, Irving and Helena. A procession that lines up perfectly with the timing of all of them appearing downstairs as their innies from S2E1. Seriously, watch this video showing the two scenes side by side. The filmmakers sure seem to be trying to tell folks who dig into the details of this show that, yes, we are seeing both sides of these elevator trips, and nothing weird is happening in between. (aside from, you know, the severing.)

All the innies regroup, get led into the newly remodeled "break room", watch a movie featuring animated versions of themselves, and decide to keep coming back to work.

It seems like the creators of the show have gone to great lengths to establish this timeline, specifically mentioning things like "I hope to see you back to work on Monday." "I only had 48 hours to put this together." "Three days of work!" and the multiple shots of clocks highlighted.

So!

The thing that I can't stop thinking about is this...

Did Lumon really create the stop motion animated short film about the "Macro Dat Uprising" in between midday Wednesday and Thursday morning?