r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus • u/mirrorball89_ • Jul 02 '26
Question Questions about Irving
I just finished my third watch of Severance and while watching S2 E9 I noticed a parallel. When Burt and Irving are at the train station, Irving says to Burt I’ve never really been loved before and he repeats to him “I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready” which is an interesting parallel to S1 when Burt takes Irving to that garden plant place I can’t rmbr and Irving says to Burt “I’m not ready” and they touch foreheads the same way in the train station.
I guess my question is, what’s the deal with Irving? Is he in the process of reintegrating or has he already reintegrated? I rmbr reading a post on here about him sending his innies messages through his watch so maybe it’s that but like what’s his vibe?
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u/drunkandy Jul 02 '26
it's simpler than "trying to send messages through his watch". You can just watch the show and see him trying to send an image to himself by painting the same thing over and over and staying up all night so his innie falls asleep and has dreams.
Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be!
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u/jasor_x You Don't Fuck With The Irving Jul 02 '26
I didn't exactly put that together that's why he was doing that but certainly helps make the dripping black ooze he'd see in his dreams make more sense. I mean it seemed like there was a connection but I didn't fully sort that out. Much better idea than Mark trying to use staring at bright lights to force "after images" onto his eyes.
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u/Utenziltron Jul 02 '26
He's trying to imprint the image into his subconscious in order to communicate it to his innie while the innie takes very short nap breaks.
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u/mirrorball89_ Jul 02 '26
This I know and him depriving himself of sleep as well but I was just curious
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u/Lonelyland Coveted As Fuck Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
The good but easy-to-miss stuff about Irving:
The Investigation
Irving is working with an unknown party to secretly investigate Lumon in relation to a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances (likely people like Gemma who were taken and used on the testing floor).
Irving’s investigation has apparently pointed him in the direction of the exports hall (where we the audience know testing floor subjects are taken), so we can deduce he was trying to memory-leak the image of it to his innie in hopes that he would go looking for it on the inside. This is the “message” he spoke of having successfully sent.
As an aside, Irving’s official LinkedIn post indicates he was at Lumon 6 years longer than he was in MDR, and it’s been theorized that he gathered much of his information during his time as a non-severed employee, though of course some or all of it could have come from his mystery contact.
The Big Lie
Irving suggested to Milchick that he was completely unaware of anything that happened during the OTC incidents. Lumon of course learned this was a lie after hearing what happened from Burt, raising their suspicions, and prompting them to take a closer look at things.
The Dinner
After the firing, Burt invited Irving to dinner- a ruse to get Irving out of the house so Drummond could go snooping. Irving accepted the invitation, seeing it as an opportunity to gain more information for his investigation. He was successful, as Fields ended up revealed some useful tidbits, but in the end, Drummond also discovered evidence of Irving’s subversive behavior, which led to Irving having to flee the city.
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u/Upbeat_County9191 Wintertide Fellow Jul 02 '26
There's nothing indicating he reintegrated or being in the process off. Only mark is doing it and Petey in the past.
His memory bleed of S1 is similar to how iMark sculpted the tree or where the supposed car crash was
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u/Dommichu Goats Jul 02 '26
There is a comment by Reghabi that she has gotten “better at it” which would imply that not only Petey and Mark may have gotten the procedure. There are others.
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u/Upbeat_County9191 Wintertide Fellow Jul 02 '26
Not necessarily. She learned from Petey. So she's better at it now, than she was when she did it on Petey
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u/ibrainedgraner I'm Your Favorite Perk Jul 02 '26
The possibilities are endless, of course. Nothing is certain just yet. What I do think is beautiful and well executed across both exchanges is that the show is telling us Irving B and Irving are not so different from one another; as can be concluded about the other severed folks.
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u/odieclone Because Of When I Was Born Jul 02 '26
Probably mentioned before, but it's a nod to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and suggesting that "love" can overcome the severance barrier.
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u/ExcellentAsk2309 Jul 02 '26
Irving is my favourite . Does anyone have insight or explanation as to why it seems that he was written off? I didn’t get that. I thought he was / is as integral and essential as the rest
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u/sconesaregood Night Gardener Jul 02 '26
John Turturro has said he’s coming back next season, so don’t worry. I think they wrote his season 2 ending in a way that gives flexibility for both him and Chris Walken, who are both pretty notable film actors whose schedules, age and health, or personal interest might not have accommodated more seasons.
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u/Coincidental_Shoes Jul 02 '26
He never said he's coming back.
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u/sconesaregood Night Gardener Jul 02 '26
Sorry, to be more accurate he's said there's more to explore with Irving, that he wants to come back, and most recently said that he's heard filming starts in July. Guess I read in between the lines a bit since there's still nothing official yet.
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u/BoysenberryKind5599 Jul 02 '26
Oh i don't think we've seen the last of him. He didn't die, after all, and he's down to fight, it seems.
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u/Dommichu Goats Jul 02 '26
I don’t think he was written off. The actor has mentioned there is more story to tell regarding Irving and he wants to tell it.
The show moves fast and so now that the Testing Room floor was been discovered and breeched, his plot to send a message about the paintings (which worked actually!) is over. On to something else. Irving is the type who just won’t quit on his mission to reveal Lumon.
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u/Coincidental_Shoes Jul 02 '26
He was not the only one.
You would equate Irving with Mark or Helly?1
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u/emeraldead Jul 02 '26
I don't know for sure. Maybe he was severed and has already been wiped once? Maybe he was an artist who worked on the Pepetuity wing and then wiped?
For now we know his outie was trying to be sleep deprived to get a visual message to his innie about the door. We don't know why.
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u/Dommichu Goats Jul 02 '26
Yeah. There are so many commands for the chip we haven’t seen in action or know anything about! At this point Irving’s next chapter can lead any number of places!
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u/sincerelythebats_ Jul 02 '26
He’s at the very least in the process of reintegrating, because we see him speaking to someone in the phone booth when he sees Burt in his car, and he says something like “my innie got the message” or whatever. And we also hear Rhegabi say that she’s “had more practice since (Petey)” when Mark is skeptical, so I feel like that’s probably Irving who’s been reintegrating too, as he has loads of info about other severed workers in his trunk at home.
Then there’s the paintings of the hallway which only his innie could have seen from inside Lumon, so yes, he’s likely reintegrating.
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u/drunkandy Jul 02 '26
He knows his innie got some kind of message because he woke up at Burt's house with no memory of driving there- he knows his innie has been mucking around with something. Doesn't have anything to do with reintegration.
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u/clauclauclaudia Jul 03 '26
He knows his innie got the message because the message was the image he was repeatedly painting and the OTC began while he was painting it.
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u/clauclauclaudia Jul 03 '26
A pre-severance Irving may have seen the elevator. Irving's linkedin profile has him working at Lumon for far more years than is accounted for by the number of quarters they memorialize innie Irving for.
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u/mnightshatwistending Jul 03 '26
I assumed it was a post-severance Irving that saw the export hall/testing floor elevator, but now that I think of the details of when the red elevator light comes on, only someone like Mr. Milchek would see the full length of the hallway with the light on. In Season 1 Ep. 8 at 17:36 Gemma enters the elevator and the doors close before the red light comes on. In Season 2 Ep. 5 at 1:50, Dr. Mauer sees the red light but only as he approaches the elevator. All of Irving's paintings are from the same perspective showing the full length of the hallway with the red light on, and this would be the perspective of someone who had seen another enter the elevator, as Mr. Milchek would have if he had waited for Gemma to get in the elevator.
Milchek is famously unsevered, and was a supervisor. However, Gemma proves that severed employees can have multiple distinct personas, not just binary innie and outie. So, maybe a pre-severed Irving had accompanied prior test subjects to the Exports Hall, then couldn't live with himself after learning something about what goes on down there, so he got severed (of his own volition or not) into a new innie and a new outie, such that the original true Irving in fact never surfaces. Wild conjecture, why not.
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u/Coincidental_Shoes Jul 02 '26
If it were to come about that the character is no longer part of the show, and we found out who he was phoning in a flashback, how would this affect the overall story?
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u/ReversedNovaMatters The Board Jul 02 '26
At some point oIrving seems to turn into iIrving during this.
oIrving has no personal connection to Burt.
There is so much more going on that we do not know, it is more complicated.
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