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Week to week, season to season, Severance viewers rabidly comb over plot revelations, character dialogue, and even the smallest of set props as they try to piece together the shows central mysteries. One of the shows most consistent but subtle messages about characters and conflict comes in how Severance uses color. Like everything Severance, it seems to be calculated; across clothing and set decoration and even elements of the shows animated intro, like actors credits the creators of Severance tell a story through reds, blues, and greens.Severances use of color is not only highly intentional, its helpful in understanding characters intentions, allegiances, and behavior. For a show layered in puzzles and hidden meaning, its worth understanding what the shows colors symbolize.Heres a brief guide to the most prominent colors of Severance, and what the shows creators are trying to tell us through visual clues.BlueThe color blue is representative of Lumon and the work half of work-life balance. Lumon housing is blue. The Macrodata Refinement teams badges are blue. Blue is the dominant color of innies wardrobes and that of many Lumon employees like Ms. Cobel/Selvig and, at times, Mr. Milchick (though he often sticks to black and white shades; more on that below).Watching the blues of Severance becomes its own key to understanding the shifting allegiances and psyches of the show. Helly/Helenas wardrobe is one of the most frequently used means of expressing behavior through color in Severance, particularly in how it incorporates blue. When she first appears in the shows first episode, Helly R. is dressed all in blue but her clothing color shifts throughout the season, eventually incorporating white, brown, and yellow. This puts her more closely aligned with her fellow MDR workers, palette-wise, and seems to tease the true conflict between her outie and innie. When Helly R. conforms to severed floor life, she wears a monochromatic yellow dress, and later regresses to blue as she works to disguise her true nature.RedThe color red is representative of the outside world the life half of work-life balance.Scenes set outside Lumon, particularly around Mark, Gemma, Devon, and Rickens lives, prominently feature red. Rickens book The You You Are is contraband at Marks work, and its cover is predominantly red and orange. In their happiest flashbacks Gemma wears red clothes of varying hues. Mark wears red pajamas in Severances intro sequences. His outie drinks red wine to excess. Hellys red hair not actor Britt Lowers natural hair color, by the way!symbolizes her real-life separation from the rest of the MDR team.Ricken actor Michael Chernus is the only person whose name appears in red in the shows opening credits.Red, blue, and purpleThe contrast of red and blue can be seen throughout Severance, including the red and blue betta fish that live in a divided tank in Marks home. It seems unsurprising that Marks house would be best personified by such a direct clash: While Mark ostensibly enjoys work-life balance through the severance procedure, he lives in Lumon housing, his outie is closely monitored by Lumon employees, and his living quarters are where former Lumon employees seek refuge. Even beyond The Horrors of the show, it is impossible for Mark to actually enjoy the intended privilege of being severed.But its not the only place: Conflict between red and blue is featured strongly in Peteys arc in season 1. Petey wears a red and blue striped robe while hiding out at Marks as he struggles with reintegration sickness. Peteys death scene is lit in red and blue, thanks to the flashing lights of police cars.Sometimes, red and blue come together in splashes of purple and heres where the colorblocking gets even more intricate. In episode 1 of season 2 of Severance, as Mark sprints through a seemingly endless hallway, he passes a purple meeting room, which appears to represent the recent Overtime Contingency Protocol that sent innies to the outside world. Intriguingly, some of Marks substitute MDR coworkers Gwendoline Y. (Alia Shawkat) and Mark W. (Bob Balaban) have red-blue or purple clothing; Gwendoline wears a purple dress and Mark W. wears red and blue suspenders, a possible indicator of their experiences with reintegration.One subtle use of purple in season 2 is clothing worn by Dylans wife, Gretchen. While she generally wears blue tones, shes dressed in a light purple shirt in the scene in which she lies to outie Dylan about her visit with innie Dylan, indicating conflict between the two worlds she now inhabits.GreenGreen is seen throughout the show, but its meaning is less clearly defined than the usage of red and blue. Much of it appears to be related to the mysterious and important underground work being done at Lumon: The badges used by the Optics and Design and Mammalians Nurturable teams are green, and the nature of their work is thus far largely unexplained. Obviously, the grazing fields of the Mammalians Nurturable room is a lush grass green. The green carpeting and green dividers in the MDR office appear to serve as barriers between team members themselves and workers in the floors below. Much of whats occurring underneath the severed floor is presented with green tones, including the Watchers Room and Gemmas living quarters and clothing.Green is also the color of Marks brain or someones brain in the shows animated intro. Christopher Walken, Britt Lower, and Zach Cherry also have their names in green in the shows opening credits. Green is also used in conjunction with red in a season 1 prop loaded with meaning: the red and green candle that Ms. Cobel steals from Mark, which also appears during the wellness session between Ms. Casey and Mark.Severances use of green could have multiple interpretations. As seen in the goat room, it could indicate flourishing growth, hope, fertility, and springtime. But in traditional color theory, green often also has negative connotations: greed, sickliness, envy, and bile.Green and blueSome of the intersection of these two colors is a bit open-ended, given how much green represents a sort of mystery. But theyre combined enough on the show to be of note particularly on Helly. While Helly R. sometimes wears a mix of green and blue together on the severed floor, Helena Eagans dress in the season 1 finale shows an intertwining helix of green and blue, one of the shows less subtle uses of color: That pairing of colors indicates Lumons work combining with new growth and the coming of spring the show has thus far been set during what feels like neverending winter with Helly herself representing a new generation of the Eagan family.Black and whiteLumon administrators and security personnel, including Seth Milchick, Ms. Huang, and Mr. Drummond, all wear a lot of black and white. Medical personnel on the testing floor, where Gemma is trapped, wear almost exclusively white. These employees lack of color implies restriction and order in some cases, the clinical, analytical, or coolly dispassionate demeanors required of their jobs.Also, Milchick just looks really cool in a black leather motorcycle jacket.
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