‘Severance’ Season 2 Just Referenced a Real-World Conspiracy

Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Severance through Season 2, Episode 4

Season 2 of Severance has already kicked into high gear. Even by the standards of the show’s stellar sophomore go-around, the newest installment, “Woe’s Hollow,” was something special. On top of raising even more mysteries about Lumon Industries’ history, the episode answered questions we didn’t even know we had and gave a stellar acting showcase for Britt Lower and especially John Turturro (we certainly hope this isn’t the last we see of Irving). While Lumon’s ultimate endgame is still shrouded in mystery, it thankfully never feels like the show has been deliberately withholding answers or spinning its wheels.

Yet this week might’ve already given us a vague hint about where things could go, and most viewers probably didn’t even notice. In the midst of the MDR team’s corporate retreat, the increasingly paranoid Irving starts to unravel and wanders into the woods as a show of rebellion against Milchick. He gets lost and falls asleep, having a dream filled with the kind of nightmarish imagery that would’ve made David Lynch proud. But for the most eagle-eyed viewers, the most fascinating Easter egg in that sequence was a text pop-up on a computer monitor, which read “Montauk: 3% Complete.”

What Is the Montauk Project in ‘Severance’?

Throughout its run, Severance has been no stranger to incorporating conspiracies into its plot. While we still don’t know the full details, it’s clear that Lumon’s intentions for the MDR team are part of a larger plan. In addition, Mark is key to an almost-completed project known only as “Cold Harbor,” which, intriguingly, is named after a real-world event, specifically a battle in the Civil War that took place in 1864, one year before Lumon was founded in the show’s history.

So the shoutout to Montauk can’t have been an accident. It likely refers to the Montauk Project, a conspiracy theory that originated in the 1980s-90s, based on the belief that the US government conducted a series of projects at a secret Air Force base in Montauk, New York. Believers in the conspiracy have alleged that these specific projects included but weren’t limited to psychological warfare, mind control, teleportation, time travel, and aliens.

While rumblings of the conspiracy happened during the ‘80s, it wasn’t until the following decade that they made their way into the public consciousness when author Preston Nichols began publishing his Montauk Project book series. Nichols claimed to have recovered repressed memories of being abducted and experimented on at a young age, and while he left it open to interpretation whether his books were intended to be fictional, they had a large following among conspiracy theorists.

While most have almost unanimously agreed that Nichols’ books were meant as fiction first and foremost, his ideas have nonetheless had a surprising impact on popular culture. The 1984 film The Philadelphia Experiment was based on an alleged experiment that Montauk followers believe was an early moment in the project’s history. Most famously, Stranger Things was heavily inspired by the Montauk Project, even though it never incorporated it directly, to the point where the show’s original working title was “Montauk.”

What Does The Montauk Project Mean for ‘Severance’?

Assuming this shoutout is indeed meant as foreshadowing, what does this mean about where Severance is going? There are lots of possibilities. Firstly, if we look at the reference to Montauk in the context of the scene (where it appeared on an MDR computer monitor), it seems most obvious that “Montauk” is another of Lumon’s secret projects. It could even be possible that it’s another name for “Cold Harbor,” the project that the MDR team has been assigned to complete.

But what little foreshadowing we’ve seen about “Cold Harbor” has signified that it mostly involves Ms. Casey/Gemma. The Montauk Project, as a theory, suggested a much more global and far-reaching scope, so it seems safe to assume that “Montauk” in Severance would be one of Lumon’s biggest-scale projects, if not its biggest. Whether this also involves actual abduction and experimentation or severance on a much bigger canvas remains to be seen.

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An early moment in “Woe’s Hollow” may have given additional foreshadowing. In maybe the episode’s strangest scene, the MDR team encounters a rotting seal carcass, and in a fit of hunger, Irving suggests that they eat it. The sequence has eerie similarities to an event in 2008, where an unidentified animal body (most believed it was a seal) was unearthed in Montauk, near the Air Force base. Believers in the Montauk Project have often pointed to this as proof of a conspiracy, and the creature was dubbed the “Montauk Monster.”

Of course, there’s always the possibility that these shoutouts may just be coincidental. Ben Stiller, who’s directed most Severance episodes, has spoken of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as an influence on the show, and thus, the references to Montauk could simply just be a shoutout to that movie’s devastating climax. Even still, the repeated references to the Montauk Project itself feel too explicit to dismiss as coincidence, and while we don’t know where they’ll eventually lead (if anywhere), Severance has us completely hooked. Wherever it goes, we’re there immediately. Severance Season 2 is streaming on Apple TV, with new episodes every Friday.