Warning: spoilers ahead for the Severance season 1 finale
Severance creator Dan Erickson explains the strange waffle party orgy scene featured in the penultimate episode of season 1. Premiering earlier this year on Apple TV+, Severance has proven to be a hit with audiences, boasting plenty of mystery (including a room full of baby goats) and a truly unique premise. The show, which just aired its season 1 finale on April 8, follows a group of office employees who have undergone a surgical procedure to separate their work memories from their personal memories, and their quest to discover what exactly their company, Lumon Industries, does.
Severance focuses mainly on the Macro-Data Refinement team at Lumon, where employees, led by Mark S. (Adam Scott), identify and remove “scary” numbers from an endless spreadsheet. Various rewards are given to the team members for meeting the refinement quotas Lumon has put in place, including finger traps, melon parties, “music dance experiences,” and, as an ultimate reward, a waffle party. The second to last episode of Severance season 1 finally gives audiences a glimpse of what a waffle party truly entails, with Dylan (Zach Cherry) consuming a plate of waffles before a group of scantily clad people in masks surround him and perform an erotic dance.
In a new interview with EW, Erickson explains the odd waffle party orgy scene and how the idea fits into the broader philosophy of Lumon Industries and its treatment of its workers. Erickson explains that the idea was actually first proposed in the writer’s room as a joke, but that it ultimately came to work within the highly capitalistic framework within Lumon. All aspects of life are commodified at the company, Erickson says, and it would make sense that sex is treated the same way. Check out his full comment below:
I honestly think it started as a joke. In the writers’ room, I think somebody made the joke-slash-comment that maybe this turns out to be a masked orgy of sorts. You don’t want to make something that’s just shocking and weird for the sake of it, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense within this idea that everything is commodified at Lumon, that all aspects of being a human being are commodified and redirected to instill company loyalty. And this idea of commodifying sex — like, of course they would find a way to use that.
So that was the big question: If we do this, is it just going to seem like a big, goofy choice, or is it going to be something that really works with the lore that we’ve set up for this company? And ultimately, we decided to go for it, and we juxtapose it with what I think is this really sweet scene between Mark and Helly, where they finally admit their feelings for each other. It’s this organic, very human version of a budding romance next to this extremely dark, weird, gross, commodified version of sex. Because [the Waffle Party] is like, yes, you can experience sex or sexual gratification or eroticism, but it’s all going to be in the context of the Lumon mythos. And sort of the moral of the orgy is that Lumon provides all things, and you must be grateful. “The moral of the orgy” is also a good episode title.
The “innies,” as Severance refers to the in-office versions of the main characters, are essentially treated as sub-human and are given small, sometimes silly rewards for meeting goals and completing tasks. The waffle party is the most coveted of all the rewards that staff can achieve at Lumon, something that finally makes sense with the reveal in the finale that a waffle party also includes an orgy with a group of people in masks. Interestingly, Erickson doesn’t address exactly why large, ornate (and creepy) masks are also part of the affair.
Severance has proven to be highly adept at building out mysteries and constructing a unique world within which the main characters operate. While finally figuring out what a waffle party entails was perhaps less of a mystery than figuring out how Mark’s wife, Gemma, is still alive, it nonetheless serves to better build out the messed-up world of Lumon. With Apple having renewed Severance season 2, it certainly seems like audiences are in for many more mysteries and odd Lumon rituals when new episodes do eventually release.
