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Helena Eagan Is a Fascinating Monster on ‘Severance’

By Chris Revelle | TV | January 27, 2025 |

Severence Helena Eagan Britt Lower.JPG
Header Image Source: AppleTV+

AppleTV’s Severance has no shortage of villains to represent the overlapping evils of corporations and cults. There are obsequious smilers like Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) and Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander), whose grins never reach their eyes as they do Lumon’s dirty work of putting a happy face on company skullduggery. There are icy sphinxes like Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who maintains an unsettling calm that belies searing anger instead of serenity. The second season has begun exploring Lumon’s ruling executive dynasty, the Eagans, in greater detail. During the beguiling second episode (entitled “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig”), we get a wonderfully layered look at Helena Eagan (Britt Lower), the heir to Lumon and the series’ newest villain to be added to the rogue’s gallery.

Fictional villainy is not an exact science. It depends as much on the story they appear in as it depends on a viewer’s taste. I love a campy, cackling supervillain type like He-Man’s Skeletor, but a great villain on a show like Severance needs to balance their mysteriously evil behavior with compelling and identifiably human motivations. The key to nailing this kind of character is to hold their villainous and sympathetic elements simultaneously, without letting either element overwhelm the other. I like to point to Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones as an example; she’s the product of a deeply misogynistic world that views her as a “broodmare,” so in some ways her anger at the world is understandable, but that doesn’t change the fact she’s an awful terrible person who sees most other human lives as expendable pawns in her power games. She’s no less a villain for her human pain. Helena Eagan is such a monster.

Let’s begin with the moment when Helena’s CEO/father lurches out of the elevator in the dangerous hours after the fiasco at the gala. As an aside, I can’t get over how uncanny and ghoulish Jame Eagan looks. Bless whatever combination of make-up, lighting, and actor Michael Siberry’s choices because Jame looks like a possessed animatronic. Britt Lower uses small adjustments in her face to show Helena steeling herself before Jame spits “fetid moppet” in her face. Though what happened was beyond Helena’s ability to predict, she’s the seeming head of severance operations at Lumon, so the embarrassment is her responsibility. My brief but memorable brush with Scientology came to mind in this scene, particularly the backward notions about child-rearing. This kind of high-handed abuse feels baked into Severance’s cult allusions and this brief exchange suggests this is the general tenor of Helena’s relationship with Jame. It seems likely this kind of abusive treatment is how Helena was raised. She seems to swallow this before setting out to do some shady damage control.

Helena records a statement that blames her outburst on an interaction between alcohol and a “non-Lumon medication,” taking responsibility, providing a cover story, and trashing the competition in a corporate hydra hat-trick. She summons Harmony into an ominous boardroom to offer an appointment to the Severance Advisory Council, a definitely not made-up-on-the-spot organization within Lumon. With a perfectly inscrutable face, Helena claims it recognizes Harmony’s expertise, and it feels quite clear this supposed promotion is really a neutralization. The glory moment comes when Helena reviews footage of the severed floor. She sees her innie Helly speaking with Mark (Adam Scott) and eventually kissing him in a memorable season 1 scene. Helena seems thunderstruck as if she’s never seen this kind of affection before. She replays the moment, eyes hungry in a new way. Helena sees genuine emotional connection and affection, which seems rare to her. It’s also something her innie, someone Helena does not view as human, has that she does not.

When it’s initially decided that Helena will go back down to the severed floor to meet Mark’s demands so that the mysterious Cold Harbor project will be completed, Helena seems reluctant, and who could blame her? Giving up control of your own body is a terrifying prospect. But then the episode’s final moments imply a monster of a twist. Each of the male Macro Data teammates troop through the locker room and goes down the elevator, and each time the audience hears the trademark severed bing. Then we see Helena enter the elevator and go down, notably bing-less, implying that it’s Helena entering the office, un-severed. This reframes the decision to enter the severed floor as a triple-act: Helena is trying to experience a positive human connection for what might be the first time, while also taking Mark’s affection from Helly, and manipulating Mark to remain with Lumon. Helena is unambiguously a villain, but she’s also the product of an abusive environment who’s reaching for affection they’ve not known. She’s in a tragic position, but that doesn’t make her less evil in her intentions.

Something I appreciate about Severance is how it doesn’t rest on being a weird mystery-box show. Yes, it’s an occasionally darkly comedic sci-fi thriller where weird chips split the mind, but it’s also about insurmountable grief, staying well under the crushing weight of capitalism, and the ways humans seek connection in unfriendly circumstances. A villain like Helena is perfect for Severance: she’s a monster born of human cruelties who reaches for the same community any human does. Helena isn’t some flat, cartoon evil; she’s something much more interesting. I can’t wait to see where this character goes, not only for what kind of chaos she’ll wreak but also for the textured development she’ll undergo. It will be interesting to watch Helena live through this episode of Undercover Boss from Hell and that ought to inspire some fascinating growth.