Fans of Severance know that nothing in Lumon's world is random. Everything has a hidden meaning, from the cryptic philosophy of Kier Eagan to the strange, emotion-triggering numbers the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team sorts. One of the most intriguing puzzles in the show revolves around a list of place names — Allentown, Dranesville, Siena, Lucknow, Loveland, Wellington, St. Pierre, Zurich, and Cold Harbor. At first glance, these seem like arbitrary locations, but as the layers of Lumon's operations are peeled back, the true significance of these names begins to emerge.
These names correspond to MDR data files, but they also match the names of rooms on Lumon's secret "Testing Floor." Each room is designed for psychological experimentation, putting severed employees through unsettling, controlled stress tests. The Allentown room, for example, forces a subject to write endless thank-you notes for unwanted Christmas gifts. The Wellington room is a never-ending dental exam. Each room represents a different kind of discomfort, and each has a direct connection to a file being refined by MDR. The unsettling implication? The work MDR does isn’t just abstract data entry—it is somehow monitoring or influencing real experiences happening elsewhere in the facility.
Then there’s the concept of the Four Tempers: Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice. Kier Eagan, Lumon’s founder, claimed that every human soul is composed of these four elements. The idea is that by taming these tempers, a person can achieve greatness—an ideology Lumon has fully integrated into its operations. The MDR team literally sorts numbers based on how they make them feel, each category aligning with one of the Four Tempers. This isn’t just a quirky corporate exercise; it suggests that Lumon is actively studying and manipulating human emotions. The connection deepens when considering the Testing Floor experiments—each test elicits strong emotional reactions, likely designed to measure or control these fundamental aspects of the human psyche.
The Four Tempers also play a role in Lumon’s rituals and symbolism. Kier is depicted in artwork taming the figures of Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice, and during the eerie Waffle Party, performers wear masks representing each of these emotions. It’s as if Lumon’s ultimate goal isn’t just to sever work and personal consciousness—it’s to gain control over human nature itself.
This revelation raises countless questions. What exactly is MDR refining? Are they processing raw human emotion into something usable? Is Lumon attempting to reshape humanity by breaking people down into their base emotional components? And, most disturbingly, what happens when someone’s temper is completely “tamed”? Severance thrives on these unsettling mysteries, and as the story unfolds, it’s becoming clear that Lumon’s ambitions extend far beyond the workplace.
