Severance Fan Theory Explains Who Irving's Outie Really Is (Another Evil Corporation Is Involved)
Why is Irving playing 007 and who is behind it all?
The characters of Severance underwent the procedure for different reasons. Mark is trying to recover from the death of his wife, and working at Lumon allows him to temporarily shut out his unbearable experiences.
His colleagues, the workaholics Irving and Dylan, also have their own interests. Dylan, it seems, agreed to the procedure so that his obsession with work would not interfere with his family life.
And Irving's extra is obsessed with exposing Lumon – it is assumed that his father once worked for the company, and now the man himself is collecting data about it for some reason. He probably hopes to undermine the system from within.
This assumption is most likely true, but one of the Reddit users offered a convincing theory as to who exactly is behind Irving's "spying" mission.
The Lexington Letter Reveals Another Corporation Competing With Lumon
From the first episodes, Irving seems like a man who knows more than he says. His behavior and interactions with other characters suggest that the man has hidden motives.
At the end of the first season, Irving's innie finds medals that indicate he has a military background, as well as a box full of records about other severed workers. But how did he get all this information?
From the show's additional materials, and more specifically from The Lexington Letter written by the creators of Severance, we learn of a terrorist attack in New York.
A truck belonging to a company competing with Lumon called The Dorner Therapeutics exploded, and Dorner representatives announced that their secret devices had been hacked.
The explosion occurred shortly after the book's protagonist, Peggy, also a severed worker, finished working on the Lexington file. After the incident, Peggy herself became convinced that she was engaged in corporate espionage.
Dorner Therapeutics May Have Hired Irving to Spy on Severed Floor
Given Irving's military background and his supposed knowledge of ciphers, which we discussed in this theory, The Dorner Therapeutics may have recruited Irving.
Most likely, Dorner is also a large corporation with its own dark secrets, helping Irving gather information to eventually use against Lumon.
In the Coming Episodes, We Will Probably Learn the Truth About Irving's Outie
In Episode 4 of Season 2, a shocking event occurs – Irving's innie is practically killed in Lumon. But the question is: what will happen to his outie? He will definitely continue to search for the truth, because Irv knows too much about Lumon and the secrets of the corporation.
Now that only the outie is left in the story, the writers will have to reveal his hidden motives – so in the next episodes we will most likely see if the version about the rival company is true.