Theory on what Lumon is actually working on

!I watched the S2 finale last night and have been thinking about this idea ever since.!<

!The simple explanation for what Lumon is testing with Gemma, and their plans afterwards, is that they're testing a new version of severance that creates totally docile innies, and that their plans for after the test is done is to simply kill Gemma to cover their trail, extract her chip for some undisclosed reason, and bury her with a goat because they're into rituals.!<

!I think there's more going on here. For one, I don't think they're truly a ritualistic cult at the highest levels of the company, I think they use that as a tool for manipulation. And I don't think they'd design in such an expensive and complicated ritual (how many people do they employ and how much money do they spend to raise flocks of goats in a basement?) I'm also not seeing a simple explanation for why they need to extract the severance chip when they've been shown to have essentially full control over it remotely - they don't need it out of her head to access the data on it, that's for sure. And as expensive as prototypes are, I don't think they're going to have problems making more so it's not about reuse of the hardware.!<

!I think what they're working on is not improved severance but rather inverted severance. The goal is not to create an innie to do the things the outie does not want to do, the goal is to *create a new person entirely*. For what purpose, I'm still not sure. But I think that Gemma was not going to physically die, rather her consciousness was going to die, replaced by a totally new person in the previous body. The show is pretty consistent in talking about a split consciousness never being activated again as "death", and that's exactly what would be happening with Gemma - except her outie, rather than her innie, would "die" this way.!<

!As for the goat - again, like I said, I don't think Lumon would put that much effort into purely ritualistic purposes for something that is also so secretive. They use rituals and stories to control people (and especially innies), but nobody in the world but a small handful of goat-herding innies have any idea about the goat situation. It's needlessly complex. However: we saw that the goat was not going to be killed with a gun, but rather a targeted spike right into the forehead. I.e. a perfect hole straight into its brain would have been drilled. We saw that Lumon was especially interested in the goat's personality, as if that was meaningful to whatever they were doing with it. And though they said that the goat was going to be "entombed with a cherished woman, whose spirit it must guide to kier's door", I don't think that was literal (in particular, the fact that they're describing Gemma as a cherished woman suggests they're not so unceremoniously disposing of her).!<

!When Petey's chip was returned to Cobel, she used the words "that's Petey?", implying that the chip *was* him. Petey being his innie name, I believe this means the chips literally contain the consciousness of the innie at least in some form. And if they've achieved reverse severance, then Gemma's chip will literally contain Gemma, and they are planning to implant it in the goat (still for reasons I don't think we understand).!<

!I'm still trying to piece together the motivations behind all of this (they seem to really think they're doing something great for humanity, so perhaps it is really just a very extreme form of helping to manage trauma? Or maybe it is more complex than that), but that is what I think the direct goals of the experimentation and the goats are. And I think that creates the potential for a meaningful goal for future seasons - if an outie can be fully extracted, leaving only the innie behind, then there's the end goal for Helly and Mark. I think season 3 will either focus on achieving that goal, or at least on unveiling this broader mystery to set up that final goal for a future season. Ending season 2 with Mark choosing Helly despite there being seemingly no path for them to be together implies to me that somehow they *will* create that path, and this is one potential way for them to do it.!<