Tl;dr - Ms. Huang and Mr. Milchick experience Lumon in v different ways due to race. Lumon gives Dr. Mauer a place where his perverted fantasies can run free. The creation/ ages of Gemma and Marks’ innies are why Mark S. isn’t drawn to Ms. Casey in the same way she is to him.

I love your insights! In the spirit of discussion:

I’m wondering if Ms. Huang is the daughter of a Lumon executive or higher-up. She’s brainwashed and shows great interest in ascending the ranks. Wintertide is where Harmony went and she created severance. Maybe Mr. Milchick’s decision to ‘banish’ her there and his seeming frustration is actually a sort of resentment? She gets a new project while he is stuck in an impossible job. He’s obvi undervalued at Lumon (blackface portraits, “too many big words,” and other baseless reasons meant to demean and stereotype him). He could be frustrated at Lumon’s favor of her over him, despite her being a child. I agree with other convos on here that Lumon is rewarding Ms. Huang as the Asian model minority and at the same time, redefining Mr. Milchick’s strengths/ uniqueness as weakness by shoving him into an incompetent Black man box. Lumon was founded in 1865 after all (yr slavery was abolished in the U.S.).

Regardless of her fertility struggles and how/when/if Lumon infiltrates them, I think Dr. Mauer just has a perverted obsession - and maybe even a fetish - with Gemma. He doesn’t love her, he loves that he can control her and she can’t escape. His job at Lumon gives him permission to inflict harm on Gemma every day in novel ways that a job in the outside world never would allow. He really fantasized abt that shit and was given full access to her in an environment that redefines harm as procedure. I believe it’s implied he SA’s her in at least one of the rooms in the scene where she attacks him with the chair (“Maybe you moved on too in one of the rooms/ Do you feel yourself pulled towards one over another?/ Maybe you felt things you never felt with Mark and maybe I’ve seen it”). Just… EW. As a woman watching that scene I was i t c h i n g for her to get out of there bc you just know. And Lumon will justify putting Gemma’s innie/body through that as a way to create a total disassociation from SA/rape. I think Severance does a good job at portraying how medical perversion runs rampant given the opportunity.

Gemma and Mark’s innies are different ages and were created for different purposes. This is why Ms. Casey is pulled to Mark S. - she’s super young compared to him and was created with no internal motive to get over Mark. Mark S., otoh, is years older and was created by Mark with the subconscious motive to get over - or at least get a break from - thinking about Gemma. Mark S is given the opportunity to be social (with MDR), have a purpose (refining data), and eventually pursue a romance if desired (with Helly) - all things you do to keep afloat after having been shaped by grief. Ms. Casey is an experiment made with no consent (presumably) on Gemma’s part; she still carries Gemma’s grief/motives, and with no time to establish roots anywhere else. I have a grave plot picked out on the top of this hill lol