‘Severance’ Season 2, episode 6: What’s with those documents Mr. Drummond finds?

From tense employee reviews to Mark (Adam Scott) collapsing due to reintegration, a lot happens in Severance Season 2, episode 6 — so much so that one brief sequence may have slipped under the radar.

We’re talking about Lumon employee Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) — the intimidatingly deep-voiced gentleman who conducts Milchick’s review — breaking into a house to look at some documents.

But whose house is he entering, and what’s the deal with the documents he finds? Let’s recap.

What does Mr. Drummond do in Season 2, episode 6?

While outtie Irving (John Turturro) is having dinner with Burt (Christopher Walken) and his partner, we see a shot of Mr. Drummond approaching Irving’s unoccupied house. Producing a large set of keys, Mr. Drummond lets himself in, then opens a padlocked chest to reveal a set of jumbled documents.

Lifting up a “Kier Regional Road Map,” Mr. Drummond finds a long list of typed names. At the top, someone – presumably Irving – has scrawled “Severed Employee List.”

The pages appear to be an alphabetised list of every Lumon employee who has undergone the Severance procedure, along with details such as age, address, and the possible date the procedure was undertaken. There are also pencil notes next to some of the names. Beside “Doug Coleman,” for instance – who apparently fractured his hand in a car crash and was involved in a subsequent lawsuit with the city over the placement of a stop sign – Irving has written: “Did the settlement lead to Severance?”

What are you up to, Irving?
Credit: Apple TV+

Why does Irving have these documents?

Now this is the big question, isn’t it? We already know that outtie Irving was obsessively drawing the exports hall – the entrance to the mysterious “testing floor” where Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) is sent in Season 1 – so it’s clear that he has an interest in Lumon’s secrets. But based on the discovery of the list, it seems like he may be far deeper in than we first thought.

Could he be actively working to track down Severed employees in order to bring Lumon’s secrets to light? And could that have something to do with the phone call he makes on a pay phone in episode 5?

Severance Season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV+, with a new episode every Friday.