The episode kicks off with that dolly zoom that we’ve all come to know and love, flipping a switch on Irving Bailiff and turning him into Irving B.
Only, he’s not in the office.
Irv is standing on a patch of icy, frozen lake, in the middle of a park that looks a lot like a painting he and his once lover Burt used to look at. Mark S. is on the cliff above him, any traces of last week’s reintegration nowhere to be seen (for now). Our complicated, mysterious redhead, whose identity will be revealed by the end of the episode, shows up next to Irving, and as they climb up towards Mark, Dylan appears, too.
The innies are seeing the sky for the first time. It’s white, harsh, and clear. It’s so, so expansive.
They’re not free, though. Of course not. They’re still on the clock. A synth–y tune brings them over to a TV set, where a recording of Milchick informs the MDR team that they’re having an Outdoor Retreat and Team–Building Occurrence. Their destination? Group unity. Their journey? Finding a secret fourth appendix to the diary of Lumon’s founder (the Bible of Lumon’s work cult) that apparently details the time that founder Kier Eagan first balanced the four tempers that make up the pillars of Lumon.
They’re guided to the appendix by a smudged figure in the distance that looks a lot like Mark, who pointsing to a smudged figure in the distance that looks a lot like Helly, who is pointing to a cave that holds a leatherbound tome—because everyone at Lumon is all about the dramatic aesthetics. It’s a splash of red in the cold black, gray, and blue of the cave, and it matches Helly/Helena’s hair.
The appendix tells the story of how Kier’s twin, Dieter, was erased from company history. A Dylan figure points the way, and MDR travels through the woods, reading about how Dieter wanted to be a pauper in the woods. He apparently brought Kier with him into the wilderness and masturbated in front of him. Do the innies even know what masturbation is?
MDR comes across a dead seal (“Maybe this is what dead things look like,” muses Mark, losing innocence by the second), which Irving, who is crashing out in ways heretofore unseen by man, suggests that they eat. Everyone else judges him aggressively for that, which makes him feel unloved. He tries bringing up his suspicions about Helly to Mark, but Mark, due to his massive crush, pushes back.
Eventually, MDR finds Milchick in the flesh. He guides them to a clearing, where Miss Huang waits with tents, food, and fire—another novelty for the innies, who are understandably enraptured by it.
Helly comes to bring Irving a little seal made out of snow as a peace offering. Rather than take her olive branch, he snaps it clean over his knee, demanding that she tell him what her outie actually saw at the end of season one. Helly’s face hardens into something undeniably heiress–like, and she storms out of the tent.
Later that night, Milchick continues reading the appendix like the world’s most fucked–up bedtime story to MDR. It ends with Dieter (… turning into a nature beast …?) and Kier encountering and tempering Woe, who is personified as a bedraggled woman who is so corpselike and creepy that I almost had to sleep with my bedside lamp on.
Helly bursts out laughing, in a way that’s both characteristic of both her innie and her outie. It’s ridiculous, she says. This is just some idiotic moral fable telling us to not masturbate.
Mark, whipped, laughs; Dylan, scared, hovers; Irving, untrusting, boils (once again—do the innies know what masturbation is?); Milchick, as punishment, hurls all the marshmallows into the fire.
Rather than trust that this is the antiestablishment Helly that we know and love, Irving doubles down on his suspicion that there’s something wrong with her. They get into a fight, and it ends when Helly strikes the ultimate below–the–belt blow—bringing up Burt. The vibe is decimated. It’s time for bed.
Mark and Helly find their way into a tent together, bathed in cinematic reds and oranges from the heater lamp and blues and whites from the tent around them and the winter sky outside of it. They kiss, and it escalates, and, damn, the innies are really getting an education this episode.
There’s a flash—the reintegration hits—Mark Scout doesn’t know where he is, or who he’s on top of—is that Gemma he’s imagining?—and then we’re back to innie Mark S. and his work wife lying together in a tent. Helly admits she didn’t want to talk about what her outie saw because she’s ashamed of who she is out there. If that’s Helena, is it all just talk, or is she telling the truth? Is she starting to hate herself as much as Helly hates her?
Irving, enraged, goes off to confront Milchick, but falls asleep outside. In his dream, he finds the MDR office setup in the woods. He sits down and starts to work on a project called "Montauk." And then Burt’s there, rolling down the partition and smiling knowingly at him. And then Woe is there, tap–tapping at her computer and snarling at Irving, getting this close to sinking her teeth into his neck.
The numbers on Irving’s computer swim. They turn into letters, spelling EAGAN. They form Helly’s face.
Irving wakes up.
Mark does, too, and finds Helly gone. Irving has kidnapped her and brought her to the base of what Milchick claimed was the tallest waterfall in the world (Lumon employees love lying for literally no reason), threatening her life. He screams for Milchick, and she begs Irving to stop.
Irving accuses Helly of being an outie. Of being an Eagan. He screams at Milchick to “turn her back.”
And, at Helena Eagan’s insistence, trapped in Irving B.’s chokehold, half–drowned in the freezing lake, Milchick does. He puts a hand to his ear and calls to reverse the “Glasgow Block,” bringing the Helly that we’ve been missing the past four episodes back. Irving was right (I was right!), it was Helena the whole time, undercover on the severed floor.
So, Helly’s back, but at what cost? Immediately, Milchick fires Irving, saying that it’ll be as if he never existed. The episode ends the reverse of how it started—with our beloved dolly zoom turning Irving B. back into Irving Bailiff.
There is so much to unpack this episode. The ethical quandary of consent with Mark and Helly/Helena. The question of where Helena’s values and morals lie as she gets to know the innies more. The end of Irving, for now, though I doubt that’s the last we’ll see of him. The reintegration process, how it’ll sneak up on Mark. The increasingly insane Lumon lore and the heavy hammering–in of the idea that control of the innies is predicated on control of their knowledge and pleasure. All that, and we didn’t even get what’s become a nearly episodic occurrence of Cobel’s road rage. I truly could not begin to guess what’s in store for next week.
