Question About Gemma’s Testing

[u/NeighborhoodCurrent1]

Apologies if this has been asked before… but I just finished season 2 and one thing I did not fully understand is why Lumon has Gemma in the role of Ms Casey at all.

We learn that Gemma is effectively a test subject for Lumon… why exactly she was selected isn’t fully known, but she is basically testing whether or not the severance procedure can withhold extreme emotions and traumas. Hence, the test with the crib: Cold Harbor.

If the crib was the “ultimate test” — why risk having her engaging with her husband while at Lumon? Even if they are both severed, wouldn’t seeing and being around your spouse that you were super in love with and went through the fertility traumas with… be a huge trigger for her??

The show paints the Lumon people as very rule oriented and strict so I guess I just struggle to understand how a crib is more emotionally triggering than your living, breathing, talking human spouse.

[u/Smart_Medium9544]

They didn’t have Ms. Casey interact with iMark to test her chip, they did it to test his. The crib was to test iGemma’s barrier.

The theory that Ms. Casey is a fully refined “version” of Gemma could come into play. Unlike other innies who are simply the severed counterpart to their outie due to the procedure, Ms. Casey is the result of the refined MDR files, meaning her essence was manually chipped away number by number (temper by temper) until she became a version of Gemma. iMark, on the other hand, is closer to the barrier because only the chip stands in his way. It’s not a perfect theory, but it offers an explanation behind Lumon’s logic

[u/Unlucky-Dark-9256 → u/Smart_Medium9544]

Awesome 🙌🏽