Fans got a tease of some of the other Lumon branches in Severance Season 2 with the mention of 5X in Episode 2.
Even though fans are now 11 episodes into Apple TV+'s gripping corporate thriller, its bizarre world and the corporation that seems to dominate it seems more mysterious than ever.
Season 2 has seen the scope of Severance widen, introducing more of the outside world beyond the show's company walls and bringing in new confounding characters like Sarah Bock's teenage deputy manager Ms. Huang.
What Is 5X In Severance Season 2?
Mr. Millchick (played by Tramell Tillman) mentions something he calls "5X" in Severance Season 2, but what does the Lumon manager actually mean?
Tillman's mustachioed company man brings up the term in Episode 2, conversing with another Lumon employee about getting Adam Scott's Mark S back to work.
He tells them he is ready and willing to fill the roles left behind by Mark's fellow Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team, and has "a floater from overseas" as well as a "pair who were laid off from 5X:"
"I've got a floater from overseas and a pair who were laid off from 5X."
Millchick's proposition prompts a "5X... Really..." from the Lumon employee, sporting a look of shock splayed across their face as they say it.
This number and letter combo also popped up in Season 2's premiere, as Bob Balaban's Mark W introduced himself to his new coworkers (including Mark S):
"I'm from the MDR department of branch 5X, where I worked with Gwendolyn Y. Kind of a fun fact about me is that I thought I'd be permanently retired when my branch shut down. So this is a nice surprise."
It seems that 5X is the branch number of the Lumon office where new characters Mark W and Gwendoline Y came from before they appeared filling the desks of Mark S's former coworkers at the beginning of Season 2, Episode 1.
Then, as fans jump back in Episode 2, it is revealed that the 5X workers had been laid off, and Mr. Millchick was going to take advantage of that by bringing new coworkers on to join Mark S's MDR team.
However, these coworkers do not last long, as Mark S enacts his plan to bring his old coworkers back at the end of Episode 1, successfully getting the 5X transfers fired and getting Lumon to rehire his friends (including Helly R who seems to be harboring a dark secret).
What Happened at Lumon's 5X Branch?
Some have speculated this 5X location may have been home to yet another Lumon working experiment, perhaps being a place where workers do not get to go home, simply keeping them there 24 hours a day.
This could be an interesting twist, with each branch serving its own unique experimental function, but it seems unlikely. When Mark W is dragged from the series' central Lumon office in Episode 2 he proclaims that he just moved from Grand Rapids, seemingly debunking this 24-hour-worker theory.
Lumon would not beyond planting those sorts of memories into one of its employees, but Mark W's protest as he was fired seems to shut down that particular line of thinking.
What audiences do know is that wherever 5X is and whatever they were doing there has been shut down. That likely means either whatever was happening at Branch 5X was too controversial or dangerous to continue happening, or Lumon as a whole is in dire straights and is in the process of contracting.
If Lumon is fledgling, the pressure on a team like Mark's MDR cohort as well as how big of a deal Helly's Season 1 finale outburst was would make sense. Fans will likely find out the secret behind 5X and some of the other Lumon branches in the next few episodes.
New episodes of Severance Season 2 continue to be released every Friday on Apple TV+.
