What's The Song Featured In Severance Season 2 Episode 7 — And Why Does It Matter?

Do not attend this Lumon-sponsored Music Dance Experience if you haven't watched "Chikhai Bardo," the seventh episode of "Severance" Season 2. There are spoilers ahead!

Finally, after nearly two seasons, "Severance" has told us what's going on with Gemma Scout (Dichen Lachman), the wife of our protagonist Mark Scout (Adam Scott). To say her fate is unpleasant is an understatement — and I'll get to that — but throughout the second season's seventh episode, "Chikhai Bardo," we also get to see Mark and Gemma's love story mostly in full, which is vital; up until now, "Severance" has only shown Gemma in the briefest of flashbacks or as Ms. Casey, her personality on the severed floor. In one of the episode's most gorgeous sequences (which is masterfully crafted by first-time director Jessica Lee Gagné, who's worked as the cinematographer on "Severance" since the very beginning), we watch a montage of Mark and Gemma's happiest days as a married couple set to a French ditty by Jacques Brel titled "La Valse à Mille Temps," which translates to "The Thousand-Time Waltz."

The lyrics of "La Valse à Mille Temps" are, unsurprisingly, really important; "Severance" rarely does anything by accident, and this song, which sounds like it's set to the sort of tune you'd hear on a carousel, isn't actually sped up for the montage and really is just that extremely fast-paced. The lyrics are fairly repetitive (which also sort of works with the whole concept of "Severance"), and the first verse includes some lyrics that seem entirely too appropriate: "In the first beat of the waltz / All alone you are already smiling / At the first beat of the waltz / I am alone, but I see you." Then there's the refrain, which builds upon itself and discusses waltzes of varying times (three-beats, 20 years old, and so on) before arriving here. (I've translated it into English rather than the original French.)

"A waltz in a thousand beats
A waltz in a thousand beats
A waltz took the time
To wait 20 years
For you to be 20 years old
And for me to be 20 years old
A waltz in a thousand beats
A waltz in a thousand beats
A waltz in a thousand beats
Only offers lovers
300 and 33 times the time
To build a novel."

Clearly, this song references Mark and Gemma's love throughout the years as well as their separation. Not only does it play over a sequence with a lengthy passage of time, but it also tells the story of two lovers separated by time. It's a devastating but perfect choice for the episode, truly.

With its slightly unsettling, carousel-esque melody and lyrics about two people dancing the same dance over different cadences and years, "La Valse à Mille Temps" is the perfect song to explain exactly how Mark and Gemma ended up in their respective spots on "Severance." The two first meet at a blood drive at their shared workplace, Ganz University — at a Lumon-sponsored blood drive, no less — and after Mark gives Gemma an ant farm because he thought she said she liked ants during their date (she actually said she likes "plants"), the two embark on a real relationship. In that montage, we see Mark and Gemma sweetly dancing together, making memories in their home, sharing tender moments, and perhaps most importantly, there's a repeated motif of their piles of books rising and falling in volume. Not only are Mark and Gemma both academics, but this also calls back to the "La Valse à Mille Temps" lyric "A waltz in a thousand beats / Only offers lovers / 300 and 33 times the time / To build a novel."

Mark and Gemma's marriage hits a serious hurdle when the two realize they're perhaps unable to have children. One of the episode's most harrowing moments, which is saying something, depicts Gemma's (likely) first miscarriage and the pain the couple feels. As they try to conceive through IVF (at a Lumon clinic, which raises some upsetting questions), their relationship becomes strained, and just before Gemma leaves the house for the final time, Mark is barely present, even forgetting to tell his wife that he loves her until she reminds him. That's when Gemma's car accident occurs, revealing that, before Gemma's apparent death, Mark and Gemma's relationship wasn't particularly healthy ... providing yet another heartbreaking detail.

The most gut-wrenching thing about "Chikhai Bardo" as a whole is that we now know one thing for sure: Mark and Gemma are desperately trying to find each other again and even exist in similar planes of reality, but they're divided by the severance procedure. We know that Mark is trying the reintegration process to find Gemma now that he's sure he's alive, and thanks to "Chikhai Bardo," we learn that the Gemma on the training floor — the one who's being subjected to variously horrifying experiences — appears to be the real Gemma, meaning her "outie" and not her "innie" (because her innie, as we already know, is Ms. Casey). This is all but confirmed when Gemma escapes the testing floor and takes the elevator up to the severed floor, only to encounter Mr. Milchick (Trammell Tillman) — who addresses her as Ms. Casey and tells her to turn around and take the elevator back down.

The Gemma we see on the testing floor is consumed with thoughts of Mark, and it's pretty clear that she's trying to get back to him in any way that she possibly can, which is one of the saddest things we've ever seen on "Severance" (again, that's really saying something). Hopefully, she doesn't have to wait 20 years like the lovers in "La Valse à Mille Temps."

New episodes of "Severance" drop early on Apple TV+ every Thursday night at 9 P.M. EST.