The Severance Goat Room Has Finally Been Explained

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Severance

Ever since Helly and Mark stumbled upon a room filled with goats in Season 1 of Severance, fans have been wondering why Lumon is raising these animals in their walls. In the Season 2 finale, we finally get an answer. The goats are being raised for ritual sacrifice. Grim, we know.

Earlier this season, Severance introduced Gwendoline Christie’s Lorne, the head Goat Herder (unclear if that’s her official title) in a department called Mammalians Nurturable. In Episode 3, Helly and Mark return to the goat room while searching for Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) and learn that the humans in the walled-in pasture are a particularly feral bunch of innies who are extremely protective of their flock.

Lorne returns at the end of Season 2, when she brings a baby goat (named Emile! Cute!) to Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), the imposing Kier acolyte who spars with both Helena (Britt Lower) and Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) in the outie world.

“Mammalians Nurturable brings an offering,” says Lorne, as she ushers in the adorable goat.

“Has it verve?” asks Mr. Drummond.

“It does.”

“Wiles?”

“The most of its flock.”

“This beast will be entombed with a cherished woman whose spirit it must guide to Kier’s door. Is it up to the task?”

“It is.”

At this point Mr. Drummond pulls out a gun. So, yes, the goats are being killed as part of Kier’s bizarre religion to which the severed people in Mammalians Nurturable apparently adhere.

Like most revelations in Severance, learning about the fate of the goats only raises more questions about Lumon, its strange cult, and its ultimate objective. Why do they have to kill the goal with a gun? It seems there would be less cruel ways to carry out the sacrifice. Even assuming the Egans don’t care about animal cruelty, there must be less risky ways to carry out the sacrifice just in case, I don’t know, the innie to whom you hand the gun decides to rebel.

And why is this sacrifice only taking place in front of one person? Isn’t the point of ritual sacrifice for it to be performed in front of adherents to the religion as a twisted bonding experience and proof of faith in the higher power? For that matter, why would Lumon program a group of innies to care deeply about these baby goats they have to sacrificially kill? Wouldn’t that seed resentment and the beginnings of the exact rebellion that takes place?

As she prepares to kill the baby goat, Lorne asks, “How many more must I give?” Her question implies that many baby goats have died before this one. Does that mean that Lumon has been experimenting on many more people the way they have been experimenting on Gemma? Or do they bury every innie who dies in Lumon with a goat? How many have there been? Do people not notice mass disappearances of Lumon employees?

Anyway, this all seems like a major distraction for Mr. Drummond, whose real work is completing the Cold Harbor project. He ought to be off perfecting the science of severance by ensuring Gemma cannot feel a trace of her real-world trauma as she deconstructs a crib identical to the one she built for the child she and Mark never had. Pulling off that experiment—which is apparently so important that Lumon’s entire future depends on its outcome—seems slightly more important than overseeing the murder of a goat.