WARNING! This article contains SPOILERS for Severance season 2, episode 5!As Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) returns from nearly being drowned at Woe’s Hollow, her meeting with fellow Lumon executives in member of the Eagan family, she might have it worst of all.

In Severance season 2, episode 4’s ending, it was confirmed that Helena was secretly posing as Helly since MDR’s return in the premiere. There were several reasons why Helena went to the severed floor herself, including fears about Helly trying to kill her, Helly sabotaging her reputation and Lumon, her growing obsession with Mark, and her feeling more freedom and joy on the severed floor than in the outside world. After Irving nearly drowned her at Woe’s Hollow to get Helly back instead, Helena is stuck in the outside world again, with more of her own twisted torment being revealed.

Helena Eagan Has Her Four Tempers Controlled & Manipulated By Lumon

Lumon's Medical Team Regularly Balances Her Tempers To Fit Kier's Guidelines

When Helena meets with Drummond and Lumon's Board (via Natalie) in Severance season 2, episode 5, Drummond explains that the medical team says her “tempers will rebalance quickly” following her traumatic incident at Woe’s Hollow. The implications of Drummond’s line is that Lumon’s medical staff regularly manipulates Helena’s Four Tempers and balances them to meet an ideal scale set out by Kier Eagan. Therefore, Helena’s personality, behavior, and thoughts are internally controlled and influenced by Lumon.

Not only this, but it’s likely that Helena’s tempers have been scientifically altered and balanced ever since she was a child. Lumon has often emphasized to Innies the importance of Kier Eagan’s Four Tempers in his philosophy and teachings, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that those behavioral expectations are also placed on the company’s non-severed personnel, not to mention Kier’s own descendants. Helena’s cold, joyless, and at times menacing disposition doesn’t seem to even be her fault, but rather her brain being hardwired and manipulated her entire life by her family.

According to Kier’s philosophy, each person’s soul is comprised of four emotional components: Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice. The four “tempers” are each associated with different emotions and feelings, with a person’s character being defined by the “precise ratio” of these tempers inside them. Kier believed that, in order to have control over oneself and the world around them, they must overcome and “tame” the Four Tempers by striking the perfect balance of them.

Severance Has Already Hinted MDR's Number Sorting Is Used To Balance Peoples' Four Tempers

The Numbers Are Sorted Into Categories That Correspond To The Four Tempers

Though it wasn’t clear that this was occurring on the same level of power as Helena Eagan, Lumon manipulating the Four Tempers of their personnel isn’t a novel concept. It’s long been theorized that Macrodata Refinement’s job is secretly to balance the Four Tempers of people in Lumon’s control, “refining” their behavior and biology to become more perfect in the eyes of Kier. However, it was assumed that this was simply being used on severed individuals on the testing floor, such as Gemma/Ms. Casey with the Cold Harbor file.

Severance's canon companion book, The Lexington Letter, includes a section that outlines the responsibilities of Macrodata Refinement.

When MDR sorts numbers groups, they do so based on how the numbers make them “feel,” with Mark giving an example of the numbers being scary. They end up sorting the numbers between four categories, WO, FC, DR, and MA; once all five bins are full with an equal ratio of those four categories each, a file in MDR is complete. The abbreviations of those categories are implied to correspond to the Four Tempers (Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice), which is further ed by the MDR employee handbook’s outlines of the “emotions” that each category elicits:

• WO: These numbers elicit melancholy or despair.
• FC: These numbers elicit joy, gaiety or ecstasy.
• DR: These numbers elicit fear, anxiety or apprehension.
• MA: These numbers elicit rage or a desire to do harm.

Are Helena's Tempers Not Balanced When She's Helly?

Helly's Personality Would Look More Like Helena If Her Tempers Were Balanced

Since Helena’s emotional state is being so directly controlled as an Outie, it’s curious that her Innie personality is so different and more reactive. It suggests that manipulations of the Four Tempers don’t transfer between the Innie and Outie parts of a severed person’s brain in Severance, which may be part of why Helly’s personality compared to Helena’s is so much less restricted and guarded.

When Helena is Helly, she gets to be a version of herself uninfluenced by Lumon’s scientific emotional tampering. Still, it’s unclear why Lumon would directly balance some Outies’ tempers, but not those of their Innies.

New episodes of Severance season 2 release Fridays on Apple TV+.