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Spoilers below.
As far as anyone watching Severance knows, the Eagans are not gods. They’re human beings in stuffy suits and pencil skirts. But there’s no question that in the universe of the Apple TV+ series, they wield immense (and perhaps unchecked) power—the kind that grants them the ability not only to shape narratives but to shape the course of history itself. When it comes to the modern-day Eagans, their holiness is second only to their long-deceased patriarch, Kier.
Lumon Industries, first founded by Kier Eagan in the 19th century, is a company of mysterious origins and even more mysterious deeds. No one inside or outside of Lumon seems to understand the full scope of what Lumon does—no one except, perhaps, the Eagans themselves, and the fortunate few brought into their inner circle. Audiences know Lumon is a biotechnology company that employs nearly half the city of Kier, PE. We know they produce and distribute a significant number of goods. We know that Lumon created and popularized the “severance procedure,” in which an employee’s consciousness is bifurcated between their lives inside (“Innie”) and outside (“Outie”) of Lumon. We know the Eagans are probably not up to any good.
Throughout Severance season 1, creator Dan Erickson drops breadcrumbs about Kier and his cohort, culminating in the dramatic reveal that Helly R., an employee on Lumon’s severed floor, is in fact Helena Eagan. Season 2 then reveals how Helena is working to manipulate her Innie’s friends in the Department of Macrodata Refinement. But to understand her motives—and the lore that informs the MDR Innies’ misgivings about Lumon—it’s important to trace the Eagan family tree back to its highest branches. Let’s get into it.
Kier Eagan
Perhaps the most important figure in Lumon lore, Kier Eagan served as the company’s founder and its leader/CEO from 1865 to 1939. He is treated as a deity within Lumon itself, where oil paintings and writings detail his life and teachings.
There is not much we know about Kier’s upbringing apart from what is shared in the appendices of the severed employee Compliance Handbook, which gathers Kier’s writings and treats them as scripture. Some of these passages detail how, as a 12-year-old boy, Kier worked in a furniture emporium, where he was beaten by his boss. He also mentions that he suffered from “consumption” (i.e. tuberculosis) as a child, and that his mother and father shared a “close biological relationship.”
Several paintings within Lumon, as maintained by the Department of Optics & Design, showcase scenes from Kier’s life. These include The Youthful Convalescence of Kier, in which a young Kier is depicted recovering from tuberculosis; The Courtship of Kier and Imogene, in which an older Kier is seen meeting his future wife at an ether factory; and Kier Invites You to Drink of His Water, in which an even older Kier looks upon the Great Lakes; among others.
Kier believed all human souls consisted of a balance of four so-called tempers: Woe, Frolic, Malice, and Dread. Only by “taming” these tempers could a person fulfill their purpose in life and do the greatest degree of “service” on Earth. He also believed that the highest form of service was labor, specifically the labor that stemmed from the “love” shared between employer and employee. As he espouses in the Compliance Handbook, “Endow in each swing of your axe or swipe of your pen the sum of your affections, that through me they may be purified and returned. No higher purpose may be found than this. Nor any higher love…This, after all, is the ultimate recompense for your labor. No monetary wage that I may give you can surmount the benefit of the pure love which can only exist between a worker and his employer. It is the only kind of truly selfless love.”
Dieter Eagan
The existence of Dieter Eagan was not revealed until Severance season 2, episode 4, in which the MDR Innies venture to Woe’s Hollow and learn of a secret Fourth Appendix to the Compliance Handbook. This Fourth Appendix is dedicated to Dieter, whom the Innies soon learn was Kier’s twin brother.
As episode 4 demonstrates, Dieter died at Woe’s Hollow, supposedly turning into a tree as punishment for masturbating in the forest that would one day bear his name. It seems likelier—though not yet confirmed—that this tree-shapeshifting saga is simply Lumon propaganda and that Kier killed Dieter himself.
Imogene Eagan
Kier first met Imogene, the woman who’d become his wife, while he was working as a stewman and she as a swab girl in an ether factory. Their romance is shown in the painting The Courtship of Kier and Imogene, which Irving and Burt gaze upon in Severance season 1. Little else is known about Imogene or her experience with Lumon.
Ambrose Eagan
Ambrose Eagan was Lumon’s CEO after his father, Kier. He led the company from 1939 to 1941—a conspicuously short amount of time, given that Kier himself reigned for nearly 75 years.
Myrtle Eagan
Myrtle Eagan, Kier and Imogene’s daughter, was Lumon’s third CEO and the company’s first female CEO, operating from 1941 to 1959. According to Irving, she “told her father at age 7 she was going to be the first” female CEO. She is the namesake for the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls, which Harmony Cobel attended, as well as the Myrtle Eagan Credit Union, which sends Irving’s Outie a letter in season 1.
Baird Eagan
The fourth Lumon CEO was Baird Eagan, active from 1959 to 1976. The neighborhood in which Mark Scout and Harmony Cobel live—Baird Creek Manor—bears his name.
Gerhardt Eagan
Gerhardt Eagan, CEO No. 5, operated from 1976 to 1987. The Kier, PE, restaurant Gerhardt’s, where Mark has a date with his sister’s doula in season 1, is named after him.
Phillip “Pip” Eagan
Phillip, better known as “Pip,” took control of Lumon from 1987 to 1999. Pip’s Bar & Grille, as seen in season 1, is another restaurant in Kier, PE.
Leonora Eagan
Lumon’s second female CEO, Leonora, worked from 1999 to 2003. Irving’s home neighborhood of Leonora Lake is named after her.
Jame Eagan
The current Lumon CEO—and father to Helena Eagan—is Jame Eagan, who ascended to the CEO title in 2003. His wax likeness first appears in the Perpetuity Wing in season 1, episode 3, “In Perpetuity,” but he makes his first in-the-flesh appearance (played by Michael Siberry) in the season 1 finale.
Helena Eagan
Daughter of Jame and, presumably, next in line for Lumon CEO, Helena Eagan underwent the severance procedure as a public demonstration of its supposed humaneness and efficacy. Inside the Lumon severed floor, she is known as “Helly R.”
Although she is not the company’s acting CEO, Helena seems to possess a great deal of power within Lumon. (This includes her ability to travel to the severed floor while retaining her Outie’s consciousness, as revealed in season 2, episode 4.)
Helena does not consider Innies to be “real people,” and her relationship with her father seems tense at best: At the beginning of season 2, he refers to her as a “fetid moppet.” Ouch.
This story will be updated.