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Watching a good title sequence is like reading a letter that was written in invisible ink. More often than not, the message is there all along, you just don’t have all the tools to decipher it until the very end. With the second season of “Severance,” that moment has come. Over the past two months, the internet has spent countless hours pointing that flashlight over various parts of the shows opening credits. Its mastermind, Oliver Latta (who is known as Extraweg) gave so few interviews that fans and reporters alike were left to theorize. And unsurprisingly, speculations ran wild. Is Lumon raising children so they can live solely on the severed floor? As the season 2 grand finale draws near, Lattawhose work on the first season’s title sequence won the Emmy Award for outstanding main title designagreed to take out his flashlight and help shine light on the intro. When we spoke, eight episodes had aired, two remained. Latta doesn’t know how the show ends. He specifically didn’t want to. I have more creative freedom to work when I dont know, he told me. But he does know the season’s plot twists, which Ben Stiller, the show’s executive producer and director, sent him in the form of sparse sentences. No images, no explanations, just small notes, one sentence each, says Latta. (He did receive one image, of Adam Scott’s character, Mark, holding balloons in the hallway, and balloons became a leitmotif in the title sequence.) Here are the clues we couldve seen all along, and what to look out for in the finale. Spoilers ahead! The clues that were there all along Mark reintegrated. In the first season, the title sequence encapsulated the show’s premise with a surreal interpretation of Mark’s innie going to work and Mark’s outie going home. In the second season, the intro sketches out what is arguably the show’s biggest arc: Mark’s outie, in his bright red pajamas, goes spelunking in a cave that looks an awful lot like a brain, albeit green. I designed the second intro as a journey Mark is going into his own brain, says Latta. [Image: courtesy Apple] This journey, we now know, was a poetic interpretation of Mark’s dangerous reintegration process, which begins at the end of Episode 3. Latta had been on set and so he knew that Mark would be reintegrating in his basement, which is why he showed the character going down a gloomy stairwell. But in the “Severance” world, reintegrating also means delving into parts of your brain that feel foreign to you because you’re not aware of them. The steps, then, became a metaphor for the subconscious. And those balloons became a metaphor for memories you can’t touch. [Image: courtesy Apple] Cobel is the real mastermind of ‘Severance’. Around the 1-minute mark of the opening credits, we watch an unmistakable outline of Cobel close an abstract picture book with Mark in it. The scene suggested Cobels importance, but as of Episode 8, Sweet Vitriol, we know its true meaning: Cobel wasnt just running the severed floor. She invented the severance procedure itself. (Latta says the visual of the book was inspired by Episode 8, where Cobel finds her old notebooks with the circuit blueprints and base code for the procedure.) [Image: courtesy Apple] Mark’s innie and outie are most likely going to meet. In fact, they keep bumping into each other in the opening credits. First, when his outie shines a flashlight at his innie. Then, on the icy lake, when his innie turns into a balloon that subsequently drifts off, then again when he carries his outie through a portal. If the show’s Episode 9 is any indication, these hint at the season finale’s unavoidable end: Mark’s innie is set to have a conversation with his outie at the birthing cabin. The clues we’re yet to decipher What’s up with all the babies? Latta says there is specific number of babies illustrated in the title sequence and that number is intentional. Apparently, Stiller wanted Latta to add lots of babies crawling around, and when Latta asked why, Stiller simply said: I like babies. [Image: courtesy Apple] The multitude of babies could be a twisted reference to Mark and Gemma’s harrowing journey through miscarriage and IVF, but that wouldn’t explain the sudden appearance of a bearded Kier Eagan baby crawling by Mark’s feet towards the end of the intro. I can’t tell you anything, says Latta on that matter. [Image: courtesy Apple] What’s that in Irving’s mug? The little trinkets flowing out of Irving’s mug are neither paper clips, nor trumpets. They’re euphoniumsa brass instrument that sounds like a mellower trombone. And that is all we know. Ben [Stiller] wanted to have every scene connected to a specific to moment in the show, says Latta. This (probably) means we should expect the musical instrumentor whatever it stands forto make a clear appearance in the show. Perhaps something to look out for in the season finale. [Image: courtesy Apple] What is Mark wearing on his face? Around the 30 second mark of the intro, right after those euphoniums pour out of Irving’s mug, Mark catches a glimpse of his reflection in a scratched-up mirror. His face in the reflection is eerily white, as if wearing a mask. Latta says he expected that scene to come up in the show already, but it still hasn’t. Another one for the finale? [Image: courtesy Apple] What’s the deal with the goats? Right after Mark sees his reflection in the mirror, he jumped into a desk of his head that soon morphs into a goat, rendered like a painting. The moment is rife with symbolism so, unsurprisingly, Latta danced around it. Creatively, the transition from Mark sitting at the desk to goats symbolizes disorientation and the shift in Marks internal conflict, he said. The painting aspect is connected to a scene in Episode 2 where Mark enters an empty room with outlines on the walls where paintings once hung. There is more to tell, he says, but since I haven’t seen episode 10, I don’t want to spoil anything. We can probably expect those goats to make a comeback in the finale. Or at least a painting of them.
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E-Commerce
This nondescript piece of home decor is about the size of a narrow bookshelf, and it looks like a vertical soundbar speaker. In reality, it’s a new home fitness deviceand it hides a gym’s worth of workout machines. Amp is a $1,995 home fitness device that streamlines the clunkiness of a cable-based workout machine into the form of a thin, wall-mounted home accessory. It’s now available to pre-order for $99. Just six feet tall and one foot deep, Amp consists of a vertical mounted bar with a movable arm that pivots off the side and serves as the main workout interface. Unlike the typical gym machine with a stack of weights attached to a cable, Amp’s single cable interface connects to a magnetic resistance motor and electrical driver and can be adjusted to different heights to accommodate everything from bicep curls to squats to lunges. [Photo: Amp] Amp was founded by Shalom Meckenzie, a fitness enthusiast and tech entrepreneur. In 2020, he merged his betting software company SBTech with the sports betting company DraftKings for an undisclosed sum. Driven by the impact of losing his father when he was just 18, Meckenzie knew he wanted his next venture to focus on wellness and fitness. He scoured the market and came upon the idea of creating a workout machine that was more accessible than the large, complex and often ugly devices found in gyms. The starting point for Amp’s fitness device was to build something that “would look like a premium, luxury product,” Meckenzie says. “Not like a fitness device but more something like furniture that will blend into any house.” [Photo: Amp] This is a particular challenge for the multi-functional workout device known as a cable crossover machine, which Amp is intended to replicate, and is among one of the most used devices in any gym. Users can do a wide variety of exercises on this machine, but it’s often an elevator-sized metal cage strung through with cables, pulleys, and large stacks of weights. The solution would need the versatility of a crossover machine without the clunkinessMeckenzie wanted Amp to sit in people’s living rooms, not get tucked away in their basements, while still being useful. “We’ve looked into all of our competitors and we chose one thing. We said we don’t want to look like any of them,” Meckenzie says. [Photo: Amp] About three years ago, he convened a team to devise a different approach. They holed up in a villa for two weeks and started designing prototypes out of cardboard. “I think we built about 25 different mock-ups,” says Shahar Cohen, Amp’s CEO. At the end of this campout design sprint the team members voted on their favorite version of the device. Their selection was unanimous. This prototype became Amp. Amp’s magnetic motor has between five and 100 pounds of resistance, which may seem low for those accustomed to straining against hundreds of pounds of metal weight. Meckenzie says the team designed Amp to optimize how a user works out, not how much weight they can pull. It operates on three different modes that alter the way weight and resistance are used in any given exercise. A fixed mode uses the same amount of resistance for both pulling and releasing the cable. A rubber band-like mode increases the resistance the longer a user pulls on the cable. And “eccentric” mode adds more resistance as the user returns the cable back to its starting point, meaning a 20-pound curl will feel like 30 pounds during the release. [Photo: Amp] With custom-built motors, integrated artificial intelligence, and a companion smartphone app, the device can mimic some of the most common machines found in gyms, and also create entirely new types of workouts based on the needs of the user. “We have a lot of opportunity for different types of resistance that you actually cannot perform with standard mechanical systems,” says Cohen. About 1,000 of Amp’s fitness devices have shipped to customers and installed so far, mostly in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, and the company expects to ship to other regions in the coming months. The full $1,995 cost includes shipping as well as installation, which Cohen compares to mounting a television. Hitting a relatively low price point was important to Meckenzie, who developed the idea for Amp during the pandemic when people were buying up smart home fitness devices like Peloton, which sell for between $1,495 and $2,495. “For me, it wasn’t interesting to sell a device for $5,000 or $10,000 which will not be accessible to people,” Meckenzie says. “I wanted to do something that has a big impact.”
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E-Commerce
As the geographic center of Indianapolis, Monument Circle is in many ways the heart of the city. The 284-foot Soldiers and Sailors Monument towering in the middle is a beloved local landmark, and the plaza and fountain around its base has been a gathering place since it opened in 1902. But the way most people experience it is through the window of a car. Monument Circle is technically a traffic circle, which means the center of the city is little more than a place for cars to drive. The past couple of years, however, have shown another possibility. Since 2023, from June through November, part of the traffic circle has been closed to cars and converted into Spark on the Circle, a pop-up park that has activated the space and brought tens of thousands of pedestrians downtown. Created by the nonprofit art and design organization Big Car Collaborative in partnership with several local agencies, Spark on the Circle turns a quarter of the circle into an activated public space, with Astroturf covering the roadway, shade structures, games, vendors, and stages for performances. Now the landscape architects who designed the park are working on a plan that could make the pop-up permanent. Merritt Chase, a firm based in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, has been involved in shaping Monument Circle for several years through its work on the downtown resiliency strategy launched by Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett in 2022. One plan arising from the strategy calls for a renewed focus on improving walkability downtown and creating more public space for an emerging residential population. Spark on the Circle, and Merritt Chase’s design for it, was created to turn Monument Circle into a destination rather than something most people simply drive past. Historic Monument Circle: Soldiers and Sailors Monument, circa 1950 [Photo: W.H. Bass Photo Co., Indiana Historical Society] There’s been so much history there, protests and demonstrations, parades, festivals, and just the everyday life of the city that passed through that space. There have always been questions around the identity of the circle, the use of the circle, the future potential of the circle, says Chris Merritt, cofounder of Merritt Chase. Over the last couple of years, the temporary park we’ve put out there has definitely been a successful case study of new ways to reimagine and use the circle. So we’re building on that to continue to think about what a future permanent plan might be for the circle. [Rendering: courtesy Merritt Chase] Merritt Chase has just been awarded an 18-month fellowship to further explore ideas for redesigning or reusing Monument Circle. The firm is one of 10 fellows supported by Emerson Collective, a philanthropy started by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple’s Steve Jobs. The 2025 cohort of fellows, announced this week, is focused on local leadership and community-centered place-based work, according to Patrick D’Arcy, senior director of fellowships at Emerson Collective. We really respect [Merritt Chases] community-centered approach. They believe that successful public projects require more than just really beautiful design; they also require community trust and collaboration and relationship building, says D’Arcy. Their vision for a more utilized and joyful Monument Circle is really inspiring. [Photo: courtesy Merritt Chase] A circle for the city Preparations for this summer’s iteration of Spark on the Circle are still underway, but its expected to open in June. Megan Vukusich is director of the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development, and though she says there is currently no funding or official plan in place to make the pop-up park a permanent one, the visitation numbers suggest strong community interest. According to a report from Big Car Collective, the 2024 iteration of the park saw more than 71,000 visitors, with more than 400 on an average day. More than 80% of visitors spent 30 minutes or more at the park, and 30% went to a restaurant or did shopping downtown after leaving. [Photo: courtesy Merritt Chase] We don’t want people to come and snap a quick photo. We’d like them to stay, maybe check out some of the local shops. These metrics are showing us that it is having an impact on the larger community, Vukusich says. Having activations such as Spark gives us a little bit more insight into what the community is looking for. It’s also a reflection of the changing shape of downtown Indianapolis. Like many city centers, it was deeply affected by the pandemic, with many companies shuttering offices or allowing employees to work remotely. But downtown development is coming back, and officials estimate more than $9 billion worth of projects are in the pipeline, including a convention center expansion and a new 40-story hotel tower. This is happening as downtown’s residential population has grown to more than 29,000, more than a 46% increase since 2010. [Photo: courtesy Merritt Chase] Merritt Chase has two other ongoing projects that feed into this growth. One is a pedestrian conversion of three blocks leading up to the convention center; the other will add a new park to the site of a historic downtown food hall, with construction beginning this summer. Spark on the Circle is the pop-up version of these larger projects. This is a way of leveraging a lot of that private investment and connecting it all across the city to create better everyday livable experiences, Merritt says. Projects like these and the way they connect will give more of a reason to not just visit but hopefully encourage more people to live downtown. Though some local commenters have bemoaned any street closures, downtown Indianapolis has a very tight downtown grid with city blocks that are smaller than those in other big cities. The closure of part of the circle, or even the entire circle, would require only a short driving detour. [Photo: courtesy Merritt Chase] Merritt Chase will use its 18-month Emerson Collective fellowship to expand its community outreach, research, and planning for the future of downtown centered around Monument Circle, using Spark on the Circle as one of the primary use cases. Chase Merritt cofounder Nina Chase says the 2024 visitation numbers show there’s a big appetite for this kind of unconventional public space in the city. That’s been really lovely to see, she says. We as landscape architects, we think yes that’s what you should do, but sometimes you never know. So it’s good to see it in action. Merritt says turning the pop-up park into something more permanent is one option, but it’s not the predetermined goal of the plan Merritt Chase will produce. They’re more interested in finding out how people in the city want to use the space and then designing around that. Whether it’s parklike and still open for cars or completely closed to cars, I think that’s still to be determined through lots of conversations with folks downtown and residents.
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E-Commerce
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