What is O&D in Severance? Mysterious department & paintings explained

There’s plenty of oddities in the Lumon building, but one of the biggest Severance mysteries comes from the Optics and Design department, otherwise known as O&D.

Although the majority of Severance is spent in the Microdata Refinement office, Lumon holds many secrets within its walls. In Season 1, viewers were introduced to O&D, the quiet and fearful department whose work revolves around strange paintings.

With Severance Season 2 on the way, we’re likely to see more of Optics and Design, and perhaps some new, equally baffling departments, too.

But what does O&D actually do, and why are they so important? Here’s everything you need to know ahead of the upcoming season. (Warning: spoilers ahead for Severance Season 1!)

What does O&D do?

Much like the other Lumon departments, the job of O&D (short for Optics and Design), remains something of a mystery – though mostly, their day-to-day work revolves around the storage and maintenance of the Lumon art collection.

Of course, this begs the question: what do they actually do? Well, the same could be asked of Microdata Refinement, or any other of the many seemingly useless Lumon departments.

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All anyone knows of O&R is what we’re shown in the show, which isn’t much. Much like the MDR team, O&D takes place on the Severed floor of Lumon. Those who work in the department wear blue lab cots and green badges, and the team is led by the soft-spoken Burt G.

As for their actual job, it seems to entail the large collection of art stored in the Lumon building. Much like, say, people who would work in a museum taking care of artifacts, the O&D department rotates and maintains the artwork collection in the building.

In Season 1 Episode 4, Irving visits the O&R department for the first time. Although we see the workers in their office, they’re holding a variety of props (like hatchets and watering cans) and performing unspecified tasks, so it’s never made clear what they’re doing.

Being in “Optics”, they also designed the branding style and colors used throughout the building.

How many people work there?

Initially, it seems as though the department only consists of two people: Burt and Felicia. However, when Irving meets the team in full, he finds out that O&D is actually a larger department with what appears to be at least eight workers.

This fact makes the purpose of the department all the more confusing. The exact number of O&D employees is never specified, but in the Episode 6 scene where Mark, Helly, Dylan and Irving all visit together, there are eight employees.

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Their office is much larger than that of MDR, filled with filing systems and strange-looking machines.

After the MDR and O&D teams met each other (thanks to the budding relationship that grew between Burt and Irving), there initially seemed to be resistance from the O&D side and Dylan. This is because of a longstanding alleged feud between the two teams, which Lumon says started years before, when one department slaughtered the other. However, it’s never clarified who attacked who.

From what O&D has heard, the MDR workers all allegedly have pouches and produce offspring that’ll attack if they get too close. (This is all propaganda on Lumon’s part to keep them separate.)

O&D looks after strange paintings

There’s a collection of beautiful yet confusing paintings featured throughout the Lumon building, used to tell the story of Lumon’s history – O&D’s main role appears to be caring for these artworks.

Or, alleged history, at least. As we know, Lumon as a hidden agenda, and the paintings are likely to be part of that.

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The paintings in question (which O&D is responsible for rotating and caring for) depict notable events in the life of Kier Eagan, the man who founded Lumon. They also depict his philosophies and quotations.

In many, the pictures are extremely similar to real-life works of art, re-framing Keir as a substantial figure in both the minds of the Innies and the audience. (I.E, “Kier Invites You to Drink of His Water” in Severance and Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog”.)

Sometimes, they even depict non-Kier related stories, like the brutal attack between MDR and O&D in “The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design”. However, both departments see different version of the painting, with the colors of the lanyards swapping to incite fear in respective departments for their counterparts.

Much like the varied subject matters of the paintings and artwork, a lot of the pieces are in completely different styles. They range from classic oil-based portraits (like that of Kier Eagan’s portrait in the MDR office) to more modern styles (like the etching of Eagan in the building’s lobby).

Artwork plays a huge role in Severance. Aside from the O&D paintings that pose more questions than answers, there’s also the matter of Mark’s tree sculpture and Irving’s paintings of his dreams. Much like the Lumon paintings, the reason behind these creations isn’t clear.

What do the Ideographic cards mean?

The purpose of the Ideographic cards Dylan finds in O&D hasn’t been revealed, but some believe it could be Lumon’s way of subtly encouraging another “attack” between departments.

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The cards are first discovered when Mark, Helly, Dylan and Irving visit O&D, when Dylan spots one and steals it for further inspection. When Milchick realizes it’s missing, he does the unthinkable and activates the Overtime Contingency in the hopes of finding it. Needless to say, the cards are important to Lumon in some way.

Again, we’ve yet to get a reason as to why the cards exist in the first place, but we know they depict a series of images showing physical forms of movement.

Some of the cards also show what appears to be martial arts moves or fighting poses. The unspecified nature of them has led to quite a few fan theories.

As one fan wrote on Reddit, “I think this specific card was rather innocuous, but some of the other cards showed more aggressive moves. Also, the aggressors have blue badges and the less aggressive/attacked have green badges.

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“Do they indicate an historical or future attack, and if it’s future or for training, why would O&D support it? The paintings ‘The Barbarity of Optics and Design’ vs. ‘The Macro Data Refinement Calamity’ already established that blue badges represent MDR and green represent O&D.”

Another user wrote, “I also think the ultimate goal of severance is to create soldiers or killers of some sort. I’m not sure the card did matter at all, I think they are messing with Dillon the same way Milcheck planted the painting on the printer for Irving to find.”

Another took a different direction, suggesting the cards actually have nothing to do with the images on them at all.

“It’s not about the image on them, it’s about the count of them,” they suggested. “If one goes missing then there’s a chance someone smuggled one out. If someone smuggled something out then they’ll know that there are no detectors and that anything can be smuggled out.”

Severance Season 2 is releasing on January 17 on Apple TV+.

Until then, check out our guides to Ms. Casey and everything we learned in Season 1. You can also see what other new TV shows are coming to streaming this month.