In season two of Severance,Mark Scout (Adam Scott) and Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) lock eyes across a Chinese restaurant. Boy meets girl. Girl jokes about taking boy home to meet her father. A meet-cute, of sorts. Only in this sci-fi world, boy and girl’s consciousnesses have been split between their work (“innie”) and personal (“outie”) lives. And Helena has been tracking Mark, whose innie is romantically involved with her own––Helly, whom Helena impersonated earlier this season. Helena, of course, is the daughter of Lumon Industries’ CEO, heir to the very company their innies work for—the same company keeping Mark’s wife (Dichen Lachman) locked away in its basement.
Still with me? Perhaps a visual aid is in order.
This intricate web of relationships forms the “love square,” where multiple, often contradictory dynamics exist between the same two people. The square emerges from identity slippage: two versions of a person––Innie and Outie Mark, Helly and Helena––each with their own desires and motivations, operating under different rules.
In this way, Severance has entered Miraculous Ladybug territory. The animated series, which airs on Disney Channel, follows French teenagers who moonlight as superheroes to protect Paris from the villainous Hawk Moth. Goofy and over-the-top, Miraculous is also a tender study of parental neglect and the pressures of a double life. But what powers the show, and has kept fans devoted for a decade, is its infamous love square: Marinette Dupain-Cheng, an ordinary girl, is in love with her classmate, Adrien Agreste, who, unbeknownst to her, is smitten with Ladybug—Marinette’s secret alter ego. Adrian is also Cat Noir, the superhero whom Ladybug sees only as her loyal sidekick. By some cosmic rule, Ladybug and Cat Noir must conceal their identities, or risk the end of the world.
In Miraculous, as in Severance, the love square delays romantic resolution, keeping each pair out of sync, caught in a state of misaligned desire. The tension comes not from external obstacles, but from the characters’ failure to recognize one another through shifting identities: Adrien’s feelings for Ladybug obscure his connection with Marinette, whom he sees––at least until season five––as just a friend. Similarly, Mark’s Innie is in love with Helly, while his Outie sees her as just another Eagan. Each side of the square presents a different version of the characters, and their failure to fully recognize one another keeps their relationships in flux. It’s Schrödinger’s romance: Ladybug and Cat Noir are both in love and just friends. Mark and Helly––Mark and Helena––are simultaneously strangers and lovers. Until the truth is revealed, all these possibilities coexist, creating a relational purgatory where love is both present and just out of reach.
Similar to Helena Eagan, Adrien Agreste is sheltered, obedient, and bound by the authority of his distant, powerful father. As Cat Noir, he sheds those constraints, becoming more like Helly: impulsive, rebellious, free. A version of himself who can act on his desire, pursuing his coworker, Ladybug. But unlike Severance’s innies and outies, Adrien’s identities aren’t at war. He moves between them freely, though he’s consumed by the very question Severance explores: Which version of him is the “real” one? How much of a person endures across different selves?
Where Miraculous creates tension without direct antagonism, Severance directs it inward, pitting each self against the other. Helly and Helena, unlike Adrian and Cat Noir, have been in conflict since Severance’s first season, when Helly attempted suicide to escape the life Helena has imposed on her at Lumon. It isn’t until the season two finale that Mark’s selves experience a similar rupture. Early in the episode, Outie Mark pleads with Innie Mark to help free his wife, Gemma, from Lumon. But once Innie Mark gets Gemma off the Severed floor, he decides to stay at Lumon with Helly, rather than leave with Gemma as Outie Mark. It’s Innie Mark’s first real choice: a leap toward autonomy, profoundlyromantic in its irrationality, since staying gives him only a few more minutes with his beloved. A win for the Mark-Helly side of the love square.
But this choice also deepens the divide between Innie and Outie Mark. The love square, after all, taps into something fundamental: the possibility that different versions of ourselves might want different things, act differently, love differently—or maybe want the same things, despite or because of what we’ve been through. In Miraculous Ladybug, that friction is a charming, endlessly resettable game. In Severance, it’s a tragedy. But in both cases, it keeps us watching.
