Though Gemma is said to have died before Mark begins work at Lumon, she is present on the severed floor as the Lumon wellness counselor called Ms. Casey. Her loss is a major motivator for her husband Mark Scout to begin his job at Lumon corporation.
Overview
Prior to Lumon
Gemma was a Russian literature professor who worked at Ganz College. She married fellow university professor Mark Scout. The couple was close to Mark's sister Devon and her husband Ricken Hale, who wanted to name their daughter after her, though Mark declined.
Mark and Gemma had difficulty having a baby, and the couple visited the Butzemann Fertility Center run by Lumon. Mark is informed that his wife died in a car crash two years before Mark began his job at Lumon, though the Lumon corporation faked her death and instead transported her to an underground medical facility.[1] Mark is deeply affected by the loss of his wife, and his grief causes him to quit his teaching job and eventually take a severed job at Lumon.[2]
At Lumon
Gemma is a test subject on the testing floor in the Lumon headquarters building. She retains her memories and is sent each day to different rooms which create a different innie. She is sometimes sent up to the severed floor where she becomes a part time worker known as Ms. Casey. She serves as Lumon's wellness counselor who spends most of her working hours in wellness sessions with severed employees. She interacts on several occasions with her husband Mark, though because of the severance procedures neither recognize each other nor know that they are married.[3] At the end of season 1 she is removed from her position as a wellness counselor and sent down to the test floor.[4]
During the use of the overtime contingency, Mark's innie learns that the two were married by seeing a wedding photo of them. When he returns to the severed floor he attempts to locate her.[5] He works on a macrodata file called "Cold Harbor" which is shown to be tied to Gemma.[6]
Development
Series creator Dan Erickson described Gemma as "the hardest character to write," saying "We tried a lot of different things with her. The writing and the crafting of her character continued well into after we had hired Dichen, because we knew that this character was going to turn out to be Mark's wife. At one point it was like, well maybe it's Helly. But that felt, it's like too obvious. Like someone will guess that. And so we wanted this character that we could really hide in plain sight, where she would make sense as just an interesting kind of strange part of, piece of the Lumon furniture. And she would be somebody where we're not looking for what's the twist with her, because she sort of feels self-contained on her own."[7]
According to Erickson the writers tried out a variety of character ideas for Mark's wife on the severed floor; for a long time they developed her as a traveling vendor who sold office supplies to the different departments, similar to an old west peddler in the style of a prospector. This idea was discarded as it was "too weird."[7]
Reception
Reviewers noted how Ms. Casey's behavior on the severed floor appeared mechanical and strange. Dhruv Sharma of Screen Rant described her personality as "robotic" and "one dimensional." [8] Erin Qualey of Vulture wrote that the character "evoke[s] a very strange yet warm presence" and "she seems like she was pulled right off the assembly line at Westworld."[9]
Qualey described the reveal of Mark's wife Gemma being present on the severed floor as Ms. Casey as an "emotional gut punch."[10] Reviewer Mary Littlejohn of TV Fanatic wrote, "It undermines the whole throughline of Mark's grief — or, maybe in some way, makes it more tragic. Innie Mark has access to Gemma, but he doesn't recognize her — he doesn't even know he was ever married."[11]
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