Severance Season-Finale Recap: Honeymoon Ending
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Murder! Jailbreaks! Marching bands! Goats! Yet again, the Severance finale delivers a wondrous Innie rebellion, but this time, the call was coming from inside the house. Written by series creator Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller, “Cold Harbor” is a captivating hour-plus of television that serves up several palpable gut punches, some cryptic Lumon lore, and a handful of the most visually stunning sequences the show has ever put onscreen. Seriously, if they offered a screening of this episode in a movie-theater format, I’d go see it. Twice.
While the finale is admittedly light on overt answers to the myriad Lumon mysteries — a potential frustration for many theory-focused viewers — it presents us with something profound and lasting. Severance runs on emotion the way that Ben Affleck runs on Dunkin’, and the nebulous nature of the answers we do get are in service of a larger goal: to encourage us to feel and think, deeply and with abandon, about the wild experience of being human. The show is truly wonderful as a platform for theorizing about sci-fi twists, but season two has proved that, more often than not, the simplest answer happens to be the correct one. (See “The Curious Case of Miss Huang.”) Or, in the case of the lingering mysteries, Severance seems to be suggesting that coming to the “correct” answer is like a litmus test — the space between knowing and not knowing, giving each viewer the space to choose an answer that speaks most strongly to their experience.
The finale focuses on Mark and his season-long journey to free Gemma from Lumon, with each scene building exponentially on the previous one until it ends in a glorious crescendo of violence, reunions, and forbidden love. In the opening moments, we’re snapped back into the thick of it as Ms. Cobel and Devon accost Innie Mark. Cobel begins to inform him about the black hallway, and she is absolutely gobsmacked to find out that he already knows about it. Honestly, Felicia knew about it, so it wasn’t that big of a secret, but the idea that Irving was able to get that information into Lumon speaks to how savvy he is. We don’t see Irving at all in this episode, but we’re reminded that Gemma’s ultimate escape could not have happened without him. John Turturro must come back for season three, if only for a proper Innie reunion between our core MDR crew. (Could that even happen? I’m holding out hope!)
Innie and Outie Mark get a chance to chat with each other via camcorder, and Adam Scott does some excellent work here. He manages to make Mark’s innie and his outie into two very distinct people, even as we’re volleying between the two. Outie Mark starts off contrite but eventually ends up sounding like a used-car salesman when he tries to pitch the idea of reintegration as a little treat. Innie Mark gets increasingly agitated as he realizes that he really has no reason to trust his other self, and he really freaks out when his outie gets Helly’s name wrong. I’ve previously mentioned in these recaps that Dan Erickson has noted that season two sees the innies enter into adolescence, and there’s a distinctive layer of the back-and-forth between Innie and Outie Mark that plays like a chat between a father and his newly rebellious son. Innie Mark doesn’t want his life controlled (or ended). He wants his own love and the ability to make his own choices. The remainder of the episode leans on the idea of defiant adolescence, utilizing high-school motifs like giving a walkie-talkie a swirlie, showcasing a whole-ass marching band, and running through seemingly endless hallways.
When Innie Mark eventually takes a stand against Outie Mark, Cobel comes to see him and finally gives him some useful information. She shares that every file he has refined has been a separate consciousness for his wife, Gemma. (Let’s all note that Cobel refers to Gemma as Innie Mark’s wife, too.) He’s good at it because his intimate knowledge of her passes the severance barrier. He’s been balancing her tempers in 24 (!) different configurations, creating a different innie for her every time. We know this already, but Patricia Arquette’s matter-of-fact delivery is chilling nonetheless.
Innie Mark demands that Lumon be the next thing he sees, and Cobel and Devon don’t disappoint. In an electrifying whoosh, Mark S. steps out of the birthing cabin and off the elevator. A terrifying new painting accosts his eyeballs. I have looked at this painting many times, and while there are a lot of insanely disturbing things going on here, I’m most freaked out by the fact that Mark’s eyes are closed. Why? Ew.
Helly arrives, and she and Mark are directed to MDR, where an animatronic statue of Kier awaits. (A remnant from Branch 5X, no doubt.) He’s holding a pop-up waffle card with a note from Milchick. Mark is to finish the file; Helly is to watch. (A curious inverse of her father watching her Outie eat that egg last week.) They catch each other up on their completely insane evenings. Helly tells Mark about her creeptastic encounter with Jame Eagan, saying that he sees the “fire of Kier” in her. Do we think that Jame possibly wants to crown Helly as the next in line at Lumon? Could my wildest dreams of Helly’s innie becoming her permanent state be coming true?!
There’s no time to think about that because Mark then shares what he knows. Helly, for her part, thinks that he should trust his outie, Cobel, and Devon. She advocates for him to reintegrate so he has a chance at living, but Mark tearfully responds that he doesn’t want to live without her. It’s a wrenching beat, made even more tragic because Mark spies the last number blob at the same moment. Helly scoots over to him, her body protectively spooning him. Lit by the eerie dimness of the office space and the glow of the computer screen, the two innies meld into one entity, determined to see their plan through. “At least it’s a happy one,” Helly says as Mark banks the final cluster.
As soon as Mark completes the file, all hell breaks loose. Milchick comes out and does a wackadoo comedy routine with the Kier Eagan statue. It’s unclear who’s providing the voice for Kier, but whoever it is also has an issue with Milchick’s stellar vocabulary. They snipe at one another for a minute, with Kier pointedly calling Milchick by his first name, Seth. And then, a new severed department is revealed. The Choreography and Merriment team come marching down the hall, horns ablaze, to celebrate Mark’s victory. All of this cacophony and chaos feels like some sort of vision Dan Erickson may have had after eating one too many weed gummies, but it’s disorienting in a fun way, and it pays off in a fantastic visual.
Dylan’s return coincides with the completion of Cold Harbor. His outie has declined his resignation. Like Outie Mark’s first missive to his innie on the camcorder, the response is kind and mostly understanding. Outie Dylan is upset that his innie made out with Gretchen but, ultimately, he gets it. They do share physiology, after all, and because Outie Dylan had never really been super-impressive, he likes knowing that Innie Dylan is there in all his badassery. This message motivates Innie Dylan to participate in the mêlée that ensues in MDR without even asking what’s going on. As soon as he sees Helly trying to barricade Milchick in the bathroom, he single-handedly rolls the vending machine into the doorframe. Whoa. Maybe his outie really should do muscle shows.
Helly and Dylan stave off Milchick while Mark races to the black hallway. Alas, he doesn’t have a working key card when he gets there. But Lorne and Drummond are in a secret room just beyond the mystery door. They’re dealing with a goat, and Lorne is visibly upset.
Okay. Let’s talk about the goat for a minute, because there seems to be a concrete answer here. Given what we see in the finale, I don’t think they were putting chips in the goats or cloning them. The goats simply appear to be sacrifices, their spirits meant to guide the souls of each completed test subject to meet Kier in heaven after the severance chip is removed from their brain and they die. (The removal fact is revealed in a throwaway line by Helly in the MDR scene with Mark.) However, this concept does raise more questions. If there have been many other sacrificial goats — there’s an entire room and specialty equipment devoted to killing them, after all — there have clearly been many other test subjects who have completed their purpose. So why is Gemma so special? Also, what are they doing with the severance chips once they’re removed from a test subject’s brain?
Lorne, absolutely rocking a black mourning shroud and red-eye makeup, clearly does not want to sacrifice this adorable goat. It’s a relief when Mark’s loud banging shifts Drummond’s attention elsewhere. When he spots Mark, he slams him up against a wall and sucker punches him in the face. And thus begins the most wildly violent sequence in Severance history. Mark is no match for Drummond, but Brienne, er, Lorne is. Her rage over her lost baby goats fuels her, and she joins the fray, handily taking down this giant evil man and pointing the bolt gun at his head. Mark steps in from there, guiding Drummond down the hall and into the elevator at gunpoint. In a tremendous moment, Innie Mark turns into Outie Mark, and the transition triggers a muscle reflex that discharges the gun right into Drummond’s jugular. This is what Outie Mark wakes up to. This accidental murder is hilarious, gory, and victorious all at once. I laughed. I gasped. I had myself a time.
Then, Outie Mark gets a John Wick moment. His suit covered in blood, he carefully makes his way down the hall. In another humorous beat, he bumps into Gemma’s nurse, and the two shriek futilely at each other while Mark uselessly waves the empty gun in her direction. She goes to find help, giving him enough time to find the Cold Harbor door, using Drummond’s blood on his tie as the key. Inside, Gemma is dressed in the clothing from the day she “died,” and she’s been instructed to disassemble the baby crib that she and Mark once owned. Dr. Mauer and Jame Eagan look on from separate monitors (Jame really likes to watch), and Mauer marvels at how the severance barrier is holding. “She feels nothing,” he says.
This tableau gives us more insight into what Lumon is looking to do with the chips. The crib, representing Gemma’s deepest trauma, is the clear watermark for the severance chip to overcome. But, as Outie Mark notes to his Innie in the opening scene, we’re a collection of our traumas and memories, and to sift out the bad is to mute the good. Innie Mark also makes this point, saying that even though they basically live in hell, they’ve found ways to be happy and fulfilled. Lumon is certainly seeking to create a product that many people might want — the ability to sever from all discomfort or pain — but our traumas are ultimately a part of what make us us. The process of working through them is often painful, but we can never be wholly ourselves if we don’t sever ourselves from grief, fears, or disappointments.
After four long years, Mark Scout finally sees his wife, and I swear my heart skipped a beat. He reaches out to her, telling her that he’s her husband and reassuring her that it’s okay. She chooses to trust the blood-soaked man in front of her instead of the disembodied voice in the ceiling (what a choice!) and takes Mark’s hand. Yet again, I must emphasize that the body keeps the score in Severance because both Dr. Mauer and Jame Eagan freak out when Gemma and Mark make a physical connection, indicating that a meaningful human touch can revert the excruciating progress made by four years of torturous experiments.
As Gemma and Mark flee, a red light begins to strobe the hallways, bathing the sterile white walls in red. The evil doctor is in hot pursuit. As they go up the elevator, the last thing we hear him say is “You’ll kill them all!” What could this mean? Is he talking about all the innies, ever? Or are there other test subjects secreted away on the testing floor? If so, who were Dylan, Petey, Helly, and Irving refining? And why do most of the files expire? Because people can’t take the addition of more than a few innies before their brains break? There’s so much to consider.
Once in the elevator, Gemma and Mark make out like there’s no tomorrow, but they soon revert to their innie selves. Ms. Casey extracts herself from Innie Mark’s embrace, asking, “What’s taking place?” This line gave me a genuine chuckle. This episode is funny, y’all! But once the two reach the door to the stairwell, Innie Mark pauses. He scoots Ms. Casey out, and she becomes Gemma. But Mark does not follow. Instead, Helly appears on the other end of the hallway, and he makes his choice. As he walks away from the stairwell, Gemma screams in anguish, beseeching Mark to come back to her, but she’s not the one Innie Mark loves.
Mark runs to Helly, grasping her hand and running further into the unknown depths of the severed floor. Set to the tune of Mel Torme’s “The Windmills of Your Mind,” the two giddily smile, but then their faces settle into more neutral expressions as they contemplate what happens next. It’s very Graduate coded, as these two nascent innies don’t have a plan beyond the rush of being together … but they get to make the decisions. For now.
When Severance first premiered, I talked about the 87-second walk that Mark takes through the hallways of Lumon, stating, “In a pop-culture landscape that has primed us to expect often fast-paced, Sorkin-esque walk-and-talks to provide exposition for our protagonists wherever they go, this interlude is inviting our collective brains to take a beat.” Since that time, Severance has consistently utilized the sprawling hallways of Lumon to great effect, most notably in the season-two premiere and now here in the finale as Helly joins Mark in his hallway jog, red warning lights bathing their faces as they run to an indeterminate location. That season two concludes with a scene featuring the Lumon labyrinth confirms my theory that the hallway moments serve to define the series. These scenes test our ability to buy into the emotional crux of the narrative, asking us to be patient, curious, and willing to go on a journey that might not always traffic in concrete answers but will never fail to make us feel something real.
I’ve truly enjoyed being your Lumon luminary throughout this season of Severance, and I hope you appreciated all of these recaps equally and without preference.
Severed Sentiments
• Do we think Helly will somehow use her Kier-fire leverage to accrue real power in the Lumon hierarchy? Will season three see her as the leader of a true Innie revolution? If so, sign me up for all of it.
• The red credits at the end are a nice touch, indicating that the severed floor has been forever touched by the outside world.
• The pregnant Kier in the birthing cabin is so fucking creepy. I can’t.
• I’m still a little confused on the mystery of the man lingering behind Mark S. when he ran down the hallway in the premiere. Is Jame Eagan just always creeping around the floors below Lumon? Otherwise, I don’t have a good answer for this one.