Severances brilliant Season 2 finale, explained
It's official: Severance is now two for two when it comes to incredible finales, with Season 2's "Cold Harbor" somehow managing to surpass Season 1's suspenseful "The We We Are."
Written by showrunner Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller, "Cold Harbor" walks a near-impossible line between answering some of our most pressing Severance questions (while raising several others, of course) and delivering unforgettable character moments and set pieces. Mark's (Adam Scott) Innie and Outie finally speak to each other. Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) pulls out all the stops in a celebration of Mark's completion of Cold Harbor. And of course, Mark — both Innie and Outie — manages to pull off a daring rescue of Gemma (Dichen Lachman), even if his Innie chooses not to leave Lumon with her.
With so many incredible developments in one episode, let's break down "Cold Harbor."
Mark fights himself in the Severance Season 2 finale.
All season long, Outie Mark has been searching for a way to communicate with his Innie to understand what's happening to Gemma at Lumon. His methods included trying to burn a message into his retinas and attempting to reintegrate, but his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and new ally Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) fashion a new solution: They take Mark to the severed cabin at the Damona Birthing Retreat, where he and his Innie can communicate across the severance barrier via recorded video messages.
While the conversation begins with a semblance of camaraderie — Outie Mark even apologizes for forcing this existence on Innie Mark — it quickly devolves into a tense showdown. Remember the ideographic card Gemma analyzes of a man fighting his own subconscious in "Chikhai Bardo"? This scene is basically that, come to life.
Outie Mark needs Innie Mark's help to save Gemma from the Testing Floor. But once he and Gemma leave Lumon and expose her imprisonment, what happens to Innie Mark? What happens to every Innie?
The answer, of course, is retirement, which is basically a death sentence. And even though Outie Mark offers up reintegration as a solution, it's clear that's not what Innie Mark wants. In his mind, his Outie is no better than Lumon, viewing the Innies as an expendable way to help him get what he wants. The nail in the coffin is Outie Mark reducing Innie Mark and Helly's (Britt Lower) relationship when compared to his marriage. Asking your Innie to sacrifice his love story and his life and the lives of his friends for your own romance? That's a tall order, one that only comes from someone who doesn't understand the depth of the Innies' existence.
The entire scene is a masterful play on perspective, accentuated by the contrast between Innie Mark's fire-lit surroundings in the cabin and Outie Mark's dark blue backdrop as he sits outside in the winter night. To each side of Mark's consciousness, the other is the villain, and as Severance toggles between the two, we come to understand the impossibility of a truly reintegrated Mark. No matter what, these versions of himself will always want different things and love different people.
We finally know what the numbers are in Severance: "The numbers are your wife."
Innie Mark's stubbornness leads Cobel to drop the biggest, clearest reveal in Severance so far: "The numbers are your wife."
That's right: According to Cobel, the MDR numbers Mark has been refining are "a doorway into the mind of your Outie's wife, Gemma Scout." The emotions he and the other MDR workers feel when refining the number clusters correspond to Kier Eagan's Four Tempers: malice, woe, dread, and frolic. Together, these make up "the building blocks of [Gemma's] mind."
So what is Mark building with these blocks? New Innies for Gemma, one for each of the unpleasant rooms she enters on the Testing Floor. Each of his files corresponds to one new consciousness, with Cold Harbor being the 25th.
But Ms. Cobel isn't done dropping bombs on Innie Mark. Once he completes Cold Harbor and Gemma finishes her time in that room, she tells him, Lumon will kill Gemma and retire Mark and the other MDR workers. Mark, realizing he and the Innies will die whether he helps Gemma or not, resigns himself to the plan — but not without anger at his Outie, Devon, and Cobel using him.
Lumon is using its baby goats for ritual sacrifices.
As Gemma prepares to go to Cold Harbor and Mark gears up to save her, Severance drops another answer on us, this time about the ever-perplexing baby goats. Turns out, Lumon is sacrificing them.
The reveal comes when Mammalians Nurturable department head Lorne (Gwendoline Christie) brings a sweet baby goat named Emile to a hidden room covered in images of humans bowing to, then killing goats. There, Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) commands her to take Emile's life, saying, "We dedicate this animal to Kier in his eternal war against pain."
He goes on: "This beast will be entombed with a cherished woman, whose spirit it must guide to Kier's door." Based on that, it seems like Lumon plans on burying the goat with Gemma, where it will act as a guide to whatever Lumon's version of heaven is. The revelation adds a deeper layer to the religious and cult-like aspects of Lumon, but, like many things with Severance, it also leads to more questions. What other Lumon rituals don't we know about? How long has this particular tradition been going on? Who else has Lumon sacrificed goats for, and how many sweet goats have lost their lives to the cult of Kier? (Enough to make Lorne beat the frolic out of Mr. Drummond, that's for sure.)
Gemma relives her trauma in the Cold Harbor room.
Thankfully, neither Emile the goat nor Gemma the human die in "Cold Harbor." However, Gemma does still have to enter the last room on the Testing Floor: Cold Harbor itself. It's a momentous enough occasion that Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry) sits in to witness the "efficacy test."
Unlike the other rooms, with their elaborate sets and characters played by Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson), Cold Harbor is sparsely furnished. The only thing in it is a crib, which Dr. Mauer tells Gemma's Cold Harbor Innie to take apart.
The crib, as well as the Billie Holliday song "I'll be Seeing You" that's playing in the room, is a direct callback to Gemma and Mark's unsuccessful attempts to have a child, as seen in flashbacks in "Chikhai Bardo." Those are already potent emotional triggers, but Lumon's not done re-traumatizing Gemma just yet! They've also forced her to dress in the same outfit she wore the last time she saw Mark.
However, none of these stimuli have an emotional impact on Gemma's Innie. "The barrier is holding; she feels nothing," Dr. Mauer says while watching. "It's beautiful."
The intense focus on the severance barrier throughout Gemma's Testing Floor experience makes it seem like Lumon is trying to find a way to sever any pain, like the woes of a dentist visit or a turbulent flight. Cold Harbor evokes the most profound emotional pain: that of grief and loss. Most interestingly, it's the first room we've seen where Gemma's pain is being blocked from the Innie, as opposed to the norm of the many Innies' unpleasant experiences being blocked from Gemma.
Now, with the test's success, has Lumon finally perfected a way to win Kier's "eternal war against pain" by shunting it off to unsuspecting Innies? And if so, what do they plan to do with the technology next?
Does Mark make the right choice in freeing Gemma but staying with Helly?
Working together, Innie and Outie Mark manage to free Gemma from the Testing Floor and get Gemma into the non-Severed stairwell on the Severed Floor. It's a sequence full of standout moments, from Outie Mark and Gemma's tearful reunion to the comedy of them changing back into Innie Mark and Ms. Casey mid-elevator kiss.
But of course, the sequence — and the entire season, really — leads up to one key choice: Will Innie Mark step out into the stairway so his Outie can be reunited with Gemma? Or will he stay with Helly and get as much time with her as he can?
In the end, Innie Mark fulfills his promise to his Outie in freeing Gemma, but he also chooses to stay with Helly and run deeper into the Severed Floor, now bathed in red alarm lights. The choice echoes Helly's passionate speech to the marching band members in Choreography and Merriment. "They give us half a life and think we won't fight for it," she tells them. Innie Mark's choice is him choosing to fight for his half a life, even when his Outie expects him not to.
As freeing (and frankly, romantic) as Innie Mark's choice is, the sequence remains undeniably heartbreaking, with Gemma screaming for the man she knows as her husband to come back. (To make things worse, she might not even know he's severed!) So yes, while Mark and Helly running off into Lumon is a beautiful image, it's also impossible to divorce that beauty from the devastation of Gemma losing her husband, and of Outie Mark potentially never knowing she made it out.
The whole scene feels like a reversal of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Here, the Eurydice figure, Gemma, escapes from the underworld of Lumon. (Fittingly, Helly did call it "hell" to Jame's face.) But it's the Orpheus figure, Mark, who looks back and returns to hell.
How long he and Helly will stay there is a question for Season 3, but as Season 2 reaches its bold and brilliant end, it's clear the Innies are ready to take back the autonomy that's been stolen from them. Even just a half a life is wholly worth fighting for.