The most surprising thing for me about the end of Severance’s second season was how few questions I still had when it was all over. Apple TV’s dystopian workplace thriller is a mystery box show, and yeah, there are still plenty of unsolved puzzles on the Lumon severed floor, but when the credits started rolling, I wasn’t frantically looking for a stinger that might tease what comes next.
Severance’s season finale, “Cold Harbor,” finally takes us across the finish line the show has meticulously guided us to for the past 10 episodes. The innie and outie of Mark Scout (Adam Scott) communicate by camcorder, walking in and out of a severed cabin to discuss a game plan to get Gemma (Dichen Lachman), Outie Mark’s wife, out from the depths of Lumon’s testing floor before the corporation puts her out to pasture. Innie Mark realizes that if he goes along with the plan to save Gemma and expose Lumon for kidnapping her, it will likely sink the company and lead to the dissolution of the severed floor, leading to the “deaths” of every innie on the floor.
Outie Mark believes that the people working on the severed floor are going through a “nightmare” that is nothing more than torture. But Innie Mark doesn’t view it that way. Sure, he knows Lumon should be stopped, but he envisions a life with Helly (Britt Lower), even if it’s only eight hours long most days. It’s only half a life, but it’s one he would rather fight for than give up for a woman he doesn’t even know. The recorded back and forth between both Marks goes south, and then Cobel (Patricia Arquette) tells Innie Mark plainly that there is no honeymoon ending for him and Helly. Mark’s reintegration may allow his innie’s memories to live on, but there’s no version of events in which he and Helly get to live out the lives they’ve been dreaming of. At least, that’s what everyone is telling him.
Severance has spent much of its second season exploring just how different innies and outies are from one another. Are certain parts of us innate, even without all the memories and trauma that shape us? Was her familiarity why Mark couldn’t tell that Helly’s outie was spying on them for half the season? Could the undeniable parallels carried between innies and outies be why Dylan (Zach Cherry) was drawn to his wife both in and out of the severed floor? For Helly, the question of whether or not certain parts of us are innate is fatalistic. She has tried to differentiate her innie self from her cutthroat corporate heiress outie, just for her father (Michael Siberry) to tell her that he sees more of the fire of her ancestor and Lumon founder Kier Eagan in the severed version of her than he ever did the daughter he raised. Conversely, Dylan finds hope in his innie’s reassured confidence because maybe it means that spirit is in him too, deep down. Irving (John Turturro) and Burt (Christopher Walken) may have had no recollection of their workplace love affair but were still drawn to each other on the surface.
That’s the introspective angle, but Severance is also clear about how these bisected personalities are two different entities and only one gets any say in either of their lives, like an overbearing parent to their offspring. During the recorded conversation between the Marks, the outie starts to call the gradually more defiant innie a “child,” as if wanting to have his own life, one that’s no longer dictated by someone who only cared to know anything about him when he needed something, was the equivalent of an unruly kid throwing a tantrum. Mark and his inner circle may be the “good guys,” but they’re not that different from Helly’s outie who, in season one, also condescended to her innie like a controlling parent. Lower’s delivery of “I am a person. You are not” rang in my head as Mark tried to tell his innie that he should give his life for Gemma so his outie could have a happy ending. Innies were always tools to be forgotten by even the most well-meaning Lumon employee, and though Mark tries to reason with his other half, the mask falls off as his frustration gives way to dehumanization. Eventually, the bittersweet fatalism wins out and the innie agrees to save his outie’s wife.
Gemma’s jailbreak requires the cooperation of both versions of Mark as they move between floors, and “Cold Harbor” does a stellar job of illustrating the disorienting disconnect of swapping between severed personalities in rapid succession. Outie Mark wakes up with a gun in his hand and accidentally kills a man in an elevator. Innie Mark gets control back minutes later in a blood-soaked liplock with Gemma in the same elevator. Between the swaps, the show, which normally avoids explicit physical violence in favor of the psychological kind, here sees that restraint give way at last as the worst of Lumon’s goons finally facing a workplace uprising they’ve long deserved. But at the operation’s core is a conflicted Innie Mark who wants to live, has been told there’s no version of this where he and Helly get to run off into the sunset, and thinks the only way he can do anything with his final hours is to save Gemma and take down the company that “killed” Irving’s innie and so many others.
So how do you end a season that has spent the past 10 episodes wondering if a person with divided memories can ever see eye to eye with someone who essentially birthed them into a workplace they can never leave? There is no real compromise between both Marks, as the innie will lose the only life he’s ever known if he helps his outie bring his wife home. You do it with a final five minutes that leaves audiences devastated, and me quietly wishing the show could end on this stunning note. Mark’s innie gets Gemma to the exit and she’s finally able to escape. But when she turns around, her husband’s other half is hesitating at the door. If he walks through, he will hand the keys over to his outie and he doesn’t know if he can trust his outie to reintegrate. Even if he did, would this shared life even come close to resembling the one he wants? Then, Helly approaches from behind and calls his name.
As a connoisseur of choice-based games, I could almost see the Life Is Strange decision UI on the screen as Mark thought about what to do next. Does he leave with his outie’s wife, who is crying and begging him to open the door and walk through, or does he choose his own happiness somewhere on this hellish severed floor? Gemma’s cries are harrowing; she’s finally reunited with her husband just to watch him walk away, holding hands with someone else. My god, what a note to end on.
Rebellion has been at the center of every episode of Severance this season. Throughout the Apple TV series, Lumon has treated asking questions, breaking rules, and defying orders as an immature endeavor against the inevitable. The corporation and its founder have an infinite wisdom that no worker should ever doubt. Innies are immature and bull-headed and are getting in the way of what their outies demand of them. This is the same condescension many misguided parents force upon a teenager who is breaking from the mold they were supposed to fill. We’re often taught that teenage rebellion is a phase one grows out of and regrets as they get older, but in truth a person, no matter how young, advocating for themselves and their ability to choose is just a basic human reaction to being told who and what you’re supposed to be. Innies have only ever been told they’re like tools, meant to live and die for the cause of the workplace, and are merely an extension of the “real” person who can discard them at any moment. Mark denying his outie’s wishes and deciding to run hand-in-hand with Helly to the deepest parts of the Lumon maze in hopes that they could spend even just a few more minutes together is the only conclusion this story could have possibly reached. All the slow burn was worth it. I know there’s going to be a third season, but god, it would have been incredible if this had been the end.
