Felicitations refiners, we’ve finished Cold Harbor. The final episode of the second season of Severance ended on a heartbreaking twist that has sparked heated debate amongst fans of the show. At least one stressful cliffhanger has been resolved – it was confirmed the streaming smash hit has been renewed for a third season by Apple CEO Tim Cook, no less.
Spoilers ahead
Cold Harbor begins with a tense stand-off between Adam Scott’s dual characters, his outie Mark Scout and Mark S, the severed personality he created to escape the grief of losing his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman). Now that outie Mark knows Gemma is alive in the bowels of Lumon, he begs his innie to help rescue her from the Testing Floor and bring her to the stairwell.
But if his innie complies he knows that he’s unlikely to ever return to the Severed Floor, where he has fallen in love with Helly R (Britt Lower), the severed innie of Lumon heir Helena Eagan. Reintegration between the two personalities doesn’t appeal to his innie – outie Mark has lived so much more life he would simply overwhelm the other’s memories. Outie Mark is blinded by grief and a terrible negotiator, not even bothering to get Helly’s name right and clearly not understanding that his innie is a separate person with hopes and dreams all of his own. His sister Devon (Jen Tullock) doesn’t care if his innie ceases to exist if she gets her brother and his wife back.
Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who we now know invented the entire severance procedure in the first place, intervenes to deliver a more compelling ultimatum. Cold Harbor, the file Mark S is close to finishing, is indeed refining the tempers of Gemma herself (theory confirmed!). He’s already created 24 innies for her, and this will be the 25th. This final test is very important to Lumon, but once he completes it he will have served his purpose and his work there will be terminated – along with what is essentially his entire life.
Back on the Severed Floor, Mark S and Helly R embrace and swap notes on what they’ve learned in front of a terrifying new mural. The Macro Data Refinement office has also been given a creepy makeover, complete with an animatronic Kier Eagan to oversee Cold Harbor’s completion. It’s Helly who gives him the final push to save Gemma – she’s being tortured by their work, and Helly can never be free when her outie is part of the apparatus that’s created every innie. Time to refine, Mark S.
With Cold Harbor complete, Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) arrives to do a very upsetting congratulatory double act with the animatronic Kier. Even this jumped-up mannequin is derogatory to the beleaguered middle manager! Then an entire new department arrives, Choreography and Merriment (C&M), a surreal marching band that Milchick solemnly leads as the drillmaster. It’s a hallucinatory set piece that’s a standout in a show full of incredible visuals.
Helly springs into action, grabbing Milchick’s walkie talkie and flushing it down a toilet before trapping him in the bathroom as the band plays on. Dylan S (Zach Cherry) arrives just in time to shove a Lumon vending machine in front of the door. His own outie has shown him compassion and respect in a heartfelt letter that acknowledges he may well be a better version of him and giving him the freedom to quit or stay. Innie rights are human rights! Something Helly taps into when she gives a rousing speech to C&M. Surely they’ve lost friends, too, when Lumon has terminated them?
Mark is off and running through the Lumon hallways to find the Testing Floor, where he stumbles upon Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) completing a sterile occult ritual with Lorne (Gwendolyn Christie) of Mammalians Nuturable. Those cute and mysterious goats we’ve been wondering about for two seasons? They’re being raised for slaughter, with Lumon demanding a ritual sacrifice of the best baby of the flock as part of the severance experiments. It’s a chilling insight into the company’s more traditional cult brainwashing techniques, and Lorne is about to crack under the grief of giving up her beloved kids in these endless Old Testament-style tests of faith.
When Drummond viciously attacks Mark, slamming him into a wall, Lorne joins the fray and turns the bolt gun on their boss. It’s a brutal showdown, with Severance making the most of Christie’s incredible physicality. Mark takes Drummond hostage at gunpoint to get down to the Testing Floor while Lorne happily bundles up her goat. His name is Emile, and he thanks you.
Unfortunately for Drummond, the elevator switches Mark’s innie to his outie, setting off an involuntary muscle moment that unloads the bolt gun into his neck. Innie Mark comes too confused and covered in blood, but handily his blood-soaked tie allows him to break into the Cold Harbor room where Gemma is completing her final test. Dressed in the clothes she last wore has her original self, her 25th innie placidly takes apart the baby crib that symbolises her greatest trauma of repeated miscarriages. The severance barrier appears to be holding, but she still trusts Mark when he appears in the doorway enough to take his hand and pass through to return to herself.
Then all hell breaks lose. Lumon has set off all the alarms, and Mark and Gemma sprint to the elevator, chucking Drummond’s dead body out of the way. They kiss frantically in the elevator before their chips flip again and suddenly it is innie Mark and Ms Casey awkwardly smushed up against each other.
Mark S stays true to his mission, guiding his outie’s wife to the stairwell door. But once she’s through and herself again, he hesitates. Stepping through that doorway means Gemma and her husband will be reunited permanently. But it would be almost certain death for Mark S. When Helly appears at the other end of the flashing red hallway, he makes his choice. He’d rather have a few more minutes of freedom with her on the run than to sacrifice all he has worked for. We knew that this retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice would end in a tragic glance back, but it’s a shock to see that it’s Gemma who has been returned to the land of the living while her not-beloved vanishes back into the halls of hell.
It’s a poetic, narratively satisfying tragic ending to season 2. Many fans are outraged that Gemma and Mark’s happy ending has been torn away at the last minute. It’s certainly been a truly awful time for Gemma. But if you can accept that innies are just as wholly a person as their outie, you have to know they would also choose life. Mark has unwittingly proved the Cold Harbor thesis – the severance barrier can hold firm even when his outie’s greatest desire is right there on the other side of the door. But the secret isn’t taming his human emotions, it’s the desire to live and to love.
Despite its sci-fi bent, Severance has always been a show about workers’ rights. The innies have banded together to rebel against Lumon, proving that organising together can allow them to fight their oppressors. Lumon, in trying to find a way to manufacture a perfect worker – someone docile, emotionally cut off from their external life – keeps failing because as a corporation it cannot conceive of the power of love and solidarity. Mark Scout and Devon’s love for Gemma means they took huge risks to get her out. Mark S and Helly’s love for each other and the life they have built together on the Severed floor pushed them to rebel. Even Lorne’s love for her flock of goats pushed her to defy the order to keep sacrificing them.
The blossoming innie rebellion is already in trouble, though. Helly R’s revolutionary fire and skill for motivating her fellow workers has drawn the attention of Lumon boss – and her outie’s father – Jame Eagan. He actually prefers this version of his daughter, who hasn’t been stunted a lifetime of indoctrination. The innies can hold their outie creators and Lumon hostage with their bodies, but for how long? Meanwhile, Gemma’s role is reversed as she is left to try and rescue her husband from Lumon – but his innie won’t want to give him up. The third season of Severance can’t come fast enough.
Severance is now streaming on Apple TV+
