[Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “Severance” Season 2, Episode 10, “Cold Harbor.” For coverage of earlier episodes, read our previous reviews.]
About halfway through his conversation with himself, Mark Scout has had enough. Mark’s Outie (Adam Scott) started the camcorder-assisted back-and-forth with a well-intentioned apology, but really, his opening concession was just the framework for a favor. A big favor. One man’s “I am so sorry — I created you as a prisoner and as an escape,” is another man’s “I am so sorry you were ever born.” And that other man is Mark’s Innie (also played by Adam Scott, who’s outstanding throughout an emotionally turbulent finale), who knows exactly what his Outie is asking of him. He knew it before they started swapping video messages.
“You want me to give my life?,” Mark’s Innie says. “The lives of everyone down there? Just to save one person you happen to care about?”
Devon (Jen Tullock) is caught off-guard by Mark’s Innie’s interpretation of events and quickly initiates his chat with Mark’s Outie, hoping the man of two minds can sort it out instead. She, like Mark’s Outie, has been focused on saving Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and punishing Lumon. They haven’t thought about Mark’s Innie beyond imagining his nightmarish working conditions, and I doubt even those daydreams paid much heed to the other Innies toiling away beside him. (No wonder Mark’s Outie mangles Helly’s name.) So hearing Mark’s Innie describe saving Gemma as a sacrifice — the ultimate sacrifice — knocks them back.
After all, it’s easier to ignore people you don’t have to see. It’s easier to neglect pain you don’t have to think about. Mark’s Outie says as much himself, when he first gets fed up with Mark’s Innie.
“Look,” his Outie says, shifting tone from sensitive to superior. “I mourned Gemma for two years. I lost my job, my teaching job, because I fucking started showing up drunk. I hid all of her stuff in my basement because it was easier pretending that she never existed.”
Now, he wants to do it again, only with his Innie — with all the Innies. Mark’s Outie clearly regrets getting severed. He may even realize that hiding from pain by shutting his brain off (chemically, by drinking, and literally via severance) doesn’t work. Here, in baring his soul to the camera, he wants his Innie to see how much Gemma means to him, knowing Helly (Britt Lower) means something similar to Mark’s Innie. Similar, but not the same. Mark’s Outie still doesn’t want to acknowledge that there’s more than one life at stake in Episode 10’s rescue mission. He still doesn’t see Mark’s Innie as anything more than a rogue part of his own greater being.
And it costs him.
“Severance” Season 2 ends with a paradoxical wallop, both inevitable and breathtaking. The Marks lead a daring escape through the bowels of Lumon Industries, switching between Innie and Outie on every floor in order to rescue Gemma from her 25(!) torture rooms and return her to the real world. But the excitement over defeating the evil scientists and saving the damsel is distorted by the sound of Gemma’s distressed cries. Here she is, finally out of the dungeon, looking into the eyes of her lost, loving husband… and he runs into the arms of another woman.
Good luck explaining that, Devon. (Well, I assume it’ll be Devon. I hope it’ll be Devon — she better be waiting for Gemma just outside the emergency exit door!)
But to us, Mark’s reasoning is painfully clear. His Innie is running for his life, running toward his life, and running away with the woman he loves. Mark’s Innie did the right thing by saving Gemma, an innocent victim. We still don’t know how, exactly, she ended up in Lumon’s sub-basement, nor why Lumon chose to conduct its advanced severance procedures on her, but we do know Gemma was being held against her will. Mark’s Innie recognizes as much and, after a pep talk from Helly, goes through with the plan to free her, despite the risks.
What he doesn’t do is free Mark’s Outie. Instead of blindly trusting his above-ground alter ego to do what he promises — “If you help me, I won’t abandon you,” Mark’s Outie says — Mark’s Innie chooses to stay behind. To stay at Lumon. To stay with Helly. He (rightly) deduces from Mark’s Outie’s struggle to explain how reintegration actually works that he’s better off looking out for himself, at least until more definitive answers can be found.
It’s a “head over heart” decision — save for the charming asterisk that Mark’s Innie is following his heart, too. Mark’s Innie may be acting selfishly. He may even recognize that he’s effectively swapped Gemma and Mark’s Outie, the latter becoming a corporate hostage and the former his distraught partner kept in the dark. But Mark’s Innie is also holding Mark’s Outie accountable. Mark’s Outie isn’t to blame for Gemma’s plight (as far as we know), but he’s certainly to blame for his Innie’s. He said as much when he apologized. Now, he’s facing the consequences.
The “Severance” Season 2 finale is noticeably different than Season 1’s ending. First of all, Season 2’s climactic conclusion isn’t a cliffhanger. It pulls us back from the brink, offering a platform to stand on, even if we’re still waiting near the edge to see what happens next. But where Season 1 unifies the audience behind Mark’s urgent discovery (“She’s alive!”), Season 2 is pointedly divisive. Where Season 1’s ending directs viewers’ ire toward Lumon, an evil corporation that faked Gemma’s death and then experimented on her, Season 2’s ending puts the climactic weight on Mark. It asks us consider what we would do in the same situation. It asks a difficult question, rather than giving a provocative answer.
People don’t typically respond to reason in the same way they respond to feelings, and “Cold Harbor” evokes a bevy of conflicting feelings. While it’s jarring in the moment to be denied one of our primary couples’ long-sought reunions, Mark’s Innie makes a choice. It’s not a choice everyone will be on board with, even if they can appreciate why he makes it. Reactions will depend on if the viewer is ‘shipping Mark and Gemma or Mark and Helly; they’ll depend on who sees Innies like Mark’s Outie sees them (as a part of Mark) and who sees them like Innies do (as distinct people); they’ll depend on how satisfied theorists are with the answers provided about Cold Harbor, the mysterious numbers, and Lumon’s overall mission. (“The numbers are your wife,” Harmony says. “Every file you completed is a new consciousness for her — a new Innie.”)
Heck, some viewers will certainly be disappointed that Harmony (Patricia Arquette) didn’t get more to do than deliver exposition (though she is the perfect person to break the big news, considering she invented severance and her creepy yet authoritative stature). Others will be anguishing over Irving (John Turturro) and Burt (Christopher Walken), whose respective and collective fates weren’t addressed at all. Plenty more will simply be disappointed their predictions didn’t pan out.
But “Severance” Season 2 was always building to this. In the first episode, Mark saves his fellow Innies and then they choose to stay at Lumon. In the last episode, Mark saves the Innies again and then he chooses to stay at Lumon. There’s a clear growth trajectory for Mark’s Innie, whose goals align with Mark’s Outie at the start of the season before he goes out on his own in the end, but the rest of Season 2 is also dedicated to recognizing the distinctions between Innies and Outies. There’s the twist with Helena pretending to be Helly, which calls attention to how polar opposite people can exist in the same body; there’s the disconnect between Dylan’s Innie (a “self-assured badass”) and his Outie (who we find out is kind of a loser); there’s a similar disconnect between Burt’s severed selves, with his Outie seeking redemption for his seedy life through his Innie’s newborn innocence.
Even splitting the first two episodes between Innies and Outies works to illustrate not only that these people are living in separate worlds, but that they’re both alive. One can’t be written off to benefit the other, just like all those hours we spend toiling away at work can’t simply be written off like they didn’t impact (or even dictate) our lives. Lumon’s goal, whether through the severance procedure or cult-like devotion, is compliance. It wants to control its workers. It wants them to believe what the company tells them to believe, and do what the company tells them to do.
What Lumon does to Gemma reveals the vile vision for extending that goal: For a time, Lumon was satisfied with exploiting half of each worker. While they’re on the clock, they’re Lumon’s, but when they’re off the clock, they’re free to make whatever choices they want (until it’s time to punch in again). But if they can sever each employee 25 times, how will those people ever know it’s time to go home? What’s to stop them from moving from one room to the next, working on different projects, for an endless amount of time? And that’s without considering what it means that they kidnapped Gemma and, until now, got away with it? What’s to stop them from doing that on a wide scale? Or what’s to stop them from breeding workers who never see the light of day and never think to ask?
These aren’t new questions, necessarily, but “Cold Harbor” offers a resounding rebuttal to anyone who thinks shutting Lumon down fixes all the problems the company has created, and it does so by forcing Mark’s Innie and Outie to acknowledge one another. In their earlier discussion, before it devolves into an ultimatum, Mark’s Outie refers to his Innie’s life as a “nightmare,” and Mark’s Innie politely pushes back. “Nightmare is the wrong word, actually,” he says. “We find ways to make it work — to feel whole. … Whatever this life is, it’s all we have, and we don’t want it to end.”
His comments are echoed later on, when Helly is rallying the Choreography and Merriment marching band. “They’re going to turn us off like fucking machines,” Helly shouts. “They give us half a life and think we won’t fight for it?”
Think again.
Grade: A
“Severance” Season 2 is available to stream on Apple TV+. The series has not yet been renewed for Season 3.
Further Refinement:
• From her opening slight to Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry) — “You’re so fucking weird” — to her Norma Rae moment with the marching band and running off with Mark S. to end the season, Helly had a helluva day. Sometimes, doing the right thing really pays off. You love to see it.
• That said, I don’t know what to make of Jame’s preference for Helly over Helena. Perhaps he just likes watching his progeny squirm under his thumb rather than insufficiently capitulate to his power, but it feels like he’s got bigger plans for his acknowledged daughter — and that’s scary.
• Speaking of who Jame’s acknowledged, his comment about “siring others in the shadows” helps explain how Harmony got Mark and Devon into the birthing suite. “She’s one of Jame’s,” Harmony tells the guard near the end of Episode 9. “No one’s to know.” So… what happened to those kids? Where are they? What do they know? Are they severed, as their dear ol’ dad seems to prefer, and… (ick) how many times?
• What a relief to see Dylan back after he tried to quit last week. But his reappearance also reminds us that Irving is still gone — will he be the new wild card in Season 3? Emerging from expulsion to save the day, much like Harmony did in Season 2?
• Playing the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls’ intro music to kick off Lumon’s historic celebration for completing Cold Harbor is… too perfect.
• R.I.P. Mr. Drummond. What a way to go out! You won’t be missed, but here’s hoping we see plenty more of Darri Ólafsson, the actor who gave him such brutish, calculating menace. If you want to see his range, flip over to HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere,” where he plays the exact opposite character.
• As someone who wasn’t a huge fan of the goats’ return in Season 2, seeing Lorne (Gwendoline Christie) reappear in the finale helped justify the earlier emphasis on her flock. I still think the sequence in Episode 3 left a lot to be desired, but it’s a relief, looking back, to know a goat (and its shepherd) would play a pivotal role in Episode 10. And I’m even more relieved that little Emile wasn’t “entombed.” No more killing!
• God, I hope Milchick defects to the rebels in Season 3. He’s too damn cool to be a bad guy, as much as I enjoy watching him wrestle with his personal pride and his loyalty to Lumon. Bring that vending machine toppling muscle over to Team MDR.
• “At least you’ll have a chance at living.”
“Yeah, but I want to live with you.”
💔
