I didn’t take any notes while watching this episode of Severance in my room with three friends, some on–brand snacks, and a whole lot of anxiety in my heart. I wanted the show to stick the landing so very badly, and I was glued to my screen, completely breathless the entire time I was watching.
Fortunately, the final episode of season two of Severance knocks it out of the park. The bulk of the episode is a negotiation between Mark Scout and Mark S. (and therefore a who–will–he–pick? between Gemma and Helly) that succinctly encapsulates the messy, complicated questions at the heart of the show: What makes a person? How far can love or grief go? Can we ever truly reconcile all the complicated, messy, contradictory parts of ourselves?
The answers, more or less, are: Who’s to say, but it certainly has to do with the other people around them, and maybe probably more than one person can exist in a person; quite far but everything exists in context; and not really, but damn it, if it isn’t the human condition to try. In a very Severance fashion, they are somewhat non–answers that somehow feel more emotionally and narratively fulfilling (and intelligent) than if they were clear–cut and easy to understand.
So, for the last time, let’s strap in and sprint down Lumon’s halls together, hand in hand.
Mark S. and Mark Scout have a conversation with each other for the first time at the birthing retreat cabin, encouraged by Cobel and Devon. Cold Harbor is almost done; Cobel says that this is the only reason Gemma is still alive. Devon tells Mark S. that he’s instrumental in breaking Gemma out of Lumon and that she’s more than excited to burn the company to the ground. Mark S. says, of course, about himself and all the innies who only exist on the company’s campus: “What happens to us?”
It makes perfect sense, and it has me screaming at my television that Devon and Cobel better not fuck this up. What happens is both so much worse and so much better—Mark Scout does.
Mark S. and Mark Scout communicate via a camcorder, where one will record himself speaking, then the other will step in/out of the cabin to watch and film a response. Inside the cabin, it’s Mark S.; on the balcony, it’s Mark Scout, with the doorway acting like a gateway akin to the elevator at work. It produces a brilliant, heart–attack–inducing sequence of the two, edited together masterfully to make you feel both the disconnect and choppiness of a conversation that has to go on this way and the overlapping emotion and desires of each aspect of Mark.
As the conversation goes on, it becomes more and more tense and more and more clear that neither Mark sees the other as particularly human. We’ve seen this before with Helly(na)’s hatred of her other side, of course, and we’ve seen somewhat of an inverse with Dylan competing with himself for his own wife, but Mark S. and Mark Scout have always been able to, to a certain extent, coexist. This is the first time they start clawing at each other, and it becomes very apparent very quickly that no one can hurt you like yourself. (Also, fuck, kudos to Adam Scott. The whole cast has always been amazing at differentiating between their innie and their outie, but this is next–level stuff.)
Mark Scout calls Helly “Heleny.” Mark S. basically tells him to get royally fucked about it. It’s very obvious that Mark would be happy with the other no longer existing—which, we must remember, will never be an option anymore, considering they’ve started to reintegrate. Things are veering into flaming disaster territory until Cobel reveals explicitly what we’ve figured out about Lumon and MDR: That Mark S. has been refining Gemma, been balancing her tempers, creating new innies for her (she’s severed twenty–five times over). There is no part of this complicated relationship that doesn’t touch—Mark Scout and Mark S. and Helly and Helena and Gemma and Ms. Casey. There’s no severing any bonds cleanly.
Mark S. demands that the next thing he sees be the severed floor if he’s going to cooperate and jailbreak Gemma—and it is. The elevator doors open on an absolutely freakish painting of Mark as some sort of Jesus, the rest of the show’s characters clustered around and behind him.
He’s joined by Helly, fresh off the heels of a creepy–as–hell interaction with Jame Eagan, where Jame tells Helly that he hates Helena and sees Kier in Helly. They quickly catch up, and Mark S. emotionally confesses his feelings for Helly along with the plan. She wraps herself around him as he finishes refining Cold Harbor. They’re lit in a cool blue–green, pulsing at the heart of Lumon’s severed halls.
And now to celebrate the only way Lumon knows how—super fucking weirdly. Milchick comes out and chats with an animatronic statue of Kier, who continues to micro–aggress him, and then Milchick leads a fever dream of a marching band party that blares and blares and blares. It manages to be entertaining, confusing, terrifying, and truly special all at once.
Dylan arrives—his outie said no way to his innie’s resignation, which Dylan G. sort of gets considering the Gretchen of it all. They’ve pretty much made their peace with each other, a fantastic counterpoint to Mark’s increasing tension with himself over his love life and his existence. Dylan snaps into action amidst the chaos, helping Helly trap Milchick in a bathroom so Mark can take off while Helly tries to rally the innies, making up the marching band into being on the side of rebellion. Mark busts into a room with Drummon and a goat, and we get some answers about what the hell is going on with those animals.
They’re sacrifices! The religious themes persist. They’re killed as test subjects’ severance chips are removed, and the subjects die, which is about to happen to Gemma. It’s such a simple answer, it makes so much sense, and it’s depressing as hell. Those goats are cute.
Gwendoline Christie, who is back, agrees. She can’t bear to part with her little beast, and she beats the crap out of Drummond, who is trying to get the goat from her. She totally decimates him. It is awesome. It is satisfying. It is a brilliant lead–in to Mark accidentally killing Drummond in the elevator, pressing a trigger on a bolt gun to kill the goat while pressed against Drummond in the elevator by mistake while switching from innie to outie in a move that is kind of incredibly hilarious.
A blood–soaked Mark Scout leaves Drummond’s corpse, keeping the elevator open, and (as is his M.O.) takes off down the hall. He races towards Gemma—and we’re shown what she’s up to, which is, in true Severance fashion, simple, heartbreaking, and an absolute “of course, oh my goodness, the writers are so damn smart” moment.
Cold Harbor is a bare room with a crib. Gemma dons her original outfit, the one she was wearing when she was first brought to Lumon, the one that she was wearing the last time she saw her husband and the last time he saw her. She walks into the room with the crib, and her newest innie starts to disassemble it.
Love and grief, are the two things we’ve been wondering about this whole show. Do they transcend severance? Can you really put a block on your feelings? Can you shut yourself off, and become a new person?
Lumon wants this. It’s the ultimate test of the chip—bring Gemma back to the worst moment of her life and see if their procedure is strong enough to remove her from it. It’s so, so heartbreaking and so, so cruel. It’s so simple and effective. It’s such good writing.
And then Mark Scout is there. He reaches out to a version of Gemma that has only been alive for a few minutes and has no idea who this strange, scary man coated in blood and carrying a drill gun is. She takes his hand. He leads her out.
Finally, after years, Mark and Gemma Scout are together again. I screamed. I nearly threw up. I felt like my heart was going to fall out of my chest and maybe explode on my bedroom floor.
An alarm sounds. Waves of red undulate throughout Lumon’s blue–and–white hallways, warm and cool and threatening. The colors here are so delicious. Gemma and Mark Scout take down the hallway and make it to the elevator, where they lock themselves in a passionate kiss—which Ms. Casey and Mark S. awkwardly disentangle themselves from once the innies come back.
Mark S. pushes Ms. Casey out the emergency exit. She becomes Gemma again, and she urges him to come with her.
He doesn’t. He turns, and Helly is waiting for him, dressed in MDR blue and green, her red hair flashing with the sirens. He runs to her, leaving a screaming Gemma behind. They hold hands and head deep into the severed floor.
And that’s the end of Season 2.
It’s brutal. It’s evocative. It’s kind of perfect because it makes complete sense and is devastating in its simplicity and logic. It was always going to end like this from the second Mark Scout called Helly “Heleny.” It was always going to end like this from the second Lumon turned its workers against each other, against themselves, and told them that personhood was a limited experience.
A note about theories, about answers, about complicated plot construction: Who fucking cares? No, we didn’t get answers to every mystery in this episode. No, we didn’t get answers to any of the big questions the show asks, either explicitly or on a broader and thematic level. No, we are not told in excruciating detail every element of every oddball aspect of this universe because if everything was spelled out for us, it wouldn’t be a show worth watching. Severance tells you just as much as you need to know and reminds you time and time again that the answer to your question can usually be found with Occam’s razor. It’s smart, it knows it, and it hopes that you are, too. It is a show about the unanswerable and the unknowable, and how the human condition is too complicated to be boxed in by any set of rules or by any corporation. Severance is about feeling things and working through the unknown. I implore you to do what it urges you to and to be comfortable with some ambiguity.
We’re lucky to get a show like this. From writing to directing to acting to set design to costuming to editing to everything and beyond, everyone working on this show is firing on all cylinders, all the time. I’ve felt incredibly blessed to dive deep into each episode with you all. I’m excited for season three and for all the questions it will force us to sit with that only we can answer for ourselves.
