‘Severance’ Season 2 Ending Explained – A Brilliant, Harrowing Finale That Changes Everything (Again)

Season 2 of Severance has had its ups and downs; there’s no doubt about that. We’ve had bottle episodes that offered little and compensatory follow-ups that included too much. But Episode 10 is perfect. There’s no other word for it. Some weaker installments notwithstanding, only a show of – and I mean this – all-time-great quality could produce a finale like “Cold Harbor”.

This is one of the climaxes that has you going, “Oh, that’s what was going on there,” multiple times over. It provides the answers we’ve been craving, the drama we needed, the small character moments we didn’t know we wanted, and enough emotional payoff for me to feel like the series could end right here and still go down in the history books.

But that won’t happen. With everything that happens here Season 3 is too tantalizing of a proposition, and I’m sure it’ll be great either way. But speculating about the future can wait for another day (or article.) There’s plenty to be going over in the meantime.

The Mark Dilemma

Outie Mark, Devon, and Cobel have a plan – sort of. Since Innie Mark hasn’t finished Cold Harbor, Gemma is alive, and if they can rescue her, they can prove that Lumon kidnapped her in the first place. The scandal will sink them. But the rescue mission requires Innie Mark’s complicity, and after being extremely confused about suddenly coming face-to-face with Cobel at the Damona Birthing Retreat, he then settles into the next logical conclusion – if he plays along, he will cease to exist.

This has always been the underlying philosophical drive of Severance. In being severed, the Outies absolve themselves of life’s mundanity but in so doing they create another person whose existence is completely distinct – and much less fulfilling. Innie Mark – communicating with his Outie via recorded messages on a video camera, both of them stepping in and out of the cabin to switch back and forth – realizes this immediately. Outie Mark just expects he’ll play along to save Gemma. But Innie Mark isn’t thinking about Gemma (or Ms. Casey, to him.) He’s thinking about Helly.

Unfortunately for Innie Mark, though, he is intimately connected to Gemma’s fate, since as Cobel eventually explains, what he’s refining is her consciousness. Each completed file creates a new Innie (as we’ve already seen happening in her episode.) Cold Harbor is the last one. Time is running out.

The Completion of Cold Harbor

Innie Mark isn’t initially inclined to help Outie Mark do anything, but upon returning to the severance floor he’s persuaded by a couple of things – in part by an absurdly detailed Optics & Design painting, and then, of course, by Helly.

Helly’s had enough of Jame Egan’s creepy bullshit and returns to work to catch up with Mark. From her perspective, her family dynasty is well worth shutting down. The heartbreaking reality that Innie Mark wants a future with her that they’ll never get if the plan is successful is a price that she thinks might be worth paying to take out Lumon.

So, Mark completes Cold Harbor, an accomplishment that is met with extreme merriment, including a marching band and a speech from Kier – a lot of it at Milchick’s expense – via the wax statue of him, which is being voiced by someone. Who? Kier himself? One of the board? This is a question for another time, I suspect. Possibly a pretty big one down the line.

Zach Cherry and Tramell Tillman in Severance Season 2 | Image via Apple TV+

The Reconciliation of Dylan

As a nice counterpoint to the bickering between Innie and Outie Mark, following Innie Dylan’s resignation in the previous episode, he discovers his request has been rejected by his outie, who writes him a heartfelt letter explaining why he thinks he should stay. It isn’t manipulative, either. Outie Dylan, who’s a bit of a loser, is comforted by the idea that there’s a version of him – even one who smooches his wife – that embodies the qualities he lacks.

I like that Severance Season 2, Episode 10 included this. It doesn’t have much bearing on the ending, but it’s a sweet moment and shows another angle of the complicated underpinnings of this concept. It’s the only real ray of sunshine in the finale, now that I think about it, the only evidence that things can work out for some people.

And Dylan does get involved in the plan to free Gemma. When, under cover of the marching band, Helly locks Milchick in the bathroom so Mark can make a dash through the corridors to the testing floor, Dylan arrives to help. By the end of the sequence, Helly has rounded up an army of musicians, and Dylan is at its head. Fight the power!

So That’s What the Goats Are For

Remember Lorne? Of course you do. She was in charge of Mammalians Nurturable when we visited in Episode 3, and she’s back in the finale with a cute baby goat cradled in her arms. What are the goats for, I hear you ask? You don’t want to know. But I’m going to tell you anyway.

Basically, the goats are sacrificed every time someone completes the testing floor (and is also disposed of). Since Mark has completed Cold Harbor, unlocking Gemma’s final test, she’s on the cusp of completing everything, progressing Lumon to the next level of the severance chip and Kier closer to victory in his “eternal war against pain”. Because everything to do with Kier is weird and cult-y, the goat must die in the process.

But Lorne isn’t having that, and neither is Mark. What follows is a three-way fight between those two and Drummond which is ridiculous but also oddly savage and deeply cathartic. It culminates in Mark keeping Drummond alive for just long enough to use him as a bargaining chip to get Gemma off the testing floor, but during the elevator ride, he transitions into his Outie and accidentally kills Drummond with the bolt gun he’s holding against his neck.

Ólafur Darri Ólafsson in Severance Season 2 | Image via Apple TV+

What Are Lumon Really Up to With Cold Harbor?

As mentioned, Cold Harbor is Gemma’s final test, and its nature gives away some suggestions about what Lumon is really up to here. Kier’s war against pain is manifesting as an effort to eliminate feeling completely, as though that’s the thing that’ll save humanity from itself. And, of course, Lumon can sell it.

So, Gemma’s journey has been about creating increasingly numb versions of her in the hopes that the final iteration could suffer through the most heinous task imaginable and feel nothing. To that end, Cold Harbor is a simulacrum of her deepest trauma, the task being to dissemble a crib the same way Mark did when they couldn’t conceive a child. If Gemma can get through that while feeling nothing, then Lumon have succeeded.

Mark’s reunion with Gemma is everything we imagined it would be. But it’s short-lived, and a rollercoaster of emotion turbocharged by the gimmick of their switching from Innie to Outie and back again. However foolproof Lumon thought their chip was, there’s something inside even the most deadened version of Gemma that allows Mark to get through to her. But there’s no time for a catch-up. When they hit the elevator, they’re back to Innie Mark and Ms. Casey. But still, they run to the door. Mark pushes Gemma through, and it closes behind her. Mark is about to follow… and then he sees Helly behind him.

Innie Mark Makes His Choice

The ending of Severance Season 2 is brutal for many reasons, but mainly because of this. I don’t envy Innie Mark’s choice. He can either risk his entire existence being wiped out to reunite his Outie with a woman he, Innie Mark, barely knows, or he can pursue his love with Helly whatever the cost might be. There’s a best-of-both-worlds quality to what he ultimately decides, getting Gemma through the door to hopefully reunite with Outie Mark while he remains behind. But will it work like that?

It also means that poor Gemma, having only just been reunited with her husband, is wrenched away from him again. She’s left screaming behind the glass of the door while Innie Mark takes Helly’s hand, and together they run through the halls of Lumon.