The season 2 finale of Severance, "Cold Harbor," has just aired on Apple TV+, and nothing will ever be the same.
The cast and crew are out there talking through the finale. Let's start with the opening sequence, where Mark Scout and Mark S — the outie and the innie, both played by Adam Scott — have their first conversation, recording responses back and forth to each other on a digital camera. Severance creator Dan Erickson told GQ that it was a discussion "rich with possibility," which is putting it lightly. “We weren't always sure it was going to be in that location, in the birthing cabin, and doing it the way that we did with the camcorder,” he said. “There were different things that we discussed.”
For whatever reason, they settled on staging the scene at the birthing cabin, but apparnetly they were nervous that it wouldn't work right up until the day of shooting. "[Y]ou're sitting there, and Adam is recording all of his lines on one side and then all of his lines on the other side. So it's not like a regular scene where you can see it unfolding in real-time," Erickson said. "[W]hen I saw the first cut of it, there was definitely a sigh of relief of like, Okay. Thank God that actually worked, because it was too late to reshoot. We were stuck with it by that point.”
After that, the action shifts to the severed floor in the Lumon building, where Mark S carries out a mission on behalf of his outie: rescue Mark Scout's wife Gemma from the testing floor, where Lumon has been experimenting on her for years. Mark S follows through and gets Gemma out of the building...but when it ultimately comes time for him to follow — meaning he'll turn back into Mark Scout, perhaps never to resurface — he goes another way. The episode ends with Mark S running down the hallways of the severed floor hand in hand with Helly R, another innie with whom he'd fallen in love. Meanwhile, Gemma screams on the other side of the door as she watches another man run away with her husband's body.
Why does Mark stay on the severed floor?
Like many other episodes of the show, this one was directed by Ben Stiller. “We knew that was going to be the ending for a while,” Stiller told USA Today. “We sort of played with the idea of ending on Mark looking between the two, but it felt clear, after having this cliffhanger ending in Season 1, I didn’t want to do that to the audience. It always felt this was the natural way that Mark’s innie would go. And what we wanted to do in the second season was set up in (the Gemma-focused) Episode 7 enough of a reason that you would feel some heartbreak and you would feel torn, and part of the audience would be going, ‘Yeah, I’m with him; go with her,’ and part would go ‘I can’t believe he’s doing that.’"
I think we can all agree that we're happy the episode didn't end with Mark torn over who to choose. Adam Scott certainly does. “It would be cruel and unusual to end it on something like that," he said. "I'm so glad that we ended where we did, because I love the sequence of Mark and Helly running through the hall and the music; it’s really fun.”
As for why Mark S chooses to stay with Helly rather than put his fate in the hands of his outie, meaning he risks never seeing Helly again...well, that says it all, doesn't it? “He’s finally 100% breaking free of this servitude, first to Lumon and to Kier,” Scott said.
Stiller expanded on that, explaining that at this point, Mark S's goal "is to stay alive," something he doesn't trust his outie to help with. “At the end of the day, he knows what that choice is to go out that door for his friends and for him, and he doesn’t necessarily trust what outie Mark says."
What happens next?
Mark's choice to take charge of his own life, such as it is, is the culmilation of everything that's happened to him since the series began. As Stiller says, the innies "are starting to mature. In Season 1, they're kind of kids and in Season 2 (they’re) more like these rebellious adolescents who are coming into their own. Are they going to revolt against Milchick, who’s having his own crisis of conscience in his relationship to the company? There are a lot of unanswered questions. It doesn’t feel like it was the happy ending. I don’t think a severed person is a natural state, and what we’re looking at in Mark is a person who is split. The idea has always been about Mark becoming whole, accepting his grief, until something like that happens.”
We can't know exactly where things will go next, but whatever happens, it looks like the innies will start putting up a united front. We saw a hint of that when Helly stood on her desk and rallied the Choreography and Merriment department. "They gave us half a life and thought we wouldn't fight for it!" she yells. Innies unite!
“[Solidarity] is an important part of this show," Erickson said. "My personal views on the importance of organized labor and solidarity, union solidarity, have really been informed by my experience working on the show, seeing how hard people work, how it's important that people from disparate parts of the industry have to have each other's back and have to support each other, and that we're all in this together at the end of the day. You can't help but be grateful for the people who are showing up at 4:00 or 5:00 AM every day. If you're not willing to help them get what they need to do their job safely and be properly compensated for it, then what are we even doing? So it was really important to me."
"It became even more important to me as the show went along, that we really honored that. It also just worked really well thematically because Lumon is all about dividing and conquering on an individual level and on a greater level. The severed floor itself is severed because the different departments are discouraged from interacting. So, ultimately, I wanted this season to begin to tell the story of what happens when people who have been encouraged not to come together start to come together and discover their collective power. I think that's a really important thing to continue to keep in the conversation right now."
When is Severance season 3?
Apple TV+ has not officially renewed Severance for a third season, but considering what a bit hit it is for the streaming service, it's only a matter of time before we hear something. And we know that Stiller and Erickson have assembled a writers room.
But even if season 3 is guaranteed, will have to wait another three years to watch it? Speaking on the New Heights podcast, Still said that we will "definitely not" have to wait that long. "[H]opefully, we’ll be announcing what the plan is very soon," he said.
Sooner is better, but the excellent season 2 finale will buy the cast and crew some time. For now, I'm glad to just bask in the amazingness that is "Cold Harbor" and this show.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.