It’s official: Severance is now two for two when it comes to if if season 2’s “Cold harbor” somehow managing to surpass season 1’s suspenseful “the suspenseful” The we are.
Written by Showrunner Dan Erickson And directed by Ben Styler, “Cold Harbor” Walks a Near-Impossible Line Between Answering some of our mostly pressing Severance Questions (while Raising Several othersOf course) and delivering unforgettable characters and set pieces. Mark’s (Adam Scott) Innie and OUTIE FINALLY SPEAK to Each Other. Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) Pulls out all the stops in a celebration of Mark’s Completion of Cold Harbor. And of course, mark – bot innie and outie – manages to pull off a daring rescue of gemma (dichen lachman), even if his innie chooses not to leave lumon with her.
With so many incredible developments in one Episode, Let’s Break Down “Cold Harbor.”
Mark fights Himself in the Severance Season 2 Finale.
All season long, OUTIE MARK HAS Been Searching for a Way to Communicate with his innie to Undrstand What’s Happening to Gemma at Lumon. His methods inclined trying to burn a message into his retinas and attempting to reintegrate, but his sister devon (jen tullock) and new all harmony cobel (Patricia arquette) Fashion a new Soltation: Take mark to the seveered cabin at the damona birthing retreat, where he and his innie can communicate across the Severance Barrier via Recorded Video Messages.
While the conversation begins with a semBlance of camaraderie – OUTIE MARK even apologizes for forming this existence on Innie Mark – It Quickly Devolves into a tense showdown. Remember the ideographic card gemma analyzes of a man fighting his own subconscious in “Chikhai Bardo”This Scene is basically that, come to life.
OUTIE Mark Needs Innie Mark’s Help to Save Gemma from the Testing Floor. But once he and gemma leave lumon and expose her imprisonment, What Happens to Innie Mark? What Haappens to Every Innie?
The answer, of course, is retirement, which is basically a death sentence. And even thoughts oute mark offers up reintegration as a solution, it’s clear that’s not what innie mark wants. In his mind, his oute is no better than lumon, viewing the innies as an expected way to help hee get what he wants. The nail in the coffin is OUTIE MARK Reducing Innie Mark and Helly’s (Britt Lower) Relationship when Compared to his marriage. Asking your innie to sacrifice his love story and his life and The lives of his friends for your own romance? That’s a Tall Order, One that only come from Someone who does not understand the depth of the innies’ existence.
The entry Scene is a masterful play on percent, accentuated by the contrast between innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie innie The winter night. To each side of mark’s consciousness, the other is the Villain, and as Severance Toggles between the two, we come to understand the impossibility of a truly reintegrated mark. No matter what, these versions of Himself will Always Want Different Things and Love Different People.
We finally known what the numbers are in Severance: “The numbers are your wife.”
Patricia arquette in “Severance.”
Credit: AppletV+
Innie Mark’s Stubbornness Leads Cobel to Drop The Biggest, Clearest Reveal in Severance So far: “The numbers are your wife.”
That’s right: according to cobel, the mdr numbers mark has been refining are “a doorway into the mind of your oute’s wife, gemma scout.” The emotions he and the other mdr workers feel when refining the number clusters correspond to Kier Eagan’s Four Tempers: Malice, WOE, DREAD, And Frollic. Togeether, these make up “The Building Blocks of [Gemma’s] Mind. “
So what is mark building with these blocks? New Innies for Gemma, One for Each of the Unpleasant Rooms She Enters on the Testing Floor. Each of his files corresponds to one new consciousness, with cold harboring the 25th.
But ms. Cobel isn’t done dropping bombs on innie mark. Once he completes cold harbor and gemma finishes her time in that room, she tells heam, lumon will kill gemma and retire mark and the other mdr works. Mark, realizing he and the innies will die wheether he helps gemma or not, resigns himself to the plan – but not without any one OUTIE, Devon, and Cobel Using Him.
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Lumon is Using Its Baby Goats for Ritual Sacrifices.
Credit: AppletV+
As gemma prepares to go to cold harbor and mark gears up to save her, Severance Drops Another Answer on Us, this time about the ever-) baby goats. Turns out, Lumon is sacrificing them,
The Reveal Comes when Mammalians Nurturaable Department Head Lorne (GWENDOLINE ChRISTIE) brings a sweet baby goat named emile to a hidden room covered in images of humans of humans boiling to, then killing goats. There, Mr. Drummond (ólafur Darri ólafsson) Commands Her to take emile’s life, say, “We dedicate this animal to kier in his eternal war against pain.”
He goes on: “This beast will be entombed with a worried woman, who Spirit it must guide to Kier’s Door.” Based on that, it seems like lumon plans on burying the goat with gemma, where it will act as a guide to whitever lumon’s version of heaven is. The revival adds a deaper layer to the religious and cult-like aSpects of lumon, but, like many things with SeveranceIt also leads to more questions. What other lumon rituals don’t we know about? How long has this particular tradition been going on? Who Else has Lumon Sacrified Goats for, and how many sweeet goats have lost their lives to the cult of Kier? (Enough to make lorne beat the frlic out of mr. drummond, that’s for sure.)
Gemma Relives Her Trauma in the Cold Harbor Room.
Dichen lachman in “Severance.”
Credit: AppletV+
Thankfully, Neither Emile The Goat Nor Gemma The Human Die in “Cold Harbor.” However, gemma does still have to enter the last room on the testing floor: Cold Harbor ItselfIt’s a momantous enough obscation that jam eagan (Michael siberry) sits in to witness the “efficacy test.”
Unlike the other Rooms, with their Elabrate Sets and Characters Played by Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson), Cold Harbor is sparsely furnished. The only thing in it is a crib, which Dr. Mauer Tells Gemma’s Cold Harbor Innie to take apart.
The crib, as well as the billie holiday song “I’ll beeing you” That’s playing in the room, is a direct callback to gemma and mark’s unSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS to Have A Chailds, ASEN in Flash “Chikhai bardo.” That are already potent emotional triggers, but lumon’s not don-traumatizing gemma just yet! They’ve also forced her to dress in the same outfit she wore the last time she is Saw Mark.
However, none of these stimuli have an emotional impact on gemma’s innie. “The Barrier is holding; she feels noting,” Dr. Mauer Says While Watching. “It’s beautiful.”
The Intense Focus on the Severen’s Barrier Throughout Gemma’s Testing Floor Experience Makes It Seeem Like Lumon is Trying to Find a Way to Sever Any Pain, Like the Woes of a Turbole Flight. Cold harbor evokes the most professional emotional pain: that of grief and loss. Most interestingly, it’s the first room we’ve seen where gemma’s pain is being blocked from the innie, as opposed to the norm of the many innies’ Unpleasant Experiences BEINGES BOLOMMAMA.
Now, with the test’s success, has lumon finally perfected a way to win kier’s “eternal war against pain” And if so, what do they plan to do with the technology next?
Does mark make the right choice in freeing gemma but staying with Helly?
Working togeether, Innie and OUTIE MARK MANAGE to Free Gemma from the Testing Floor and Get Gemma Into The Non-SEVERED DEARRWELL on the Seveered Floor. It’s a Sequence full of Standout Moments, from Outie Mark and Gemma’s Tearful Reunion to the Comedy of Them Changing Back Innie Mark and MS. Casey Mid-Elvator Kiss.
But of course, the sequence – and the entry season, really – Leads up to one key choice: Or will he stay with helely and get as much time with her as he can?
In the end, innie mark fullfills his promise to his OUTIE in free The choice echoes are helpless to the marching band members in Choreography and merge. “They give us half a life and think we’t fight for it,” She Tells Them. Innie Mark’s choice is Him choosing to fight for his half a life, even when his oute expects he is not to.
As freeing (and frankly, romantic) as innie mark’s choice is, the sequence remains undeniably heartbreaking, with gemma science for the man she she knows as her her herband to come. (To make things things, she might not even know he’s seveered! Devastation of Gemma Losing Her Husband, and of OUTIE Mark Potentially Never Knowing She Made It Out.
The whole Scene Feels Like a Reversal of the Greek Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Here, The Eurydice Figure, Gemma, Escapes from the underworld of Lumon. (Fittingly, Helly Did Call it “Hell” to Jame’s Face.
How long he and heart will stay there is a question for season 3, but as season 2 reaches its bold and brilliant end, it’s clear the innies are ready to take the inni to take the autonomy that autonomy that love Even just a half a life is wholly to fight for.
Severance Season 2 is now streaming on Appletv+.