This article contains spoilers for the season two finale of Severance, “Cold Harbor.”
At last, the final few episodes of Severance’s second season answered some of the show’s most pressing, confusing questions: What exactly was the Cold Harbor program at Lumon, and why was Gemma (Dichen Lachman) so crucial to it? How would Mark’s (Adam Scott) reintegration of his severed selves be resolved? What was the deal with the goats?
But the show’s season two finale, directed by executive producer Ben Stiller, didn’t end by untangling one last byzantine theory. Instead, it concluded with a return to the mushy, poignant heart at the series’ center: the love story between Mark S. and Helly R. (Britt Lower).
In the end, Mark’s innie needed to make a choice between the love of his outie’s life, Gemma, and the love of his own, Helly R. Viewers who have spent two seasons invested in the complex, somewhat tragic dynamic between Mark and Helly, which blossomed while they were trapped inside Lumon’s severed walls, had their own stake in the matter. I, for one, let out a bittersweet cheer when Mark S. made his decision, finally freeing Gemma from Lumon’s clutches—but choosing to stay in them himself, in order to be with Helly.
This season found Lower putting on an acting clinic each week, with the actor toggling—sometimes secretly—between her portrayals of innie Helly R. and outie Helena Eagan, the enigmatic Lumon heir. For an exclusive postmortem on that wild finale, which also included a marching-band-led mutiny and a wax animatronic of Lumon founder Kier Eagan, Lower joined Little Gold Men to break down the end of Severance season two—and all that led to it.
Vanity Fair: Let’s start at the very end of this episode.
Britt Lower: We’re starting at the end? Oh my goodness.
It’s an extraordinary final scene. How did you react to it when you first read it? Were you told about it before getting the script?
I remember reading it and feeling all of my feelings at once. The arc of the season was given to us in advance because, like season one, we film out of order, so we knew the major arcs of the characters and we knew the end point. Some of the details of how we got there changed a bit as we were filming, but we always knew there was going to be this final hallway scene where Mark was getting Gemma free—and needing to then make a decision between a life where he might be integrated or choosing his own consciousness purely as an innie. It looks like he’s choosing either Helly R. or Gemma, and that is, I guess, literally what’s happening. But in my mind, innie Mark and outie Mark have two separate consciousnesses. And when Mark is looking at Gemma on the other side of the door, he really has no connection to her compared to what outie Mark has. When he looks the other direction, he sees that his entire life has been inside of MDR—with not only Helly R., but with Dylan and Irving and previously with Petey.
Do the innies’ lives matter—including all of the people at O&D, all of the goat people, all of the innie marching band members, which Helly has just discovered exist? For all they know, if Mark crosses that barrier, Gemma getting out will completely dismantle the severance program and all of these innies’ consciousnesses will cease to exist.
Jon Pack
