I’m bringing up the spoiler warning statement for Severance fans. Read it. Again:
I am thankful to have been warned of potential spoilers, my fall cut short by those with wizened hands. All I can be is thankful, and that is all I am.
I believe you mean it. Let’s get started!
After a season full of big swings, it was unsurprising for Severance to hit us with a whopping 76-minute finale.
The Severance Season 2 Finale, ‘Cold Harbor’ uses its runtime to delve deeper into its core themes, flex some filmmaking muscle, and of course, get weird. If at least one of those beats appeals to you, this finale gave you something to feast upon. If you are a fan of the unique balance of Severance’s many tempers, this may be one of your favorite finales of all time. That being said, even if something did fall out of balance for you, it’s impossible to deny that ‘Cold Harbor’ leaves us with some iconic visuals and plenty of intrigue to unpack until Ben Stiller, Dan Erickson, and the rest of the creative team deliver Season 3.
Early in the episode, we pick up on last week’s teaser of an exchange between Helly R. (Britt Lower) and Jame Eagan (Michael Sibbery, Jessica Jones). Jame continues to unsettle viewers to the core with his creepy, almost leering speech patterns. Helly quickly saves us with the season’s ultimate audience surrogate moment when she responds with the words, “god, you’re fucking weird.” Despite that zinger from our girl Helly, Jame has plenty of creepiness left in the tank. He even nods to all of the fan theorizing about secret Eagans when he explains that he no longer sees Kier in his daughter or his other illegitimate children that he “sired in the shadows.” While this certainly keeps that branch of theorizing alive, the main effect of his words seem to be pushing Helly towards a certain level of peace with her Outie persona; she seems to almost understand that both sides of her consciousnesses are imprisoned by this strange old man. Jame also insists that the next day is important, and we are left to wonder what mentality Mark Scout (Adam Scott) will bring to the completion of the Cold Harbor file.
Over at the birthing retreat, Mark, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), and Devon Scout-Hale (Jen Tullock, Perry Mason) are asking the very same question. They’ve devised a plan for Mark’s Innie and Outie to share a conversation using camcorder recordings and a handy Severance threshold between the roaring fire of the cabin and a snowy outdoor balcony. Much to their chagrin, Innie Mark feels threatened by the circumstances and immediately starts asking questions about what will happen to him if the mission succeeds and they are able to “take down” Lumon. He feels they are asking him to lay down his life, and even the sharp-witted Devon is left speechless by the poignancy of this question.
Nevertheless, Innie Mark agrees to sit for the conversation. It starts out optimistically with Innie Mark’s sense of joy and surprise over the fact that his Outie has acknowledged his existence and apologized. Unfortunately, things quickly devolved from there. Outie Mark doesn’t seem to realize that he is patronizing his Innie with the skill of a Severed Floor manager. When Innie Mark starts getting irritated and defensive, his Outie’s request for help starts to fall apart. It’s a fascinating conversation that does a great job of layering nuance onto the conflict between these consciousnesses. In fact, this reviewer felt a bit blindsided as well. Until this episode, the concept of reintegration always sounded like a best-case-scenario conclusion in which all of the best qualities of the identities we’ve learned to know and love could potentially live on in harmony; however, Innie Mark’s observation that a reintegrated Mark would be much more Outie than Innie based on volume of hours lived is hard to ignore.
Things only get worse when Outie Mark misnames Helly as “Heleny” (do your homework, dude!) and condescendingly responds to his Innie’s concern about their reintegrated personality with a defensive, “I don’t think it works like that.” In fact, when frustrated Outie Mark complains to Devon about his Innie’s petulance, she can’t help but acknowledge that Mark’s reintegration process has been pretty miserable and ineffective up to this point. They really don’t know anything about it.
Outie Mark makes his best choice a few moments later when he honors his Innie’s demand that they end the conversation so he can return to The Severed Floor and talk to Helly.
Innie Mark gets his wish and is greeted in the Severed Floor lobby by a deeply unsettling painting of himself as a twisted Lumon Christ-figure. Mark is depicted at his station with a hand poised in the air, full of serenity and purpose; he is about to make the final keystroke to complete the Cold Harbor file. Of course, the painting isn’t set on The Severed Floor, but at the Woe’s Hollow waterfall. Also, Mark isn’t alone in the image, he is flanked on either side by pretty much every character he has encountered up to this point from. Ms. Casey to that dude from Mammalians Nurturable who was wearing a goatskin. Perched atop the cliff in the background, the entire Eagan line looks on in approval.
It is some creepy and deeply unsettling stuff; and we see that discomfort burn onto the face of Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) when he steps off the elevator a few scenes later. We learn that Dylan’s Outie rejected his resignation request; however, this was not an act of cruelty. It was an act of growth. Dylan reads a statement from his Outie acknowledging that he overreacted to his Innie’s kiss with Gretchen George (Merritt Wever, Godless) and has come to realize that perhaps he needs to work on his own self-confidence. It comforts Outie Dylan to believe that he has a more confident counterpart on the inside. Fortunately, this confidence boost comes just in time for Innie Dylan to perform his mandatory end-of-season feat of strength.
Of course, before we get to see which muscle group Dylan is showing off in this season finale, Mark has to grapple with his Outie’s request and the question of whether or not he should complete the Cold Harbor file that everyone has endowed with so much importance.
This grappling kicks off in earnest after Mark and Helly embrace in front of the creepy portrait and share what they’ve learned about The Severed Floor since their last meeting. Mark reveals the whole info dump from Cobel: he has been refining Gemma Scout (Dichen Lachman, Dollhouse) and creating twenty four different consciousnesses for her on The Testing Floor. Cold Harbor will be the 25th. Helly doesn’t have as much concrete evidence, but she has the map to The Testing Floor elevator and her earlier revelation that she and Helena Eagan are, in fact, the same person. After they talk things out in the eerily dark corridors and offices of The Severed Floor (the usually aggressively-lit rooms and hallways go dark for this sequence), Helly lends credence to the notion that reintegration might work out for Mark after all: “at least you’ll have a chance at living.” This nearly pushes Mark to tears, but it seems if the woman he loves believes this can work, he is willing to make the sacrifice.
As Mark completes the file, they joke about the little scraps of understanding of the outside world that still cling to their Innie brains. Helly is only able to remember a few names of “places” other than Delaware. After some innocently naive dad-joking about “the equator,” our lovely couple posits that “maybe it’s just a building that’s, like, so big, that it became a continent.” If that’s not enough to make a Mark-Helly shipper swoon, the couple snuggles up for a final moment of peace; later, Helly calls back to this silent romantic promise when Mark heads out for the Gemma rescue mission: “see you at the equator.”
Just after we pass “the equator,” the episode goes all-in on Severance’s signature zaniness. Cold Harbor is such a special file that the usual vintage video game cutscene celebration just won’t cut it. Lumon has something special in mind, and the master of ceremonies is on the way!
Once again, Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) is in full Lumon loyalist mode. Nevertheless, he misses his entrance by a beat (even after sprinting out of his meeting with Dylan earlier just to make it out on time). There is almost no hint of the man who stood up to his boss last week and approved a deeply suspicious mental health day for Mark, but we don’t get much time to worry about that. Instead, Milchick jumps into a forced and haunting standup routine with the Kier Eagan animatronic from the Perpetuity Wing. They exchange barbs for a few moments before Milchick announces the main event: a performance from Choreography and Merriment!
That’s right folks, we get a whole new department: a Severed marching band! Milchick steps into the role of drum major and dances his little heart out, baton in hand. Performer Tramell Tillman is so delightful in this performance that it’s hard not to crack a smile, even if this particular moment of weirdness felt a bit too forced for this reviewer – but really, what do reviewers know anyway? This sequence launched a million memes before midnight the night of the premiere and helped keep Severance at the top of the pop culture conversation. Plus, within the context of the season, it teaches us why Milchick keeps clocking in every morning despite his clear inner conflict about his job.
Unfortunately for Milchick, Choreography and Merriment will prove to be his undoing. Under the cover of the music and dancing, Mark sets off on his mission to rescue Gemma while Helly steals Milchick’s walkie talkie and lures him into the bathroom. She is going to buy Mark as much time as possible. In fact, she summons up the strength to fend off Milchick’s escape for a few moments. At this point, an emotionally refreshed and bolstered Dylan rides in with a Lumon vending machine to barricade the door. Milchick spends the rest of the episode throwing his body against the bathroom door while Dylan and Helly fight him off. Eventually, it’s game over for Milchick when Helly “rebel rebels” her way onto a desk and convinces the marching band members to fight for sovereignty over their own minds.
This buys Mark plenty of time for an action-packed heist sequence, but before we get there, the episode has one more lore dump for us. As Mark searches for the Testing Floor elevator, Lumon’s head stooge, Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Somebody Somewhere), is meeting with Lorne (Gwendoline Christie, Game of Thrones), head of Mammalians Nurturable. They are prepping a ceremonial sacrifice of one of Severance’s fabled goats. Unfortunately for this lil’ furry guy, he has the verve and the wiles (the most of his flock!) it takes to serve as a spiritual afterlife guide for a “cherished woman” (presumably Gemma). He has been chosen to usher her spirit to Kier’s door. Drummond pulls a bolt gun from the wall, along with a cartridge from a disturbingly efficient dispenser that looks like it could just as easily distribute feeding pellets for a petting zoo. This is terrifying for animal lovers in the audience (and also a clearly distraught Lorne), but it also prompts Drummond to reveal a bit more about Kier’s vision: “We commit this animal to Kier, and his eternal war against pain.” We’ll dig into this one down in the Tempering the Evidence section.
Before the sacrifice takes place, Mark accidentally stumbled upon the scene. Cold Harbor is now complete, so Drummond is more than happy to destroy the frail little frame of Mark’s body (at least some of the pain is real).
Mark gets his shit rocked in #Severance, but I included the podcast audio. pic.twitter.com/BpHQtUtNPH
— Tig Naruto (3rd Act of Mickey 17 Defender) (@_bella_baxter) March 22, 2025
It’s a painful and severe beating until Lorne channels her inner Birenne of Tarth to enter the fray and take Drummond to the cleaners. It’s a fun turn of events, and if nothing else, a payoff of the rousing speech Helena delivered to Mammalians Nurturable earlier this season. It seems Helly was right to suggest that she and Helena are the same person.
P.S. The goat lives.
Finally, the heist is in full swing. Mark holds Drummond captive at bolt-gun-point and ventures down the Testing Floor elevator. Mark S. isn’t a killer, and his decision to step onto an elevator with an evil enforcer who just beat the everling crap out of him feels like a bad move. Of course, we don’t get too much time to worry about it. When the elevator crosses the threshold and Mark’s Severance chip prompts him back to Outie mode, his body’s physical response to the transition causes him to accidentally pull the trigger. Outie Mark is thrown back into consciousness as the massive Mr. Drummond bleeds out all over Mark’s nice crisp suit. What a way to wake up.
It turns out that Mr. Drummond’s large frame makes a great doorstop. While Drummond’s corpse holds the elevator at the ready for Mark and Gemma’s escape, our hero makes his way toward the Cold Harbor room. Gemma’s Nurse (Sandra Bernhard, The King of Comedy) discovers Mark right away, but she books it down the hallway before he can get any useful information. Luckily, after a little trial and error, Mark figures out that he can use his own blood-soaked tie to trigger the blood-recognition lock on the Cold Harbor door. He’s made it to Gemma.
We learn that Cold Harbor is, ultimately, a final efficacy test for the “barriers” of a Severance chip. We are spared having to watch Gemma undergo additional physical trauma, but her test is still troubling. She is asked to dismantle a crib (a “Cold Harbor” brand crib according to the eagle-eyed freeze-framers who scoured “Chikhai Bardo” with a fine-toothed comb), the crib that Mark bought for their baby…a baby that never came. She must perform this heavy task while wearing the clothes she wore on the day of her “death” and listening to the song that she most deeply associates with her husband. The barriers hold.
Jame Eagan and the crew are ecstatic until a bloodied Mark disturbs the test. Gemma never snaps out of her Cold Harbor persona, but she slowly allows herself to be guided out of the room by this handsome, bloody, stranger.
At this point in the finale, Severance runs through as many angles of their complicated love polygon as possible. First, Mark and Gemma share a brief but beautiful reunion in the hallway of the Testing Floor. Now that Milchick is locked in a bathroom and Drummond is nothing but a soul without a goat guide, there is more than enough chaos to cover our lovebirds’ escape. They easily outrun a desperate Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson, Beauty and the Beast), but they still don’t have enough time to finish their passionate elevator smooch before their respective Innie Mark and Ms. Casey personas take over. Ms. Casey has had so many weird interactions in this hallway that she doesn’t have many reservations about accepting Mark’s help. They fight their way through the white halls of The Severed Floor, which are also flashing a beautiful shade of red thanks to some blaring emergency lights, and make it all the way to Severance’s iconic Season One stairwell. Mark coaxes Ms. Casey across the threshold. Victory is in sight!
Unfortunately, Innie Mark isn’t so sure he wants to follow through with the rest of the plan. Helly appears at the end of the hallway as Gemma screams for Mark to join her on the other side of the door. We linger here for a few heavy moments until Innie Mark turns to Helly, leaving Gemma behind.
Severance closes out Season Two on a beautiful and desperate run into the labyrinth of the Severed Floor with Mark and Helly. These two crazy kids don’t have a plan, but they have their love. These shots skyrocket into the pantheon of iconic visuals from a series known for its cinematography and art direction. In a final flex, the episode ends on a freeze frame that gets increasingly grainy. According to director Ben Stiller, this was shot digitally and then transferred to 35mm for that vintage feel. The season goes out strong, paying homage to its cool older cousins The Graduate and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Ultimately, the finale is quite a spectacle. It delivers emotion, fun, lore, beauty, and….of course…..theories.
TEMPERING THE EVIDENCE
Severance is so full of lore, iconography, and open questions that we could never explore every possibility. Instead, we will try to make things more manageable by “tempering” the evidence. In other words, we will attempt to shape our theories into a more focused and manageable arrangement. But what is a logical arrangement for such a strange and complicated story?
Fans of the show have become all too familiar with Kier Eagan’s theories about human personality as depicted in a painting, the “Taming of the Four Tempers.” In fact, a top fan theory is that the four members of Macrodata Refinement each represent one of the tempers: Woe (Mark), Frolic (Dylan), Dread (Irv), and Malice (Helly). It is even possible that their unique dispositions must work in harmony (Harmony Cobel?) to complete the department’s hidden function or objective.
Each week, we will check in on five theories. We’ll swap them out if they are resolved, disproven or otherwise lose steam along the way. Each of the first four theories will reflect one of Kier’s “tempers,” and for the last theory, we will “throw a Waffle Party.” In other words, we’ll take a big swing, hold nothing back, and attempt to tame the tempers by exploring our most bonkers prediction.
In order to best keep up with this ongoing segment, consider checking out last week’s installment.
Woe: Ego Death Is the Only Way Out?
Our recent theories about the Severance procedure as an escape from death started out strong in this episode; Gemma even took a slow walk down the Testing Floor corridor in the outfit she wore the night of her alleged death, but ultimately, Cold Harbor was just an efficacy test to see if she could forget her past self.
On the bright side, we didn’t have to witness a traumatic drowning or synthesize a memory of a car crash that never happened. Of course, our death theory isn’t quite dead yet, either. Let us explain. Ironically, it all starts in the birthing cabin…
That conversation between the sides of Mark’s split consciousness kills some of our hope that “reintegration” could provide us with a super-mega-happy ending. Not only does reintegration leave us with some very messy, unresolved love polygons, but Innie Mark also expresses a valid concern that he might just be drowned out or absorbed by his Outie counterpart’s sheer volume of experiences. We can certainly imagine cute alternate solutions, like some sort of Innie/Outie timeshare cabin experience or a brave new take on the throuple, but those possibilities seem unlikely to resolve all of the complicated emotions that come with these particular fractured consciousnesses.
What if Gemma already explained exactly what has to happen during her “Chikhai Bardo” analysis of the Lumon testing card? Mark assumed that the card depicted two human figures fighting, but Gemma saw a more internal struggle: “No, it’s the same guy fighting himself, defeating his own psyche. Ego death.” What if every consciousness we’ve come to know and love has to die so that a new consciousness can rise up from the ashes?
Innie Mark unwittingly reminds us of this debate in the finale when he and his Outie counterpart have different interpretations of reintegration. Innie Mark assumes some sort of binary relationship and asks his Outie if “you get the right side and I get the left?” Outie Mark counters with his belief that, “it’s not a top-bottom situation.” If nothing else, their disagreement leaves us pondering the geometry of reintegration from a whole new perspective.
If Gemma is right, perhaps each of these consciousnesses will eventually have to die an Ego death. Perhaps each one of these fractured personalities will have to let go of their own desires and leave a blank slate behind. It’s scary to imagine our beloved characters being wiped away forever, but it could make for a beautiful thematic statement about the human psyche. Plus, we know Lumon’s security office lists a “Blank Slate” protocol amongst the different Severance chip commands. It seems like Lumon will have to start playing with some of those protocols in Season Three.
Frolic: Ether for the Masses?
This theory was borderline proven in the Season Two finale. Before Drummond nearly kills a sweet lil’ goat to serve as a spirit guide, he delivers some ceremonial words:
“We commit this animal to Kier, and his eternal war against pain.”
If we look back on all of the evidence we’ve compiled since episode seven that Lumon is developing a chip designed to eliminate human pain, it looks even more compelling with this new insight into Kier’s vision.
Additionally, Jame Eagan’s response to Mark’s heist tracks more with a scorned and frustrated businessman than a cultish weirdo who just lost his ticket for immortality or cloning his forefather. These lighter business-oriented stakes feel like right for a show that exists, in part, as a satirical commentary on the work/life balance.
Dread: Permanent Programmable Innies?
Last time, We took a week off from this theory to pontificate on the possibility that Irving Bailiff (John Turturro) might never return to the series. That proved true for the Season Two finale, and remains an open question, but “Cold Harbor” hit us with some information that demands we circle back to the question of permanent programmable Innies.
Of course, the Innies were anything but programmed this week. Listen, if the measure of a successful insurrection is the effectiveness of a heavy metal “Fuck You, Lumon!” worthy of the Kier Region’s underground music scene – then our Innies scored a huge W in the Season Two finale. It doesn’t get much more metal than the image of a Lumon stooge’s bloodied corpse at the foot of an evil elevator. Of course, there is one small problem: all of those rebels on The Severed Floor are connected to a security system full of protocols and switches that seem to give Lumon pretty heavy control over their state of consciousness at any given moment.
Plus, this episode offers a bit more evidence to suggest that Lumon might be able to reprogram human minds in increasingly sophisticated ways. Early in the episode, Helly lunges at Jame Eagan wielding a pen, but she seems to stop in her tracks before delivering any violent blows. We haven’t known Helly to hesitate like this in the past, so it’s hard not to wonder if she was held back by some sort of Severance chip failsafe. Of course, another read on this moment could be Helly’s growing recognition that she and Helena are, in fact, the same person. Even though this guy is so “fucking weird,” he’s still her dad. Of course, this isn’t our only evidence for permanent programmable innies.
When Harmony explains the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) numbers to Mark, she refers to them as Gemma’s tempers: “the building blocks of her mind.” Harmony’s word choice here suggests that those numbers can be moved around and restructured, much as we have been theorizing throughout the season.
One other chilling piece of potential evidence comes when Dr. Mauer desperately chases after Gemma and Mark, insisting that they come back. He says that their escape will “kill them all.” Mauer is most likely talking about the 25 Gemma personas that he has been coveting and abusing for the last two years, but what if he is literally warning Mark and Gemma that all of the Innies can be instantly killed with the simple, mechanical flip of a switch?
Malice: Harmony the Usurper?
This compelling slow burn of a mystery has been on our minds since the middle of Season One. In the finale, we watch Harmony utilize her corporate knowledge and a newfound willingness to put her own needs and desires ahead of Kier’s vision. As Mark so elegantly phrases it: “I mean she’s the same, but like, different same.” This theory is at least partially true, and we will likely spend much of Season Three trying to discover whose needs she will ultimately put first.
Another wrinkle in this theory presents itself when Harmony showcases genuine surprise at Innie Mark’s reference to Irving’s Testing Floor elevator paintings. Harmony’s surprise doesn’t necessarily mean she will turn on Mark and Devon, but it reminds us that her pride in understanding the Severance procedure, a technology that she invented, will probably always remain her primary interest.
Waffle Party: Flock of Eagans?
We are more than willing to admit that the Severance Season 2 Finale hinted that Lumon’s plan is probably more mundane than a convoluted scheme to allow every Eagan consciousness to live on in a new human host via Severance chip – but this is our last Waffle Party of the season, and this theory is too fun to forget.
Plus, we get a couple pieces of evidence that we can easily ascribe to this theory. First and foremost, Milchick’s stilted stand-up routine with the Kier Eagan animatronic is unsettling. Not only is it weird and desperate, but Milchick clearly wasn’t in control of the script. That cheap, tacky animatronic even delivers the latest shot at Milchick’s elevated vocabulary. In fact, it serves as the episode’s only reminder that Milchick is even remotely conflicted about his work with Lumon. While this joke is probably just a little “fuck you” from Drummond after Milchick told his superior to “devour feculence” last week, what if there is a full Kier Eagan consciousness alive inside of that twisted puppet!?
Similarly, what if Dr. Mauer’s plea that Gemma’s escape will “kill them all” is actually a reference to all of those valuable Eagan consciousnesses they’ve been keeping on ice for so many decades? Yes, folks, it’s still possible that we will get to crawl back down that goat-sized hallway and into this theory before Severance calls it quits.
Luckily for us, they haven’t called it quits yet. Apple TV has already greenlit a third season, and we can’t wait to get lost in the labyrinth of The Severed Floor with you when Severance returns! Thanks for reading, and consider checking back in with us when you start your Season 2 rewatch!
