Severance season 2 comes to a close with a packed finale. Here’s our review of the final episode.
Warning! Unlike previous episode reviews, this review contains MAJOR spoilers for Severance season 2 episode 10.
Well then, here we are. 10 weeks after we returned to Lumon Industries and three years since Mark S. took over his Outie’s body to scream “She’s alive!” before the screen cut to black. He was of course referring to his dead wife, who is indeed alive and being experimented on by Lumon on the severed floor.
Last week’s episode ended with Mark S. awakening in a cabin with Harmony Cobel waiting for him. This week’s episode, the season finale titled Cold Harbor, has the tough job at answering a lot of questions. What’s Cold Harbor? What’s Lumon’s plan? What’s going on with Gemma? What’s with the bloody goats?!
It seems I owe Dan Erikcson and Ben Stiller an apology. I’ve been somewhat critical of this season and how it was building up to a finale that had no way of delivering a satisfying conclusion to such a complex narrative. Turns out, I was very, very wrong.
Severance season 2 finale is simply spectacular. It doesn’t answer all the questions the series has posed, but it’s a tense, action-packed 76 minutes that manages to also have an emotional impact. We’re in an era of great TV and Severance keeps surprising us with its creativity and boldness and we’re lucky to have such a show. It also seems that AppleTV+, which was reported to have been losing $1bn annually, is focusing more on quality of its shows than its streaming counterparts and it certainly shows. Hopefully that’ll eventually turn to profit and we can keep enjoying shows like Severance.
For the final review, we will be looking at the whole episode and discuss spoiler-y things so if you haven’t been able to catch up with the Severance season 2 finale, we suggest you return to this review after you’ve done so. This is your final warning for SPOILERS!
The episode begins right where we left off last week. Innie Mark awakens in a cabin with Devon and Cobel, who encourages him to converse with his Outie by leaving video messages on a video camera. It’s a pretty ingenious way of getting the two sides of the same character to talk to each other and at first, it goes well. Outie Mark tries to convince Innie Mark to help them free Gemma who is being held on the testing floor. The two Marks would need to work together to get her and ultimately guide her out.
However, Innie Mark isn’t convinced. He fears his Outie will abandon him as soon as he has Gemma, not to mention he’s deeply in love with Helly R. still.
We also finally find out what Project Cold Harbor is and what Mark S. has been working on all these years. As we know, his job is to arrange numbers into folders. So far, he has completed 24 folders, which correspond to the rooms on the testing floor they’re experimenting on Gemma in. Cold Harbor is the final room and the numbers Mark arranges into different folders are the “a doorway into the mind” of Gemma. Each folder creates a new consciousness, a new Innie for Gemma in the rooms.
Mind you, all of this happens within the first 15 minutes of the episode. It’s a lot to take in, but oh, so satisfying as we finally get a clear image of what’s been going on. The rest of the episode provides plenty of answers as well and yes, we finally know what the goats are for. The episode also draws more attention to the question of whether the Innies are people of their own and should they have rights like their Outies. Is Innie Mark’s life just as valuable as his Outies? It’s a theme that has been popping up a lot this season, but the finale really brings it to the forefront.
Season 2 has certainly upped the ante and there have been some truly impressive, magical episodes like Woe’s Hollow and Chikhai Bardo, but it’s been a heavy season. The finale does a marvellous job of tying it all together, but there are still a few things Severance could have done better. Dylan and Irv have felt more like extras than meaningful characters at times and the finale is desperately missed Irv who was sent away by Burt at the end of last week’s episode. Dylan’s Outie has left Innie Dylan a heartfelt message on his resignation request, describing him as a badass that he hopes he could be outside the office. There’s so much more potential here to mine, but Severance season 2 has largely been plot-heavy, with a lot to get through, so Dylan has particularly been somewhat ignored.
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Most of the episode is almost unbearably tense, but there are some lighter moments. As Mark completes the Cold Harbor file a statue of Keir Eagan begins to talk and Mr. Milchick appears, promising Choregraphy and Merriment. Cue a huge marching band entering and Mr. Milchick busting a few moves. No wonder Ms. Cobel was fired, we can’t see her doing this.
The season doesn’t end on a cliffhanger per se. Outie Mark saves Gemma and Innie Mark escorts her to the door on the severed floor, finally freeing her, but as Helly R. appears behind him, Mark is quite literally between the two loves of his life. Gemma is begging him to join her on the outside, but can Innie Mark simply leave Helly? Turns out, he can’t. Helly and Mark run off into the sunset, or in this case, down a hallway, but their future is uncertain.
Ben Stiller has already assured viewers that there won’t be a three-year-long wait for season 3, but we’ll believe it when we see it. Season 2 has left us hungry for more Severance, but whether that’s a good or a bad thing is down to you. There’s no clear end for the series as a whole in sight, but we’d be lying if I’d said I wasn’t yearning to return to Lumon already.
All episodes of Severance are now streaming on AppleTV+.
