Severance: 10 Burning Questions We Still Have Going Into Season 3

Warning: This post contains spoilers for all 10 episodes of Severance Season 2.

Severance wrapped up its sophomore run in spectacular fashion last week, answering some of the questions we've had about Lumon for years — but of course, many mysteries still remain.

In the Season 2 finale, Mark learned that the numbers he's been refining at work were connected to his wife Gemma's mind, helping Lumon perfect the severance chip, and he helped bust her out of the testing floor — but at the last minute, he chose to stay behind with Helly rather than reunite with Gemma on the outside. (Read our full recap here.) We also got some insight into what the goats are for at Lumon, among other things, but the finale still left us pondering plenty of questions. The biggest one being: Where can the show possibly go from here?

Because we're missing our Lumon co-workers already, we decided to drum up a list of the 10 biggest questions we still need to see answered in Season 3 of Severance. (And thank goodness it's officially coming back for a third season, so we can get some of these answers.) What's next for Mark and Helly? Will we ever see Irving again? And could Mr. Milchick end up helping the refiners topple Lumon from the inside?

Read on to see what mysteries are still occupying our non-severed brains looking ahead to Season 3 of Severance. (Special thanks to TVLine staffers Jason Averett, Nick Caruso, Claire Franken, Rebecca Luther, Matt Webb Mitovich and Ryan Schwartz for their help in compiling this list.) Got questions of your own? Or answers to ours? Head down to the comments to join us for some pineapple bobbing and light conversation.

Yes, it was fantastically romantic seeing these two run off hand-in-hand bathed in red light as the Season 2 finale drew to a close. (Unless you're a Mark-and-Gemma fan, that is.) But where are they even running to? It kind of felt like the ending of The Graduate: elation, followed by "WTF do we do now?"

So how do Mark and Helly plan to fight back against Lumon, as well as their own Outies? Is Season 3 going to be a hostage thriller of sorts, with Innie Mark and Helly refusing to leave the office — and essentially erasing Outie Mark and Helena — until their demands are met?

We know Innie Mark left her stranded at that exit door — and we sure hope she gets out of the building safe and sound — but how will she work to get Mark back? We could see her teaming up with Devon and Ms. Cobel on the outside to lead a protest of Lumon, exposing it for the horrors it put her through and hopefully freeing Mark in the process.

This is the ultimate conundrum, isn't it? Season 2's 7th episode made us fall in love with Outie Mark and Gemma's romance, and we cheered when they reunited, albeit briefly, in the finale. But we also understand why Innie Mark turned his back on her and opted to stay inside Lumon with Helly, aka the only love he's ever known. Do we even want to see Gemma get Mark out, if it means Innie Mark and Helly's love story is over? But after everything she went through to escape, now Gemma has to live without her husband, just like he had to live without her. See what we mean? Conundrum!

Reintegration was dangled in front of us throughout Season 2, in the hopes that Mark could escape Lumon by consolidating his Innie and Outie selves. But it was a messy process that yielded only fleeting results — Mark's lucky to have even survived it, according to Cobel — and now we're not so sure we want that for him. Innie Mark laid out his concerns perfectly: What if a reintegrated Mark is much more Outie than Innie, and Innie Mark is relegated to a corner of Mark's full consciousness? In rooting for reintegration, are we actually condemning Innie Mark to death?

Mark found himself in the middle of a very bizarre love triangle (shout-out to New Order) this season, as he not only pursued his feelings for Helly, but found himself pursued by her Outie, Helena, even accidentally having sex with her during Episode 4's ORTBO outing thinking it was Helly. Will Helena's weird obsession with Mark — we're still creeped out by that Chinese restaurant conversation — play a bigger role in Season 3, now that Mark is holed up inside Lumon with Helly? Will Lumon even find a way to switch Helly into Helena remotely (we've seen them do it before) and have her go undercover, posing as Helly to collect valuable intel and thwart Mark's revolution?

It pains us to think of the MDR team being permanently broken up, but in Season 2, Irving was fired by Lumon, and his Outie was put on a train out of town by Burt, possibly never to return. So does that mean John Turturro's time on the show is over? There's no definitive word yet on whether or not he'll be back for Season 3, and both Turturro and series creator Dan Erickson have been cagey when speaking about Irving's future prospects. But we know we'd miss Irving if he was gone for good — because we'd love to see Irving team up with Gemma, Devon and Ms. Cobel to lead the charge against Lumon from the outside.

So we know Mark was refining numbers that corresponded to his wife Gemma, with each file representing one of her severed Innies — but then what were his co-workers refining? Were Helly, Irving and Dylan also tinkering with Gemma's mind? Or are there other test subjects down there on the testing floor who match up with the files the other three were working on? (Gemma can't be the only one, can she?) And while we're on the subject: What's the significance of Gemma having 25 Innies, with Cold Harbor being the last one? Why is 25 the magic number?

Season 2's final scene, with Mark and Helly running through the halls of Lumon, is accompanied by a Mel Tormé rendition of "The Windmills of Your Mind." That song is best known from the 1968 movie The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. So was that a conscious reference by the show? The episode itself was certainly one big heist!

The movie ends with McQueen's bank robber eluding Dunaway's investigator and getting away, even after she fell in love with him. Are Mark and Helly like McQueen and Dunaway, seemingly doomed to never get a happy ending together because of who they really are? Or is Gemma like Dunaway, trying to wrangle a man she loves even while he's determined to remain an outlaw? Hmmm, we might have to rent this one and report back.

Ms. Cobel's former right-hand man went on an absolute journey in Season 2, being named the new manager of the severed floor — before doubts about his loyalty to Lumon began to creep in. (Especially when they gave him the gift of those unsettling paintings.) He did revert back to being a Lumon company man in the Season 2 finale, but maybe his evolution continues in Season 3, and we're holding out hope that he'll end up joining Mark and Helly in their uprising against Lumon. Workers unite!

First of all, we loved meeting sweet-faced Emile, and we're very happy he survived the finale. But we're still a little puzzled about the whole goat thing at Lumon. So the company has an entire department, Mammalians Nurturable, dedicated to raising goats just so they can be sacrificed as an offering to Kier? We have to think there's more going on here. That leads us to a larger question: Is there a greater purpose to Lumon beyond the severance chip? Are the goats also involved in other secret scientific endeavors, such as cloning or perhaps reincarnation, as some online theories have suggested? Is the ultimate goal of Lumon to find a way to bring its founder Kier Eagan back to life? These are the kinds of questions we'll be pondering until Season 3 arrives, it seems.

Fellow refiners, join us in the comments below to share your own questions, thoughts and theories.