Severance's Bloody, Brilliant Finale Gives Us Some Long-Awaited Answers — and Another Huge Cliffhanger
Severance's Season 2 finale had an awfully high bar to clear, after the masterpiece that was the Season 1 finale — and is it crazy that we think they cleared it?
Friday's supersized finale begins where we left off, with Innie Mark in a Lumon birthing cabin with his sister Devon and Ms. Cobel. Mark tells them he hasn't finished Cold Harbor yet, and Cobel is relieved: "Then she's still alive. We can save her." She starts telling Mark about a long, dark hallway inside the Lumon building, and he remembers it from Irving's drawings: "We know where it is." Back at Lumon, Helly is confronted by her Outie's creepy father Jame Eagan, who confesses: "I do not love my daughter. I used to see Kier in her, but he left her as she grew." But when Helly lunges at him clutching a pen as a weapon, he's pleased: "There he is." He also tells her "tomorrow is a special day."
Cobel tells Mark that once he finishes the Cold Harbor file, he needs to hurry down that hallway and get to the testing floor, where he'll switch to his Outie. Then he'll need to take Gemma to the severed floor, where he, as an Innie, can help her escape. Mark is confused (understandably!), but Devon tells him if they can prove that Lumon kidnapped Gemma and held her captive, "it will end them." But then "what happens to us?" Innie Mark asks... and Devon doesn't have a good answer for that. Cobel says his life doesn't have to end, and tells him someone else wants to talk to him. She hands him a video camera and tells him to record his response when he's done watching and then step outside onto the balcony. He flips the video on — and it's Outie Mark!
Outie Mark apologizes to his Innie, acknowledging that "you've been living a nightmare for two years." He wants it to make it right, though. Innie Mark flips the camera around to record his response and then steps outside, where he switches to Outie Mark. He then watches the message from Innie Mark, who worries he'll cease to exist if this plan works: "Whatever this life is, it's all we have. And we don't want it to end." Outie Mark sends a message back saying "Lumon doesn't have to be your whole life." He's working on reintegrating: "This life, our life, belongs to both of us." But as Innie Mark points out, his Outie has lived way longer than he has, so won't the reintegrated Mark be way more Outie than Innie?
Outie Mark then opens up about how devastated he was after Gemma's death: "I thought I was protecting you from that pain." But he steps in it when he brings up Mark's affection for "Helena Eagan," calling her "Helleny" (?) and telling him his love for Gemma is like that multiplied by thousands. Innie Mark bristles at that, correcting him ("It's Helly"), and they end up bickering back and forth: He knows Helena won't reintegrate, so he'll lose Helly forever if he does. In fact, Innie Mark thinks his Outie is just using him to get his wife back and will discard him when he's done. (And isn't Adam Scott amazing in this scene, creating two distinct Marks to argue with each other? Start engraving his name on the Emmy now!)
Outie Mark gets frustrated, calling his Innie "a child," and Cobel offers to talk to him. She tells Innie Mark a big secret: "The numbers are your wife" (!!!). She explains that the numbers on his computer are "the building blocks of her mind" corresponding to Kier's four tempers: woe, frolic, malice and dread. (And the macrodata refiners feel those feelings when they move the numbers.) He's been building a new consciousness for Gemma with each new file, a new Innie, and Cold Harbor is the last one. Once he finishes it, "you will have served your purpose. So will she." But she warns him "there'll be no honeymoon ending" for him and Helly: "She's an Eagan. You're nothing to them. Nothing to her." That's the last straw for Innie Mark, and he angrily storms off, demanding that the next thing he sees better be the severed floor.
Sure enough, he walks outside and finds himself in the Lumon elevator, emerging to see a grandiose mural of himself finishing the Cold Harbor file with his co-workers looking on admiringly. Helly gets off the elevator next, and they hug, telling each other: "I have to tell you something." In their work area, they're confronted by a statue of Kier Eagan holding a card from Milchick that congratulates Mark on "the historic completion of your 25th file." As they approach their workstations, Helly tells Mark about Jame's visit — and Dylan emerges from the elevator, too, deflated when he realizes his Outie didn't accept his resignation. On the testing floor, Gemma opens her closet to find today's outfit... and it's the same outfit she was wearing the night she "died" in that car crash.
Mark isn't sure if he should finish the Cold Harbor file, but Helly says they might be screwed either way. If he does get Gemma out, she suggests, maybe he could take down Lumon and then reintegrate: "At least you'll have a chance at living." But Mark gets emotional as he turns to Helly, saying, "But I want to live with you." She tells him "I am her," though, and he gets back to work, pushing Cold Harbor's completion to 98%. Meanwhile, Dylan reads his Outie's response to his resignation request, which consists of three points: "Point one: F–k you." Outie Dylan is angry that his Innie tried to steal his wife, but also: "I get it. She's perfect." He admits he's jealous of how self-assured his Innie is, and "I hope one day she sees in me what she sees in you." He wants his Innie to stay at Lumon, he's decided: "I like knowing you're there."
As Mark nears completion on Cold Harbor, he and Helly talk about geographical names they've only heard about. (Is the Equator a building or a continent?) "Just wish we had more time," Helly sighs. Mark comes to the final numbers, and Helly joins him at his monitor, slipping him Irving's instructions before he finishes the job. Cold Harbor is 100% complete, and the Kier statue starts talking (!) as rock music plays, thanking Mark for bringing "my grand agendum nearer to fulfillment." He brings in Milchick, who saunters in like a late-night TV host, exchanging some canned-laughter banter with the Kier statue. Then Milchick calls for "choreography and merriment," bringing a full marching band and drum line into the office to play loudly in Mark's honor. (Because it wouldn't be a Severance season without Milchick dancing, right?)
Helly grabs Milchick's walkie-talkie, though, and hides it in the bathroom to distract him while Mark runs out into the hallway with Irving's instructions in hand. When Milchick enters the bathroom, Helly tries to keep him inside, holding the door shut. He forces it open — but then Dylan arrives to shove a vending machine in the way, trapping Milchick in the bathroom! While Mark sprints down the hall following Irving's instructions, Gemma is led to the Cold Harbor room, where she switches and then sees... a baby crib just like the one Mark was building in the flashbacks we saw. She doesn't react to the crib at all, though. In fact, she doesn't even know who she is. (Dr. Mauer and Jame Eagan watch this with delight on surveillance video.) Oh, and Lorne from Mammalians Nurturable pushes a cart holding a bleating baby goat down the hall. Why do we have just the worst feeling about this?
That feeling is quickly justified when Lorne brings the goat to Mr. Drummond as an "offering," with him loading up a bolt gun with a single bullet and handing it to Lorne. While Gemma is instructed to take the crib apart with a screwdriver, Milchick slams his body into the vending machine trying to free himself, and Mark hurries down the Lumon hallways. He finally arrives at a door, and his kicking at it interrupts Lorne as she's about to pull the trigger. Drummond steps outside to find that Mark is actually at the door across the hall, and he brutally throws Mark against a wall, wrestling him into a chokehold. They tussle, and Drummond gets the upper hand, strangling the life out of Mark... when Lorne puts the bolt gun to Drummond's head, telling him: "No more killing."
Drummond slaps the gun away from her, and they exchange punches until Mark holds Drummond back and Lorne pummels his face bloody. She's about to shoot him dead when Mark stops her, taking Drummond as a hostage as he continues down the hallway. While Jame and Dr. Mauer marvel at how unaffected Gemma is as she disassembles the crib ("She feels nothing. It's beautiful"), Mark takes Drummond into an elevator at gunpoint, explaining that he's about to switch — but when he does switch, he accidentally pulls the trigger and shoots Drummond in the throat. Oops! Blood spurts everywhere as Drummond falls down dead and the elevator opens on the testing floor. And as Milchick tries to climb out of the bathroom, Helly bashes him in the head with a marching band trombone and pleads with the band to help her: "They're going to turn us off like fucking machines!... They give us half a life and think we won't fight for it."
Mark makes it to the Cold Harbor door, using Drummond's blood to get past the scanner, and steps inside to find Gemma. She's scared of him at first, but he calmly tells her: "I'm your husband. Your name is Gemma Scout. We've been married for four years. We had a life together." Jame looks on in horror as Dr. Mauer warns her that Mark is dangerous, but she takes his hand anyway, and when they step outside, she switches back to the old Gemma, hugging and kissing Mark through tears. They're bathed in red light as an alarm sounds throughout the building, and as they run for the elevator, Dr. Mauer screams: "You'll kill them all!" Mark and Gemma reach the elevator, and once inside, they switch back to their Innies, with Gemma/Ms. Casey asking: "Mark S., what's taking place?"
As he leads her down the hallway to an exit door, Milchick frees himself from the bathroom, crouching atop the vending machine like a wild animal. But he's stopped by Dylan, backed up by the marching band, as Dylan tells him: "F–k you, Mr. Milchick." Gemma reaches the door and switches back to her Outie self as she steps through it, calling for Mark to follow her. But Mark is still Innie Mark... and he's not sure he wants to go. She begs him to come home with her, but then Helly runs up behind Mark, and as he looks back and forth between them... he backs away from the door and walks back to Helly, leaving Gemma in tears. Mark and Helly run down the hallway in slow motion bathed in red light as the alarm continues to blare — and we hope we don't have to wait another three years to see what happens next.
That's it for Season 2, Lumon employees: Was the long wait worth it? Give the finale — and Season 2 as a whole — a grade in our polls, and then hit the comments to share your thoughts. (And stay tuned to TVLine to get the inside scoop on the finale from the Severance cast.)