Ahead of the Season 2 finale of Severance on Thursday, we have a lot of lingering questions about the world that this mystery box series has created. We’re nearly through two seasons and 19 episodes, yet we still don’t know the true intentions behind Lumon Industries, its controversial severance procedure, or what purpose it will serve for the company’s founding family, the Eagans. Hell, we don’t exactly know what year this show is set in.
Fortunately, Thursday’s finale will mark only the end of this current season, not the series at large. There should be ample time for the fans’ most pressing questions to be answered. Although the Apple TV+ series has yet to be renewed for a third season, Severance is reportedly drawing in strong viewership numbers, boosting engagement for the streamer in the process. And that doesn’t even account for the show’s widespread critical acclaim. It seems inevitable that an official green light will come soon enough, and construction of the writers room for Season 3 was already underway as of early February.
With that said, Season 2 has introduced new story lines while further developing a number of the show’s central mysteries, and there’s still one episode left for answers to emerge. The upcoming season finale, “Cold Harbor,” has a running time of 76 minutes, the longest installment of the series to date. That might not be enough time to answer every question that Severance has raised over the past 18 episodes, but it should afford plenty of narrative space to resolve the major plotlines that Season 2 has been building. Mark is closer than ever to finally reuniting with Gemma, and his wife’s fate is now in the hands of his former boss at Lumon (and neighbor), Harmony Cobel, of all people.
Before the finale airs on Thursday, let’s take a look at some of the biggest loose ends in the second season of Severance.
How will the love triangle (hexagon?) between Mark, Helly, and Gemma resolve itself?
In Severance, love has never been more complicated. What with Dylan and Gretchen, Irving and Burt, and Mark, Helly, and Gemma, along with all of the severed employees’ respective innies (or outies) in between, there are numerous affairs happening in this series that raise fascinating ethical questions. These relationships have led to strange and unprecedented circumstances due to the nature of the severance procedure and the severed workers’ inability to be fully aware of their own lives as a result. The most important among them is the six-sided romance involving innie Mark and Helly, outie Mark and Gemma, an unknowing Ms. Casey, and Helena as she awkwardly tries to wedge herself into the middle of it all to be loved by someone.
At least one of these characters is going to get their heart broken, right? Outie Mark is currently doing everything he can to save Gemma from Lumon—going as far as teaming up with Cobel—and Helly has positioned herself to do the same from within the company’s walls, even if her success could lead to the end of her fledgling relationship with innie Mark. What Cobel has planned at the Damona Birthing Retreat after her forthcoming conversation with innie Mark remains a mystery, and Helly doesn’t seem to have considered anything beyond locating the testing floor where Gemma is being held captive.
If either Mark or Helly is able to save Gemma, some very awkward conversations will need to be had between all remaining parties. Of course, Gemma has been through much worse than that lately.
What really happened to Gemma on the night of her car accident?
In Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo,” we finally got to see Gemma’s backstory, including how she met and fell in love with Mark, along with a glimpse into the hell that Lumon has trapped her in. Although it answered plenty of questions about who Gemma is and what she’s endured in the background of this series, Severance has yet to reveal what happened to her on the night that she supposedly died.
The true nature of Cold Harbor—and what its completion will mean for Gemma—has been the mystery at the heart of the second season. It’s only fitting that the finale will bear its name. In Episode 9, Cobel confirmed that Gemma will die if and when innie Mark completes the Cold Harbor file. But it still isn’t clear what Gemma will even be dying for or what purpose the various experiments that her innies have been put through will ultimately serve for Jame Eagan and Lumon. Perhaps most important of all, we still need to learn why and how Gemma was selected to play this vital role for Lumon in the first place. The shady biotech company must have taken extreme measures to fake her death and ensure that her husband would work at Lumon. And with Cobel standing before innie Mark at the end of Episode 9, finally prepared to have a real, truthful conversation, Mark—and the audience—is on the precipice of finding out exactly what’s happening.
More From the Severed Floor
Why was Irving Bailiff investigating Lumon? And who was he calling from the telephone booth?
Through almost two seasons of Severance, Irving Bailiff remains one of the show’s most intriguing and elusive mysteries. After outie Irving barely appeared in Season 1, the second half of Season 2 has dedicated a significant amount of screen time to the character as he’s gotten to know Burt Goodman. Yet there’s still much we don’t know about Irving or his interest in Lumon Industries.
The first time we met Irving’s outie in the penultimate episode of Season 1, we discovered that he lives alone—with the exception of his dog, Radar—and that he spends an alarming amount of time painting the same image of a black hallway, over and over again. When innie Irving switches places with him in the following episode, he finds and unlocks a chest that contains what appear to be his father’s mementos from the U.S. Navy. However, hidden beneath the upper compartment of the chest is an archive on Lumon Industries.
As Irving sifts through various documents, including a newspaper clipping about a severed employee who sued Lumon, he stumbles on a list of severed employees, with notes accompanying many of them. This list allows Irving to track down Burt’s outie at his home, creating an awkward situation with Burt’s husband. Mr. Drummond finds this very list when he snoops around Irving’s apartment in Season 2, and he sees enough concerning information in it to decide that Irving needs to be silenced by Lumon, one way or another. Burt also discovers Irving’s not-so-secret stash of Lumon information in Episode 9, finding Irving’s theory that he’s a former “goon” for the biotech company. (Seems like Irving should have picked a better hiding spot, no?)
Perhaps more intriguing than any of the chest’s contents is the fact that Irving isn’t investigating Lumon alone. There have been multiple instances when Irving’s called someone from a telephone booth near his home in Kier. However, each time, he ends up only leaving a voicemail.
When Irving calls in Episode 2, not long after the OTC protocol was triggered and he got (temporarily) fired by Lumon, he says: “You’re not picking up, I get it. I want you to know my innie got the message.”
In Episode 5, after Irving has been fired for good, he calls again. “So, they fired me,” he explains. “I think they knew what my innie was up to.” And just as he starts to say, “I’m telling you to …,” Irving spots someone watching him from a parked car and decides to cut his message short.
Whether it’s a character whom we’ve already met—such as Asal Reghabi or Cobel—or someone who has yet to be revealed, it’s unclear who Irving was contacting. Yet we do know that Irving has gone to considerable lengths to investigate Lumon from the inside, and there’s also someone else who knows why and was involved in this operation with him in some way. It’s just a matter of time until Severance provides the missing pieces to the puzzle.
How does Irving know about the testing floor?
Before we move on to other topics, let’s revisit Irving’s bizarre obsession with those paintings of the black hallway. This hallway has become an important fixture in Season 2 because of where it leads: the testing floor.
It remains unclear why outie Irving is so fixated on the black hallway. It could be that his innie was sent to the testing floor at some point and the experience has been embedded into his subconscious, or perhaps Irving was trying to lead his innie there to discover what’s on the other side of the hallway’s elevator. When Irving said that his innie “got the message” in Episode 2, it seemed likely that he was referring to the paintings his other half found in the apartment; innie Irving soon started investigating the origins of that hallway upon his return to the severed floor. In Season 1, innie Irving occasionally hallucinated black goo forming around his computer and the office, which could be the result of his outie’s repeated use of the black paint, spilling into the depths of his mind. Although we don’t know how he learned about it himself, outie Irving wanted his innie to be aware of this hallway and the testing floor.
It seems unlikely that Gemma is the only person who has been trapped—and effectively tortured—on Lumon’s testing floor. Irving might have been working to prevent that from happening to anyone else ever again. Since he safely leaves Kier in Episode 9, thanks to a little help from Burt, we might not gain any further insight into Irving’s past or his plans for Lumon. But Helly has picked up the trail that his innie left behind, and she could be the key to saving Gemma in the upcoming season finale.
Where did Asal Reghabi go?
Reghabi has a habit of disappearing right when each season’s drama is reaching its peak. In the seventh episode of Season 1, Reghabi killed Mr. Graner when he interrupted her introduction to Mark, and then she wasn’t seen or heard from until Episode 3 of the second season. After the former Lumon surgeon performed Mark’s reintegration procedure and stuck around to help guide him through the rest of the process, Reghabi left again in the seventh episode of Season 2. This time, it wasn’t because she had to hide a dead body. Instead, it was because of Devon’s very questionable decision to call Ms. Cobel for help, which has put all the work that Reghabi did with Mark in jeopardy.
Reghabi’s last words to Devon before leaving Mark’s house were “do not call that woman,” but Devon didn’t listen. Reghabi had been planning to continue Mark’s reintegration treatment once he woke up from his fainting episode, but beyond that, it’s unclear what her larger agenda was in trying to save Mark and Gemma. Between reintegrating Petey and Mark, Reghabi seems to be trying to make amends for her time working at Lumon. However, as with Irving’s outie, there’s still a lot that we don’t know about her or her motivations at large.
It seems likely that Reghabi won’t return until next season, but we will soon find out whether Devon made the wrong choice by entrusting Mark’s and Gemma’s lives with Cobel instead of her.
Who was the “man in the hallway” in the season premiere?
Remember that random guy from the Season 2 premiere who was lurking in the hallway outside the Wellness Room while Mark was searching for Ms. Casey/Gemma? We never got a good look at his face as he stood there, watching Mark from around the corner:
In the credits for Episode 1, this mystery character was listed as “Man in Hallway,” played by Adam Jepsen. Eight episodes later, we still don’t know who this guy is or why he was creeping on Mark like that. It’s possible that he was an illusion of some sort, foreshadowing Mark’s eventual reintegration and his journey to merge his two selves again. However, it seems more plausible that this hallway man has ties to the other strange, obscure figures who emerged in Episode 4, “Woe’s Hollow.” Which brings us to our next loose end …
Who (or what) were the “twins” in Episode 4?
During the dreamlike Outdoor Retreat and Team-Building Occurrence (ORTBO) in Episode 4, the four members of the MDR crew are guided to Woe’s Hollow by four bizarre individuals, each eerily similar to one of the refiners. When Mark and Co. finally reach what is supposedly the tallest waterfall on the planet, they find their doppelgängers perched above it, staring down at them.
“Kier’s twin was always with him,” Milchick explains as he emerges from the woods. “That’s why we provided the very same for each of you.”
But who—or what—are these “twins,” really?
If we look to the episode’s end credits for clues again, we can see that each of these characters is listed as the “shadow” version of each of the MDR workers. And notably, “Shadow Mark” is played again by Jepsen. Whether Shadow Mark and “Man in Hallway” are the same person—if these beings are even people at all—is one question, but what purpose these twins ultimately serve for Lumon is another matter entirely.
Who were the four Lumon employees monitoring the MDR team from the testing floor?
Speaking of confusing doppelgängers, these “shadow” workers from Episode 4 aren’t the only characters we’ve seen in recent episodes whose origins are completely unknown. In Episode 7, we’re introduced to four more mystery employees, who sit beneath the desks of the MDR team—on the testing floor—and spend their days monitoring the work and progress of each of the MDR members’ files. These individuals aren’t exactly the spitting images of their MDR counterparts, but they do look weirdly like them as well. They’re also played by different actors than the shadow workers, with the guy watching Mark—credited simply as “Mark Watcher”—portrayed by Eric J. Carlson.
Severance often answers its questions with more questions, and that is especially true of the Gemma-centered Episode 7. There’s still a lot that the series needs to uncover regarding the strange happenings of this secretive department in Lumon, and it will be interesting to see how (or whether) these four employees resurface in the finale.
What happened to Ricken and Lumon’s revised edition of his book?
Now, this is probably the most inconsequential loose end on this list, but I’m curious about it all the same. Ricken has been absent during the show’s recent events, save for his appearance during a flashback in Episode 7. The last time we saw him before that was in Episode 5, when he and Devon were having a tense conversation about the prospect of Ricken working with Lumon to release an updated version of his book that is more suitable for the company’s severed employees.
As Devon argues, Lumon is twisting her husband’s words to better fit its own agenda, watering down and repurposing Ricken’s ideas to deliver its propaganda. Although Ricken maintains that his book might “begat a revolution” among severed workers across the world, it’s clear that he’s on the verge of becoming a sellout.
“This is a fiscal and creative opportunity unlike any I have yet seen,” Ricken tells Devon. “And I am not inclined to just walk away from it. Unless me selling millions of copies of my book and the life that that manages to give us has somehow lost its appeal for you.”
It seems possible that Natalie and Lumon commissioned this new version of Ricken’s book as a means of monitoring the developing situation concerning Mark and Gemma, especially after Lumon discovered that Cobel had intruded into Devon’s and Ricken’s lives under the guise of Mrs. Selvig. Whatever the case may be, we still need to find out what Ricken has been up to and whether this book will be released after all.
Will Milchick join the anti-Lumon revolution?
Seth Milchick may have finally reached his breaking point at Lumon. The manager of the severed floor has had a great character arc in the second season, and Episode 9 highlighted some parallels between his current journey and Ms. Cobel’s experience working for Lumon last season. Just as Cobel told Natalie to “fuck off” in Season 1’s eighth episode as she was getting fired by the Board, Milchick finally stood up for himself against Mr. Drummond in his own glorious way, telling him to “devour feculence.”
More than that, Milchick is starting to question his steadfast loyalty to a company that continues to demean and undervalue him, just as it did Cobel. When Mark calls him in Episode 9, Milchick has a small window of opportunity to get a hold of his employee on what was meant to be a momentous day for Lumon, with Mark finally set to complete Cold Harbor. And Milchick balks at it. Mark lies about seeing doctors for his ongoing nosebleeds before admitting that he just needed to take the day off for personal reasons.
“I’ve just got life stuff,” Mark says. “Isn’t that what Lumon’s all about? Balance? I mean, work is just work, right? Do you know what I mean, Mr. Milchick?”
Although Milchick seems to be aware that something suspicious is going on with Mark, he really takes the sentiment to heart. Milchick silently reflects for a few moments before allowing Mark to take the day off, as long as he returns to work the next day. The conversation is reminiscent of an exchange that Mark had with Cobel (who was still pretending to be Mrs. Selvig) in Season 1. Cobel was lamenting about having a tough day at her shop, and Mark assures her that “work’s just work.” She might not have given up her allegiance to Lumon at that point, but Mark’s simple suggestion struck a chord with her nonetheless, just as it did with Milchick in this most recent episode.
It remains to be seen whether Cobel will end up betraying Mark and Devon to finish her life’s work at Lumon and finally get the credit she deserves, but Milchick now finds himself on a similar path to redemption. If he remains a loyal soldier for Lumon, his decision to let outie Mark go will surely come back to haunt him in some way. Yet Milchick appears to be at a crossroads, presented with the chance to see Cold Harbor through to its completion—with everything that portends for Lumon—or otherwise follow in the footsteps of Reghabi and Cobel to betray his ungrateful, immoral employers.
What are the baby goats for?
Ever since Mark and Helly stumbled upon a man bottle-feeding baby goats in a random room on the severed floor in the fifth episode of Season 1, Severance fans have been desperate to find out more about Lumon’s unexpected collection of goats. When Mark and (fake) Helly returned to the location in Season 2’s Episode 3, they found a connecting room full of verdant hills and an entire herd of goats (and their creepy caretakers), adding further intrigue to the mystery. The resulting theories have been prolific and varied, ranging from Lumon’s interest in fertility and reproduction to cloning and beyond.
The upcoming finale is probably too early for Severance to already circle back to its baby goats, but one can dream. It may take longer for the series to answer some of its biggest questions, but Severance is primed for another dramatic finish on Thursday.
