This text accommodates spoilers by way of the finale of Severance Season 2.
The world of Severance is so unfailingly chilly, so sterile, that the seventh episode of Season 2, “Chikhai Bardo,” got here as a palpable shock. Flashback scenes detailing the love story and marriage of Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and Mark (Adam Scott) have been stylistically completely completely different; they featured dappled pure gentle and ambient noise, and have been shot on movie—a manufacturing selection that gave each characters a grainy, imperfect aura. Directed by the cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné, the episode defined what occurred to Gemma after her supposed demise in a automotive crash—her severance into a number of consciousnesses, every one set as much as endure a unique sort of torment, and her captivity on a hidden flooring of Lumon that she by no means will get to depart. However it additionally drew a pointy distinction between the company’s frigid absurdity, with its historical past of ether-huffing youngsters and creepy animatronic corridor of founders, and the naturalistic humanity of the world past it. “Who’re you?” Mark asks Gemma once they first meet, donating blood by way of ominously Lumon-branded gear. That is, I ought to be aware, precisely the identical query he asks Helly R. (Britt Decrease) within the opening seconds of the collection. Not like Helly, although, Gemma has no bother responding.
Season 2 made Gemma absolutely human, after first introducing her as Lumon’s robotic, apparently lobotomized “wellness counselor,” Ms. Casey. Unsevered, the present revealed, Gemma was humorous, sharp, absolutely in love with Mark, and devastated by her lack of ability to have a toddler with him. Lumon has all the time been sinister in a buffoonish approach, however its therapy of Gemma in “Chikhai Bardo” was horrifically evil: preying on her ache at a reproductive clinic, faking her demise, confining her to windowless quarters, mendacity to her about Mark’s new life, and experimenting on her like a lab rat, making her undergo by way of staged dentist appointments and airplane disasters over and time and again. All of that is in service of a mission that, after the Season 2 finale, “Chilly Harbor,” stays blurry however appears to ivolve sacrificing Gemma in a goat-attended ritual so as to revive the consciousness of Lumon’s founder, Kier Eagan. (And, sure, I really feel excessive even typing these phrases.)
Season 1 of Severance spent sufficient time exterior of Lumon to completely underscore how bizarre the corporate was, with its cultlike devotion to Kier, its obsession with spherical meals (eggs, melons, waffles), its bizarrely hostile management. The individuals who fleshed out the present’s world past the corporate—a Lumon-protesting punk band; Mark’s sister, Devon (Jen Tullock); and even depressed Mark himself—have been principally recognizably regular. Its internal acolytes got here throughout, in contrast, as uncannily contrived kooks. Season 2, although, has confined itself extra carefully to the Lumon realm, which made “Chikhai Bardo” and its depiction of pre-severed Mark and Gemma stand out. And, to me, the season’s cramped, airless Lumon setting additionally made the finale’s closing scenes crueler, as outie Mark rescued Gemma from the corporate’s netherworld, just for innie Mark to desert her on the opposite facet of the door, screaming, whereas he ran again towards Helly.
At a theoretical stage, the ultimate twist is sensible. Innies and outies, Severance has emphasised all through Season 2, are basically completely different individuals with distinct personalities, wants, needs, and ethical compasses. Innie Mark, emotionally harmless and as impulsive as an adolescent, may certainly select Helly, even when the 2 are actually trapped along with no conceivable approach out. The ending units up a 3rd season of Severance that is still comparatively steady, with the Lumon CEO Jame Eagan doubtless nonetheless intent on finishing Kier’s “grand addendum,” even when it means ignoring one more messy worker rebellion. And Decrease’s double-edged work this season toggling between her innie, the beautiful, irreverent Helly, and her outie, the icy, manipulative Helena, has been astonishing, greater than justifying the ending by emphasizing the present’s philosophical questions on nature versus nurture and whether or not love can transcend severance. So why is what occurred to Gemma nonetheless so exhausting to swallow?
Perhaps as a result of, on the present, Gemma has solely ever skilled struggling: earlier than Lumon, throughout Lumon, and now after. Even in her escape, she’s dropping one thing but once more. (Lachman’s bewildered, “Mark S? What’s going down?” as she discovered herself kissing him within the elevator, having switched into the severed mode of Ms. Casey, was pitch-perfect.) In any other case, “Chilly Harbor” did every little thing it wanted to plot-wise, whereas throwing a spectacularly nervy marching-band set piece and a teeth-grindingly tense escape sequence into the combination. There have been revelations. (Mark has certainly been coding completely different souls for Gemma this complete time, as a part of a momentous venture to probably convey again Kier—which does, although, urge the query of whom the opposite innies have been refining.) There have been ideas. (Is Kier Eagan really alive in digital kind, imprisoned within the animatronic type of himself?) There have been vastly gratifying insurrections—Dylan and the marching band in opposition to Seth Milchick, the supervisor of the severed flooring; Milchick in opposition to a roboticized Kier; the mysterious goat girl in opposition to the Lumon supervisor Mr. Drummond. (Emil thanks you.)
There have been additionally eggs. So many eggs! (Presumably, with the present’s rumored $20 million an episode funds, the present can afford them.) We spent a lot time this season pondering the that means of the goats when the eggs have been there all alongside: uncooked eggs, egg bars, eggs reduce neatly into six completely different segments, served on essentially the most menacing plate a prop grasp ever thrifted. From its opening scenes, Severance has offered the process the present is known as for as a sort of start, the spawning of a brand new, immature being. With “Chilly Harbor,” we lastly obtained a way of the complete life cycle. The childlike innies have turn out to be extra akin to youngsters, discovering sexuality and falling in love. Subsequent, it’s presumed, comes maturity, after which demise, after which resurrection by way of blobs of knowledge with 4 tempers.
And apparently, with demise come sacrificial scapegoats. A present as wealthy in symbols, particulars, and Easter eggs as this one is all the time going to be thrilling to decode, with Reddit threads and screenshots making an attempt to make sense of the mysteries. The problem for the finale was providing simply sufficient to maintain hard-core Severance-heads engaged with out alienating the much less dedicated viewer or relinquishing the qualities that make for satisfying tv. And, for essentially the most half, “Chilly Harbor” succeeded. The remainder of the season, although, had various bugs in its system. Is Mark, after present process a course of designed to reintegrate his two minds, nonetheless severed or not? Who really is Reghabi, the ex-Lumon worker doing mind surgical procedure on Mark in his basement? Is Ricken, Mark’s offbeat brother-in-law, something greater than comedian aid? The revelation that so lots of Lumon’s core characters, together with Concord Cobel, have been broken by each trauma and repetitive publicity to ether as youngsters may assist clarify their sheer strangeness. However the present’s concentrate on increasing the historic lore of Lumon this season left it much less time to commit to its characters, the verbose and really fascinating Milchick amongst them. (Severance: The Lexington Letter, a fictional e-book launched to accompany the collection, hints that Milchick is expounded to a newspaper editor, which maybe explains his love of phrases.)
Final week, The Guardian posited that Severance has turn out to be the smash it has as a result of it provides various things to completely different tastes (and even completely different tempers): puzzle-box mythology, office comedy, allusions to cultlike organizations and the heartlessness of company America, an overarching sense of dread. However for me, what makes the present so charming is its humanity: the riveting, fleeting moments when the characters really feel actual, regardless of the eggy, etherized monstrousness of the world they’re trapped in. Ought to Severance return for a 3rd season (which it appears fated to—reward Kier), all of the items appear arrange for extra formidable, absurd storytelling. However I’ll nonetheless be craving justice for Gemma.