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It was mostly stuff she said. She was uh...very pragmatic. Always had a plan B. You know, one time we were supposed to go on this camping trip and--Is it weird that I'm talking about her right now?

SEVERANCE | 1x06 / 2x07

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i always thought it was funny how one of the reasons lumon fired cobel was because she was “spending time at the house of mark scout’s sister” but then they were also like. that’s a great idea though.. let’s start doing that. and immediately had natalie start spending time at the house of mark scout’s sister. but apparently stealing her ideas is just their whole thing

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Season three. I need to see more dancing from Ms Casey. And Gemma... and Helly R.

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Dichen Lachman and Britt Lower behind the scenes of 2x07 (x)

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the way they're literally in love with each other

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The Severance stars on *that* finale, fan theories, and their characters' love tetrahedron.

Severance fans had an Irving-style list of questions heading into the season 2 finale. What was Lumon's plan with Cold Harbour? How would Innie Mark and Outie Mark's reintegration play out? What about poor Gemma? And what exactly is the significance of Gwendoline Christie's herd of impossibly cute goats?

Creator Dan Erickson and producer Ben Stiller may not have answered all of our questions. But hey, that's what season 3 is (hopefully) for. In the meantime, viewers are still reeling from that drama-packed finale, which – spoilers! – saw Innie Mark (Adam Scott) forced to make a choice between his Outie's wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman), and his own love, Helly R (Britt Lower). Fans were left divided when Innie Mark helped Gemma escape from Lumon, but chose to stay with Helly R, leaving Gemma bereft as Mark S and Helly R run back to Lumon's severed floor together.

We're not the only ones reeling. Britt Lower and Dichen Lachman joined Glamour UK to discuss those heart-wrenching final scenes, the enduring appeal of the show, and what their hopes for season 3.

GLAMOUR: By now, Severance fans around the world have seen the season 2 finale. What's the reaction been like?

Britt: Intense. It stirs up a lot of emotion, which I think was Ben [Stiller] and Dan [Erickson]'s goal. But it's heartbreaking. I remember reading it and just… you know, we watched Outie Mark and search for Gemma for two seasons and simultaneously Innie Mark is falling for Helly, and forming this chosen family with Irving and Dylan. So, these two concurrent relationships coming to a head was something that was inevitable, but as with every great tragedy, you hope against the inevitable.

Dichen: It's exciting to see how engaged the viewers are and how much they want to know what happens next. That's how you want the show to end; with that desire for them to want more.

GL: What can we expect from season 3? What do you hope to see for your characters?

Britt: I just want more scuba diving. Pineapple-bobbing. All underwater activities.

Dichen: How incredible was the stop motion?

Britt: Yes, more stop-motion animation.

Dichen: I mean, wow. Those guys deserve so much credit. I actually don't know anything about it, but I do want to just acknowledge the amount of work that goes into stop motion is phenomenal. There's a guy on Instagram who posted behind-the-scenes of making all the little figurines. Like, Coraline is one of my and my daughter's favourite movies, and the workmanship and time that goes into that is extraordinary.

Britt: Oh, and Keanu Reeves [who made a surprise, uncredited cameo in episode 1 as the voice of the Lumon building in the stop-motion ‘Lumon is Listening’ video].

Dichen: Did you know about that?! I had no idea.

Britt: I was so excited. “Just be excellent to each other!”

Dichen: So, all of season 3 in stop motion, just listening to Keanu's beautiful, soothing voice.

GL: Severance is currently Apple TV's most-watched show. For such a mind-bending and surreal show, what do you think makes it so universally appealing?

Dichen: I feel like people relate to the show because not everybody has the opportunity to do what they love. Everyone in this room is pursuing something creative and dynamic and fun, but there are, sadly, a lot of jobs in this world where it's a grind, and it's not inspiring or creative, it's very corporate, there's not a lot of flexibility. So on that level, I think people relate to the office culture. I think on another level, they're relating to the need to escape, to having an alter ego or a different part of themselves they want to explore. I think it's a very natural human desire to want to escape.

Britt: I think there are so many analogies. I feel like the greatest compliment is just hearing the way the fans are applying the questions of the show to their own life and asking themselves: ‘Well, what would I do? Would I behave in this way? Would I want to suffer? Do I have parts of my life that I have an Innie and an Outie for?’

Dichen: Some people are just 100% themselves in any situation, and I really admire and respect those people. But I think we do show different sides of us, and in a way, we probably do have Innies and Outies at work and in different situations.

GL: I think that's so interesting because one of the first things that really struck me about Severance was the idea that you could erase or ‘park’ your trauma or grief. So, would you sever if you could?

Britt: I don't think so. I saw that needle, that's too long.

Dichen: Yeah, I'm very needle-phobic.

GL: Have you seen any fan theories that blew your mind?

Britt: There's a great one about Richen being a goat.

Dichen: That's my favourite one too! It's so unoriginal, but it's so out there. And I love that they invested the time try and justify how they came up with the theory.

GL: Dichen, what was it like filming that hallway scene?

Dichen: It was very intense. And it was very technical at the beginning of the day which I found challenging, because you're trying so hard to get the shot right, but you're also trying to experience all of the emotions, and doing those zollies [a cinematic technique combining a zoom and a ‘dolly’, where the camera is on a set of wheels] were probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

Britt: Yeah, underwater.

Dichen: Underwater, and the ‘hanging’ in season one. To do that with all the emotion and to do it on the move, making sure I'm not getting shorter in the frame, was really tricky. And the emotional stuff wasn't easy, that's the wrong word, but that stuff comes a little more naturally. When you're shouting so loud for hours and hours, when your body is in that much stress, it tricks your mind…

Britt: And you were going for it so beautifully. They had to put pads on the door because Dichen's hands were… Adam [Scott] and I were worried about your hands. Yeah, you were just fully present. It was heartbreaking to watch. In that last moment, for me as Britt, I just couldn't take my eyes off you. It was just like, ‘Oh wow’. And then I'm being pulled away.

GL: The show also powerfully tackled fertility and miscarriage with Gemma's storyline. Why do you think that was so crucial to the plot?

Dichen: It was nice to be able to explore that when it's not often explored. I've seen it a little, but it's not really a topic people talk about very much. I think it was important to the story to really establish the relationship between Gemma and Mark. Anyone who's ever been in a relationship knows – and even Mark describes it to Innie Mark – about the ups and downs and the intense love. I think that in order to have intense love, you have to go through ups and downs together, and that forges your relationship. When you have the contrast of the beautiful, happy and just everyday moments with immense grief, it solidifies that relationship like nothing else. So in order to really buy that relationship, for the audience to be invested, I think they had to go through that. Because there's no perfect relationship. You look at people sometimes and you're like, ‘I wish I had that relationship, they're always happy, they seem like the perfect, ideal couple’. But that's just your perception of it.

Britt: Right, the depth is what creates the light.

Dichen: The depth and the pain creates the growth, and you grow together.

GL: Who's your go-to support on set?

Britt: We just have such an amazing crew. The hair and makeup trailer in the morning – and the cast is just so supportive. It's so cliché, but it really does feel like a family.

Dichen: I said this in LA, and I was like, ‘Maybe they don’t know what I'm saying', but there's no bad eggs. Everyone's a good egg.

Britt: If you like eggs.

Dichen: They're very expensive in America right now apparently. But I didn't get to work with you very much at all this year, and it was still limited even in season one.

Britt: They cut our scene when we were supposed to hug in season one, Miss Casey and Helly R, and to this day, I'm sad that I didn't get to hug you. Helly R needs more women in her life!

Dichen: That was a sweet little relationship. Poor Miss Casey was so worried for you.

Britt: Speaking of Miss Casey, what happened to her?!

Dichen: She's still there, right? Somewhere.

Britt: She's still there. Just like Helena is still there, and Outie Mark is still there.

Dichen: Yes, there's a lot of relationships going on.

Britt: Our love tetrahedron, right?

Dichen: I actually can't remember what a tetrahedron is.

Britt: A tetrahedron has six edges, four faces. But then also maybe it's a hexagonal prism, right? That's two hexagons in a 3D shape, because each of us have two sides. But you have actually 25, right? So it throws my shapes all out of order.

Dichen: She's very good with geometry.

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The thought that I keep coming back to is that, as rapturously joyful as Mark and Gemma's reunion is, it was never gonna be permanent. Even if Mark S followed Gemma out that door, it wouldn't have been a neat and tidy happily ever after.

Before Gemma disappeared and was presumed dead, her and Mark's marriage was tearing at the seams. Gemma's episode did a lot to show how much they loved each other, yes, but it also showed that their marriage was gonna fall off a cliff without some serious intervention.

Mark was starting to lash out at everyone and everything, including his wife, and Gemma silently internalized all the pain she was going through and self isolating. The scene of Mark smashing the baby crib while Gemma listens from the other room fucking haunts me.

The night Gemma "died", he had to be reminded to say I love you to her before she left. They were 3 feet away from each other and yet the distance between them in that scene felt so vast.

That is all to say, as much as they missed each other and yearned for each other in the 3 years apart, the time and space apart is not going to magically mend the broken pieces when they are back together.

They've come back to each other completely changed people. Their experiences and trauma and loneliness and isolation (on top of all the shit with their severed selves) fundamentally changed them, and it is not as simple as picking up where they left off and running off into the sunset.

It was never going to be that simple.

I'm rooting for them like nothing else, but I also expect they will have to have a reckoning with themselves and each other about where to go from here, and I have a feeling that is going to play a big role in s3.

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SEVERANCE (the tv show) SPOILERS FOR ALL OF SEASON 2!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!

Okay, so I want to throw my own hat into the ring regarding the frustration some fans experienced at the end of S2EP10. After scrolling through many posts, I’m seeing two common points brought up in the discussion.

1. people saying that the reaction to the ending shows how people don’t view IMark as his own character.

2. Shipping stuff between Gemma and Helly.

However, I think these people miss the actual reason why some people felt frustrated at IMark.

Helly and IMark choose to run back into the building that they have both experienced abuse in. Helly herself refers to it as torture. IMark has been told by Cobel that they will be killed if they stay there. IMark has been fully informed of the torture his “bosses” are capable of towards Innies. Therefore, even when only considering the information the Innies are privy to, their decision feels…shortsighted. Heck, the show itself recognizes this, contrasting the upbeat frolicking music with their looks of confusion and worry in the last shot. To the audience members who’ve spent hours building to this moment, it feels like a subversion, and not one that feels good. Instead, it almost feels…stupid.

That’s when I realized, it’s because their decision is incredibly naïve. This is most definitely on purpose, the Innies are repeatedly shown to be so sheltered socially that they veer into child-like territory. And naivety is very frustrating to watch. Especially because we are seeing Gemma, a woman who’s experienced so much trauma and knows exactly what their decision means for her and her husband, suffer the consequences of their naivety.

So, I’m not saying IMark’s decision doesn’t make sense. It makes perfect sense for this character, in fact. However, I think it is disingenuous to write people’s frustrations with his decision off as simply “you don’t view IMark as his own character” or worse “You just don’t like the Helly/Mark ship”, and don’t get me started on the weird vitriol I’ve seen towards OMark.

Just as IMark’s decision is not inherently “wrong”, it is not inherently “right”. And just because some fans don’t like the decision, doesn’t mean their media literacy is less than those who do.

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i love the idea of gemma progressively becoming more and more of a person as the show goes on but like, as a storytelling technique. the show is defined by the weight of her absence but simultaneously works to build her up as a person. we start out only getting hints to her presence, then she's "my wife who passed a few years back", then we get her name, then we get what she looked like, then we know she's still alive in some form. and the more the episodes go on, the more real she becomes; we get a full episode dedicated to her and the confirmation that she's well and truly alive. at the end of s2, she finally escapes the place that both physically and metaphorically took away her personhood, which i can only assume is a set-up for the next season in which she'll only continue to be expanded on as a character. ily gemma scout

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My unpopular opinion that will have me like this is that Helly / Helena and Gemma don’t need to become friends simply to bridge the fandom. Especially if it makes no narrative sense. Don’t change the narrative for fanservice. Like, ever.

Work together? Sure. Have a moment of empathy? Sure. Woman to woman respect? Sure. Have a conservation? Sure.

I think it’s good not to push it, since both of them have already been through so much traumatizing shit. Just respect their boundaries, especially Gemma. I want her to become her own character.

Outside of oMark / iMark / Helly / Helena which will only continue to develop in Season 3.

Her husband has moved on to some degree, the creep who told her that wasn’t entirely wrong. Mark felt something for Helena (source: Ben Stiller and Adam Scott) and he’s “madly” in love with Helly (source: Adam Scott) and it’s perfectly fine if she’s not in a rush to become friends with Helly. That’s her choice.

The woman has had her mind split 25 times, give her a break. You know?

I think the average person’s response to “hey, so your husband is madly in love with another woman, and I know you’ve been married for 4 years, but would you mind stepping down as his wife and just being his girlfriend from now on and sitting on that cuck chair in the corner of the room while they bang” would be “um… no?”

And that’s 100% valid.

Anyways there’s my unpopular take. If they do become friends, it has to make sense in the narrative. Not forced. But mostly I just want Gemma to be her own character.

Not rely on Mark or Helly.

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Dichen Lachman has graced us all with some more of her thoughts via this interview. Love that she nails what makes Mark and Gemma’s relationship so compelling and why they’re both still fighting for it after everything that’s happened. There’s history there and a bond that refuses to be broken.

These two statements further cement, in my opinion, why Gemma Scout needs to be the main character going forward into season 3. It would be so interesting to have a main lead who doesn’t have an antagonistic relationship between their innies/outies.

I do think Gemma, despite her experience of Lumon’s cruelty, would approach the existence of her innie, Ms. Casey, with a sense of compassion and empathy. Gemma has the unique experience of not having chosen to birth these innies - it’s all been done against her will, just like her innies.

Gemma and Ms. Casey would also have something that Helena/Helly and Mark S/Mark Scout don’t have - they’re on the same page about one thing.

Their shared love for Mark.

It would such a refreshing dynamic to have a character actually work to understand and work with themselves in Severance and I think Ms. Casey is a hugely underrated asset in saving her friends on the severed floor. We actually don’t know too much about her - or Gemma, for that matter, outside of her relationship with Mark - and season 3 would be the perfect time to shake things up with Gemma taking the lead in figuring out a solution to this entire mess.

Also I really want to see a conversation between Gemma and Ms. Casey. I think it would be so cute and endearing, which we need after being forced to watch Mark’s diva off with himself.

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“Gemma coming back defeats Mark’s story about healing” bro WHAT are you talking about.

the whole point is that Mark wasn’t healing. severing yourself and forgetting about your dead wife for 8 hours a day isn’t a healthy coping mechanism. and both the grief and the unhealthy coping is caused by Lumon. it’s an injustice that Mark is even grieving because Gemma didn’t die of natural causes or random events. an exploitative company targeted her for their own gain and put her through inhumane cruelty. Mark and Gemma didn’t suffer from natural events that are just a part of life. an injustice occurred, that they are fighting to stop. why should the story be about passively accepting exploitation?? corporate power went unchecked, destroying the lives of everyday people.

the point is that it’s messed up that Lumon caused Mark’s grief which is what made him chose severance in the first place. their company created the problem, and they sold the solution.

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season 2 ep 7 of severance is like. what if the first 5 minutes of Up were an hour long and the pain compounded exponentially with every extra five minutes that they lasted

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The actor chats with Glamour about portraying miscarriage on screen, how her own motherhood journey informed her character, and how she thinks Gemma really ended up at Lumon.

There were many revelations in the Severance finale, but one packed a particular punch. Gemma Scout, the imprisoned wife of the show’s protagonist Mark, finally faced her biggest emotional challenge in the mysterious “Cold Harbor” room, and it was an empty crib.

While viewers still don’t know how Gemma (Dichen Lachman) ended up in the basement of Lumon as a captive, the season two finale did answer some burning questions. (Spoilers, detailed plot threads, and very specific Severance speak obviously ahead.)

While her husband believes Gemma died in a car accident two years ago, she has actually been forced to undergo the “severance” procedure multiple times, creating a new “innie” every time she enters a new testing room. Once she’s in the room, her innie is forced to engage in an activity which coincides with things she fears (going to the dentist, airplane turbulence) or dreads (writing thank you cards). In each room and with each innie, Lumon seems to be testing if engaging in these activities she dislikes breaks the “severance barrier,” or allows her real “outie” personality to bleed through to her innie.

The last room waiting for her was Cold Harbor, which offers the biggest emotional test of all. As we learned in episode seven, titled “Chikhai Bardo,” Gemma and Mark (Adam Scott) had struggled for years to have a baby, undergoing rounds of IVF and miscarriage without success. One of their worst moments was when Mark angrily took apart a crib he had optimistically assembled in a spare room. As he tore it to pieces, the couple’s anguish was clear on both their faces. In Cold Harbor, Gemma is forced to disassemble the same crib, as a test to see if being forced to relive one of the worst moments of her life would break the severance barrier.

The couple’s arc throughout the season depicted how infertility can strain a marriage in a way that was both poignant and realistic, and getting it right was something Lichman tells Glamour she took incredibly seriously, speaking to friends who had suffered pregnancy loss and drawing on her own experiences as a woman.

This research and Lichman’s innate sense of the character led to one of “Chikhai Bardo’s” most heartbreaking moments, when Gemma apologizes to Mark after they arrive at the fertility clinic for the first time. The line was something Lachman improvised, when she realized Gemma would feel guilty that she couldn’t get pregnant even though, of course, she had no reason to.

“It just sort of came out,” she says. “A lot of women, even though it is not our fault and we have no control over it when something like that happens, we feel this need to apologize. We tend to do that. Generally, we tend to be quite apologetic about things that we can't control.”

Lachman chatted with Glamour about how her own experience as a mother informed her character, how she thinks Gemma ended up at Lumon, and that crazy Severance finale cliffhanger.

Glamour: Gemma is absent for much of season two, but then stars in “Chikhai Bardo,” which revealed a great deal about both her current situation at Lumon and her relationship with Mark. What was your first impression of the script?

Dichen Lachman: I was excited to have more to do and to be able to participate in the show more, obviously, but I was so very nervous. I wanted to make sure the infertility issues were handled the right way. That was also really important to Jessica [Lee Gagné], the director. She wanted to try and make that as authentic as possible, and so it was a mixture of excitement and fear.

It was such a lovely opportunity to really deal with something that women go through like that every day, but isn't often dealt with on television. I think it's important that it's represented, especially because women now, we're burdened with so many roles.

I think modern women are constantly being pulled in this direction and that direction. And sometimes we feel, I know I do, I feel like I'm failing at all of it. I try to be there for my daughter and my husband and our little family, but work pulls me away…It's really difficult. There's a lot to balance.

It’s so difficult! Being a working mom is so hard.

Patricia Arquette [who plays Harmony Cobel on the show] said something to me because I asked her, how did you cope? You know, with being both a mom and the powerhouse that she is. She told me… it's important for them to see mommy go to work.

The infertility scenes were incredibly realistic, in a way I had never seen before on TV. How did you and Adam approach telling this story?

Adam's as extraordinary a person as he is an actor. In terms of developing the relationship, I think his generosity and kindness helped create that sense of familiarity. In terms of the miscarriage scene, I spoke to a lot of women and it's more common than people admit or talk about. It’s one of those things that just isn't in the conversation. It's something that a lot of women feel like they go through alone, and it's very difficult, I think, for a male partner to understand what it feels like.

…It was so important for Jessica to make it feel authentic. I think both our desires to really deal with it that way, hopefully landed really well with the audience and the writers and Ben [Stiller, who executive produces the show] and everyone. Obviously they’re men who haven't been through something like this, but they were really encouraging in terms of just saying, whatever you guys want to do with this, however you want to approach it to me and Jessica. They were great that way.

You mentioned speaking to women who had experience with miscarriage, who were they?

I have a couple of girlfriends, I'll let them be nameless, but people who've had multiple miscarriages and also people who had multiple miscarriages in the IVF process. I've personally had my own experiences with things too, but I didn't want it to only be my point of view. I wanted it to not just make it like, oh, well, because everyone's experience is different.

In some instances where there's that real desire and you've tried multiple times, it's really heartbreaking and you feel like you are failing, you feel like the one thing that should come so naturally is so difficult. It's a real thing that women go through regularly. Often they feel like they're going through it by themselves,

There is a scene where Gemma has a miscarriage that I thought portrayed the experience so beautifully, without explicitly stating what happened. Afterwards, I was reading some of the show chatter on Reddit and there were multiple (male) posters being like, “Wait, what’s wrong with her? What happened?” When to me, and assume most women, it was pretty obvious.

I think the men who really understand what women have to go through, even on a regular basis on any given day, they're few and far between. We're constantly going through a transformation every month, and then as we age, it changes, and then we have to deal with a whole host of things…I actually wondered, when I watched it, I was like, I wonder if the male audience is actually going to understand what's going on.

There’s a lot of fan theories about Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson), the Lumon employee running the experiments on Gemma who seems to be a little obsessed with her. He was also lurking in the background when Mark and Gemma were at the fertility clinic, leading people to wonder if they somehow recruited Gemma from her treatment. What do you think?

I see the theories and I'm like, oh, wow, I didn't even think of that. It's incredibly fun to see the level of investment that people are putting into it and the level of thought into what situations could have got her in this whole thing. But I try to just tell myself, you know what? Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. But at the end of the day, I'm just going to trust the process and enjoy what it is for now. And [show creator] Dan Erickson is such an incredible talent. I'm just looking forward to seeing what he comes up with. Although I know he's admitted to reading the Reddit thread. I don't know, maybe he'll find inspiration.

My main question on Gemma’s captivity is what’s with all the weird outfits for each different room?

I feel like it was Dr. Mauer's infatuation with her. He’s enjoyed living out this fantasy. I mean, this is me speculating—disclaimer—but I think the clothing would maybe inform her innie when she was in that space, and it would just change the whole environment and it was part of the experiment. That's how I justified it. He's left up to his own devices and then even [Lumon executive] Drummond says to him in an earlier episode, why are you wearing that ridiculous sweater? It seems like it's just part of his little experiment down there, and which makes it even more creepy.

There’s a lot of speculation as to how Gemma ended up trapped at Lumon, with Mark thinking she died in a car crash. Some think she was kidnapped, while others are speculating she went willingly, possibly because she was lured by a promise of an infertility treatment that could work. What do you think?

When my character says goodbye to Mark that day [of the alleged car crash], I really believe she was going to her friend's house. To be honest, I didn’t even ask Dan that question. But now that I've seen it, it does make me think, oh, maybe she knew that he would never want to go, and she did sign up. It's possible. The thing is that the possibilities are so endless, and I'm with the fans, I'm like, when are we going to see what happens?

You have a 9-year-old daughter. How did your own motherhood journey inform your portrayal of Gemma?

In terms of my daughter, I feel like she was coming whether I was planning it or not. I can't imagine my life without her, as hard as it is sometimes. I think that intense love and understanding of what that love is now, which I couldn't quite understand before, thinking about not having experienced it, especially when you're really wanting and yearning for it, helped me have more empathy, more understanding of how heartbreaking it was for her.

I have a feeling fans are going to have a lot of thoughts about Mark’s innie, Mark S., ditching Gemma in a stairwell to stay on the severed floor with his love interest, Helly R. (Britt Lower), rather than help outie Mark and Gemma flee to safety at the end of the finale. How do you feel about the cliffhanger?

Even though I'm on the show, I'm a fan of the show, and you're so torn. Britt's done such a wonderful job of giving this Helly character life and with Mark S. and their dynamic. Then episode seven does kind of throw a spinner in the works because finally you are introduced to what Mark had on the outside world, which feels meaningful too. So it's a real conundrum. Sometimes. I joke that they have to find a new, modern way of a timeshare relationship.

I was rooting for Gemma and Mark to escape, but I think I’m in the minority. A lot of the audience seems to be more pro-innie.

It's really interesting to see how connected the audience has become to the innies. But I mean, it makes sense. That's who they've been spending time with the most. So I don't know what's going to happen. I have no idea. I mean, the best emoji to describe it is just the brain exploding.

Well Ben Stiller has promised we won’t have to wait another three years for season three, which is good, because we can’t just leave Gemma in the stairwell!

I know, and it's so complicated too. She has so many different innies. I wonder if she'll do the backyard brain surgery. Who knows? It's like, what do you do when you have so many innies? I can't wait. But yeah, I have no idea what's going to happen, but I just hope the fans are really invigorated by episode 10 and they enjoy the ride.

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Lower: Helly R. seeing Gemma, Britt seeing Dichen’s performance on the other side of the door, was really affecting. That last moment where she’s seeing this heartbreaking thing happening across the hallway, my eyes were just drawn to Dichen. That was just something that happened on the day. I remember just being like, “I can’t take my eyes off her, even if I’m being pulled away.” There’s a connection there. There’s this moment where I think Helly R. is seeing an outie, having empathy for an outie, maybe for the first time, and seeing this other woman who loves the outie version of the same person that she loves on the inside. That has an effect, even as they’re running away like wild horses. That lingering image, that heartbreaking image stays with her as they’re both, like, “What are we doing? What’s next?” And yet she’s free.

Both Marks and Helena-Helly are going through identity conflicts all through Season 2. How do you see this decision in the finale helping or complicating that next season?

Erickson: It shows innie Mark, having gone through the growth to see himself as an individual worthy of life and worthy of protection, he no longer feels that he is an appendage of his outie or an offshoot of his outie. He, through his love of Helly and his time on the floor, sees himself as a person. But it’s going to drive a hell of a wedge between him and outie Mark, I’ll tell you that much, because while innie Mark did get her to safety, he didn’t follow her and so he has robbed his outie of that reunion, which is what he’s been wanting the entire series, is to be back with his wife who he lost. I would imagine that to outie Mark, that feels like an extreme betrayal.

Lower: Helly R. seeing Gemma, Britt seeing Dichen’s performance on the other side of the door, was really affecting. That last moment where she’s seeing this heartbreaking thing happening across the hallway, my eyes were just drawn to Dichen. That was just something that happened on the day. I remember just being like, “I can’t take my eyes off her, even if I’m being pulled away.” There’s a connection there. There’s this moment where I think Helly R. is seeing an outie, having empathy for an outie, maybe for the first time, and seeing this other woman who loves the outie version of the same person that she loves on the inside. That has an effect, even as they’re running away like wild horses. That lingering image, that heartbreaking image stays with her as they’re both, like, “What are we doing? What’s next?” And yet she’s free.

[agent-of-shipwrecked]

This article contains spoilers from the Season 2 finale of “Severance.”

For the second season in a row, Severance ended on an epic cliffhanger. After some tricky coordination between Mark Scout (Adam Scott) and his severed “innie” self, Mark S., the Marks were able to successfully free Mark Scout’s wife, Gemma Scout (Dichen Lachman), from her surreal imprisonment on Lumon Industries’ Testing Floor and get her out of the building through the mysterious Exports Hall. However, at the last moment, Mark S. decides not to follow Gemma to freedom. Instead, he stays inside Lumon with his fellow “innie” and work girlfriend, Helly R. (Britt Lower).

It feels like a bittersweet moment for Gemma. She appears to be liberated from the unreasonable torture viewers saw her undergo in the mind-blowing episode “Chikhai Bardo” earlier this season. However, once again, Gemma finds herself separated from her husband. Lachman, for her part, enjoyed finally being part of the show's main action after being cordoned off from the rest of the cast for so long.

“It felt cathartic actually to be present on the show,” Lachman tells Gold Derby about the Season 2 finale. “Obviously, Gemma is ever-present throughout the whole first and second seasons because she is what Mark is grieving for, but this was being present in the actual physical sense — to be able to be there and work with these extraordinary people who I so look up to, and to challenge myself by doing things that honestly I'd never had to do before. Some of those transitions from Cold Harbor to Gemma and then Ms. Casey were challenges that I really pushed myself to get through, and it felt great.”

“Cold Harbor” has mysteriously hung over all of Severance Season 2. It was first given as the name of a secretive but critical project on which Mark S. was working. Then, it appeared on a door on the testing floor that Gemma was being escorted around. In the season finale, Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) confirmed the connection between Mark S., Cold Harbor, and the experiments on Gemma. It turns out that all of the projects Mark S. has completed while working in Lumon’s Macro-Data Refinery department have been creating different “innie” personalities for Gemma to test the full capabilities of severance technology. “Cold Harbor” (the title of the Season 2 finale) is the ultimate test and the final one. Cobel warned the Marks that they had to save Gemma immediately after the completion of Cold Harbor, or she would die — for real this time.

But what exactly is Cold Harbor, and why is it so important? Lachman understood it as being tied to the miscarriage that Gemma endured during her marriage to Mark. When Gemma finally enters the Cold Harbor room, she is instructed to disassemble a baby crib identical to the one Mark tearfully disassembled after the couple finally gave up on their dream of having a baby together. 

“The room is set up there with the crib to see if that painful moment, as painful as it was, is strong enough to break through the barrier,” Lachman says. “In terms of why it's called ‘Cold Harbor,’ I guess maybe because it's on the box of the crib when he buys her the crib in episode seven. And in terms of what's going to happen after, there are ways to interpret it to mean her death, but ‘death’ on our show can mean different things.”

For instance, earlier in season 2, Mark S.’s MDR coworker Irving B. (John Turturro) was “terminated” after physically assaulting Helena Eagan, the “outie” personality of Helly R. and the heir to the Lumon fortune, on a work trip. Irving’s “innie” personality was seemingly erased from existence, though subsequent episodes revealed that Irving’s “outie” was still alive and well. Would Gemma have undergone a similar process, or would she have been actually physically murdered? Lachman doesn’t know for sure. 

“There's still a lot of mystery for me around how she arrived there [at Lumon] and her understanding of this process,” Lachman says. “She is definitely a prisoner for sure, but I just leaned into its ambiguity because [Severance creator] Dan Erickson has such a brilliant mind. I have no idea what he's going to be exploring next, but I really believe if he thought I needed to know something important for my performance, he would tell me.” 

[agent-of-shipwrecked]

The cast of Severance gives completely made up spoilers for Season 3