Severance isn’t just a TV show: it’s an event. It’s a psychological experiment designed to give us an existential crisis over what it is we even want in life and what it even means to be alive in the first place. Kidding. Kind of. After the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers, we waited three years for season 2 – which proved to be a darker, deeper dive into the dystopian near-future Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller have created and gave us a different, devastating season finale that puts the entire series into perspective. It’s not about turning your work brain on and off, or the person we are on the weekend versus who we are in the office. The metaphors have gone well out the window: this is a story about two different men with two different sets of wants and needs – and what they decide to do in the eleventh hour, when the stakes are high and decisions have dire consequences.
I realize this is controversial: Aren’t Mark and Mark S technically two halves of the same person? When I interviewed Adam Scott, who plays Mark and Mark, about season 2, I asked about the mentality of playing two different characters – but he didn’t see it that way. “It was super important that it not feel like two different people, just sort of like different halves or sections of the same guy,” he said. “One part of him has 40-odd years of life experience of sorrow and joy and pain and trauma. And the other one is, for all intents and purposes, two and a half years old. So it’s the same guy, but it’s just a difference in life experience, if that makes sense.”
Sure, it makes sense: Mark Scout underwent a controversial surgical procedure to split his brain into two so that – to paraphrase what his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) says in season 1 episode 1 – he didn’t have to think about his dead wife for eight hours every day. We spend all of the first season with the understanding that Mark Scout and Mark S are the same person, with the same heart: easily persuaded and open to connection, suspicious yet trusting, etc. etc. But it’s season 2 episode 10 where we, in my opinion, clearly see that this is not the case. And it’s Scott’s harrowing and intense performance that really drives it home.
Two halves don’t make a whole
In the episode ‘Cold Harbor,’ Mark and Devon team up with Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) to hatch a plan to rescue Gemma, who is, in fact, not dead and is instead being held prisoner at Lumon. In order to make this work, Mark has to speak to his innie and get him onboard – which he assumes won’t be a problem at all. They head on over to the birthing retreat, which has its own severed floor, where the two talk to each other via recorded video messages. Mark apologizes to his outie and explains the reintegration process (which deep down he knows doesn’t actually work), emphasizing that they truly are the same person and that they can simply coexist in the same body with the same combined memory. His innie’s response, however, puts the entire show into perspective: “[Helly is] the woman I’m in love with, which you’d know if you’d ever taken an interest in my life before tonight when you need something. She’s the person I’ll lose if I do what you say.”
Mark assumed that his innie would be on board, that his innie wouldn’t giving up his life at Lumon, that his innie didn’t have much of a life at all. And here’s where things get a little complicated: Lumon knew that this would happen, right, that the innies would develop an agency of their own? They must have, because why else would they create 24 different innies, 24 different life experiences, for Gemma? But it’s the outies, save for Helena, who couldn’t have known. Mark underwent the severance procedure so he could shut his brain off for eight hours a day, not to create an entirely new person with their own wants and needs. And it’s this unfortunate fact that brings us to those fateful, final seconds of episode 10 that I truly did not see coming.
After outie Mark breaks out Ms. Casey, she returns to her Gemma outie but with innie Mark in tow. Instead of following her into the stairwell, he turns back down the hallway, grabs Helly’s hand, and the two run into what might as well be oblivion. That, dear reader, is what Severance is about. It’s not a workplace sci-fi comedy-drama, it’s sci-fi on acid in the pit of absolute despair. And it’s damn good. But where does the show go from there? Lumon is in shambles, the innies will more or less die, and Helly and Mark can’t hide on the severed floor forever – especially considering the fact that Helly’s outie is Helena Eagan, blood-related corporate overlord to the Eagan cult who, like Mark, didn’t anticipate for her outie to a) be her complete and total opposite and b) create a life of her own down there. So, now what?
The work is no longer mysterious nor important
I can see this all being used as an argument for why the show should end here, because it absolutely could. But it could also go in a million different directions, and dive even deeper into the dystopian nature of the show – especially given the fact that Lumon is more than just that singular building…it’s everywhere. It’s important to remember, however, that at the center of all of this madness and plot, is Mark Scout – or, should I say, Mark Scout and Mark S.
This show is about a man who selfishly, albeit accidentally, created another version of himself that developed into a completely separate person. If you wanted to get really existential and weepy about it, you could argue that the true monster at the center of all of this is not Lumon, but the concept of grief itself. Had Mark allowed himself to grieve Gemma and maybe gone to therapy, none of this wouldn’t have happened. But that’s another 4,000 word essay for another day.
Severance season 2 has broken my mind clear open, and my brain hurts. However, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m not sure what’s next for Mark and Mark S, but I do wholeheartedly trust Dan Erickson and the writers to take us down a much deeper rabbit hole – although they won’t be holding our hands while doing so.
Severance season 2 is streaming now on Apple TV Plus. For more, read our Severance season 2 ending explained, or check out our guide to everything we know so far about Severance season 3.
