This article contains spoilers for “Severance” season 2 episode 10, “Cold Harbor.”
Mark Scout (Adam Scott) doesn’t have a great time in the mind-bending “Severance” season 2 finale. Not only does his semi-reintegrated mind have to deal with the mighty task of saving his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and possibly the whole world from the completion of the Cold Harbor file, but he has to convince what turns out to be his most dangerous enemy to team up with him. What’s worse, that enemy is … himself.
Yeah, so Mark’s innie and outie really do not get along. The video camera conversation between the two starts amicably enough, but soon becomes increasingly tense. Outie Mark’s dirty looks and eye-rolling frustration when the camera isn’t rolling make it obvious that he considers the innie both inconvenient and inferior, while Mark S. soon catches up and develops a survival agenda of his own. The innie is reluctant to participate in the rescue-and-reintegrate plan because he doesn’t want to stop existing, and ultimately comes to believe that outie Mark is a filthy liar who’s trying to use him and lose him.
Despite the two Marks’ differences, they end up working together well enough to get Gemma out of the Lumon building’s exit door … but after Mark S. helps her escape, he promptly turns back and runs off with Helly R. (Britt Lower) while Gemma helplessly watches. Since Helly’s relationship with her outie, Helena Eagan, is also famously hostile, it’s fitting that the last shot of the season is that of the two innies running deeper into the depths — unclear of what the future brings, but happy in this all too rare and likely fleeting moment of love and happiness.
Severance isn’t severing every innie-outie relationship
With Helly’s relationship with her outie wrought with assassination attempts and impersonation, Mark’s newfound hostilities with his — which are destined to reach a whole new level thanks to his actions in the season 2 finale — make him the second major “Severance” innie with a bad relationship with his outie. With this, the core Macrodata Refinement Team is (very fittingly, considering the show’s themes) split directly down the middle on the subject of innie-outie diplomacy, which seems like it may become a major plot point in the upcoming “Severance” season 3.
Irving Bailiff’s (John Turturro) innie and outie have never really been hostile toward each other, and his black goo visions, paintings, and other signs hint that the two are either reintegrating or were never fully severed in the first place. Outie Irving even references his innie’s dialog during his goodbyes with Burt Goodman (Christopher Walken) in season 2 episode 9, “The After Hours.” Surprisingly, Dylan George (Zach Cherry) and his innie also make peace in “Cold Harbor,” as the outie admits that Dylan G. is the cool version of his personality — something the innie always used to think of his outie.
Because of these developments, both Irving and Dylan now represent severed people who get along with their innies and even directly benefit from interacting with them, while Helly and Mark are firmly in the “my outie sucks” camp. Sure, “Severance” still has a whole evil megacorporation cult to deal with and countless plot threads to tug at, but this juxtaposition between the four severed main characters might just turn out to be the most interesting thing season 2 sets up for the show’s future.
The entire second season of “Severance” is now available for streaming on Apple TV+.
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