If you had the pleasure of catching Severance back when it aired its inaugural season in 2022, you may have spent the last three years sitting on pins and needles. The Apple TV+ original concluded its first season with one of the most show-stopping cliffhangers in television history, before enduring several harrowing production delays on its ten-episode follow-up. Luckily, the new season has finally arrived, and has somehow managed to be well worth the wait. Since Severance season two premiered in January, the show has amassed droves of new fans, gained cult status among Apple TV+ subscribers and propelled itself into the position of most popular original series on the streamer thus far. Of course, Severance’s heady delivery and otherworldly writing has left some fans with plenty of questions, concerns and comments.
Since the series has turned so many heads, now seems like a good time to examine the new batch of episodes, and walk through the Severance season two conclusion as we anticipate the third installment. Obviously there will be major spoilers for the entire series ahead, so please feel free to bookmark this page and return later if you haven’t finished watching. Even if you don’t generally mind spoilers, Severance is the kind of show that really lends itself to shocking reveals, so make sure to squeeze the most out of your viewing experience by going in blind. If you’re having trouble recalling what happened back in 2022, we’ve also done an in-depth recap of season one. Without any further preamble, let’s dive right in, and see what we can discover about Lumon’s mysterious plans.
How Did ‘Severance’ Season 1 End?
When we last left our severed employees of the macrodata refinement office, they were in the midst of a life-altering mission to escape from the severed floor and reveal the secret truths of Lumon to the outside world. Innie Mark, Helly and Irving each woke up in their respective outie’s bodies, and each attempted to spill their guts about the treatment that they face in Lumon’s isolated basement. For Irving, this meant showing up at the doorstep of his former co-worker turned lover, Burt, and slamming on his door with tortured urgency. Helly discovered that she is actually Helena Eagan in the outside world, daughter to Lumon CEO Jame Eagan and heir to the entire company. She attempted to take the stage at a lavish gala and unleash a scathing critique of her company before being tackled off-stage.
Unlike the others, Mark woke up during a private social event at his sister’s home, and actually managed to have a prolonged discussion with a trusted family member before being unceremoniously snatched out of his own body. While still in his innie mode, Mark managed to learn the identity of his outie’s wife, Gemma. Much to his surprise, innie Mark notices a photo of Gemma, and learns that she is none other than Lumon’s severed wellness director, Ms. Casey. In his final moments before the overtime contingency was terminated, innie Mark came bursting into the party like a bat out of hell, screaming, “She’s alive!” at the top of his lungs. Just as Mark utters these words, Seth Milchick busts down the door of the Lumon security office, and bodyslams Dylan, shutting down the manual override of the severance chips.
The Aftermath of the OTC
The season two premiere of Severance opens with innie Mark’s first moments of consciousness following the OTC. For him, it feels like only a moment has passed since screaming at Devon’s party. Before he can piece together his thoughts, Mark finds himself on the elevator at the severed floor, suggesting that his outie elected to bring him back to the building where his wife is being held captive. Innie Mark takes no time deciding what to do, and immediately bee-lines for the wellness office to corroborate his findings with Ms. Casey. Unfortunately, wellness has been entirely packed up and stashed away, and Mark finds that an all new team of refiners has replaced his beloved coworkers.
Before he can even ask what happened to his old team, Mark is accosted by a child named Miss Huang, who seems to have taken on Milchick’s old role as deputy manager. Huang shows Mark to Cobel’s old office, where Milchick has been promoted to manager of the entire severed floor. From there, Milchick explains that it’s been five months since Mark and his cohorts pulled off the OTC stunt, which has since been dubbed the “Macrodat Uprising.” Milchick claims that Mark’s efforts have led to sweeping severance reform, and have paved the way for a new, compassionate era of severed work. Though the newly appointed manager apologizes profusely for his role in Mark’s initial discontent, Mark is filled with trepidation, refusing to work unless his old team are returned to their roles in the MDR office. He even attempts to clumsily sabotage his new coworkers.
The Truth Behind the ‘Macrodat Uprising’
In the second episode of Severance season two, we get confirmation of what most viewers already suspected. Nearly every single word out of Milchick’s mouth is a bold-faced lie. As it turns out, it hasn’t been five months since the OTC was activated – it hasn’t even been five days. In the immediate aftermath of the scheme, Milchick fired Dylan and Irving from Lumon, citing a made-up story about them violating the company’s code of conduct from within the severed floor. Helena, in outie form, records a video apologizing for her remarks at the gala, and claims that she was simply inebriated and making a poorly-delivered joke. It almost seems as though the entire OTC adventure was a massive failure, save for the fact that Mark is apparently integral to the company.
Hours after Mark’s outburst at the party, Milchick arrives and attempts to coax him back into the Lumon basement to complete his work. Mark attempts to quit, but ultimately changes his mind after his sister begs him to investigate Gemma’s apparent whereabouts at the building. Thanks to a brief discussion between Helena, Cobel and security chief Mr. Drummond, we learn that Mark is working on refining a file titled “Cold Harbor,” which is set to bring about a new era for Lumon. Whatever this mysterious file is, Mark is the only person cable of refining it, and the company will do anything and everything to keep him on schedule. Though innie Mark has no idea he’s so essential to the company, he utilizes the whole of his bargaining power, and successfully gets Milchick to rehire the other three refiners.
MDR Reunited
Back on the severed floor, Mark is reunited with Dylan, Irving and Helly. Almost immediately, Irving decries that he can’t go on living without Burt, and attempts to tender his resignation – effectively ending his life as he knows it. Dylan manages to talk him out of it, by insisting that they need to keep working together to uncover the secrets of their work. Likewise, Mark reveals that his outie is married to Ms. Casey, who is presumed dead to the outside world. Helly opts not to tell her coworkers the truth about her outie, possibly for fear of being ostracized, and instead makes up a bogus tale of waking up in a dingy apartment wearing a “save the gorillas” shirt. Irving immediately suspects that something is amiss with Helly’s story, but the others are too focused on Mark’s bombshell revelation to notice.
The following day, Mark and Helly print out a bundle of missing-persons flyers with illustrations of Ms. Casey on them, and attempt to pass them out to other departments. While searching for other severed employees, the pair stumble upon a massive office called Mammalians Nurturable, which is home to the baby goats they previously encountered in season one. The department has many employees, each of whom are adorned in business-formalwear that has been tattered and dirtied by farm work, as the goats roam in an indoor grassland plain. The MN crew is extremely apprehensive of outsiders, though they eventually reveal their respect for Ms. Casey, and agree to join forces to save her from whatever Lumon has in store.
Dylan’s Latest Perk
As the others work to uncover Ms. Casey’s whereabouts, Milchick informs Dylan that he’s created a whole new perk just for him. The perk, an outie family visitation suite, allows Dylan an opportunity to meet his outie’s wife and learn more about his life on the outside. Milchick continues to hang this visitation suite over Dylan’s head throughout the entire season, which helps to placate him and prevent him from assisting Mark and Helly with their extracurricular hijinks. While Dylan is completely elated to meet his wife, Gretchen, and even see photos of his children, he becomes increasingly frustrated at the various tales of his outie’s failures. Gretchen kindly informs iDylan that he “never really found his thing” in the outside world. He seems to be a good dad, though he is forgetful, sometimes selfish and often overspends on frivolous activities.
As innie Dylan becomes more perturbed by his outside self, Gretchen begins to see something in him that reminds her of the man she married. iDylan’s self-assuredness, clear motivations and moral purity allow him to come off as a better version of the depressed man he’s become in the world outside the severed floor. After a few of these meetings, Gretchen even begins falling in love all over again, and even initiates a kiss with iDylan. Before long, Dylan is completely infatuated with his wife, and wishes to spend every waking moment with her. Unfortunately, Gretchen sees this as a tryst, and starts lying to oDylan about her visitation schedule, in an attempt to hide her budding relationship. Severance must be the only television show in history to see a man cuckolded by himself.
Mark’s Massive Leap
Outside of Lumon, Mark continues to be in denial about the fate of his wife. He fruitlessly claims that his innie must have been mistaken by screaming that Gemma is alive, or that he must have been talking about someone else. Still, Devon insists that he investigate, and the two begin working together on a project designed to communicate with his innie. Before they can test this hypothesis, however, Reghabi appears in the night, and insists that the only way for innies and outies to communicate is through her experimental reintegration process. Outie Mark, having seen the effects of reintegration on Petey, is entirely apprehensive, and refuses to let this bizarre woman tinker with his brain. That is, until Reghabi confirms that Gemma is alive on Lumon’s testing floor.
Mark has been mourning Gemma for two years. He claims that he identified her charred remains at the morgue following her fateful car accident. He describes, in harrowing detail, how the loss of his wife has derailed his entire life, ruined his teaching career and driven him to take on the job at Lumon in the first place, just to find a brief respite from the grief. Learning that she is not only alive, but being held captive by the very employers he interfaces with on a daily basis, completely shatters Mark, and he immediately agrees to begin reintegration on-site. As the third episode of Severance season two draws to a close, Reghabi hooks Mark up to a series of crude machines, and starts realigning his brain waves, in a Frankensteinian attempt to make him whole again.
The ORTBO Changes Everything
Before we can discover more about the reintegration process, iMark and his MDR crew wake up in the middle of a frozen-over pond, surrounded by snowy wilderness. The quartet are extremely disoriented, but manage to piece together that they have been brought here as part of an Outdoor Retreat and Team-Building Occurrence, or ORTBO for short. Thanks to a prerecorded message from Milchick, the crew learns that this exterior locale is known as the Dieter Eagan National Forest, and that they are supposed to follow instructions to locate a hidden, secret appendix to the Lumon handbook. This outdoor excursion is clearly designed to play on the MDR staff’s apparent thirst for hidden knowledge, and the whole thing is quite overwhelming. After trekking through the woods for a while, the innies meet up with Milchick and Miss Huang, who read passages from the appendix while roasting food over an open flame.
Things go sour for the innies when Irving begins poking holes in the entire ORTBO. Clearly, his experience in the outside world during the OTC, paired with his bleak outlook on life following the loss of Burt, has stripped away any semblance of Lumon loyalty left in his soul. While castigating Milchick and his tricks, Irving turns the lens on Helly and demands that she come clean about her OTC experience. Helly snaps back with some truly cruel comments about Irving’s empty life, prompting him to storm off from the rest of the group. Irving ultimately finds himself lost in the woods, and resorts to sleeping in a snowbank while Milchick and the others return to their tents for the evening. Mark enters Helly’s tent to comfort her about the confrontation, and the pair wind up having sex, finally paying off their long-held chemistry and will-they won’t-they dynamic.
Irving Takes One for the Team
After a harrowing night sleeping in the freezing snow, Irving finally pieces together what’s so different about Helly. He correctly surmises that the woman he’s been speaking with is not Helly R at all, and is in fact, Helena Eagan. Irving accosts Helena in the woods and reveals that he knows her secret, before grabbing her and walking her down to the base of the Woe’s Hollow waterfall. Helena screams for help, as Irving begins dunking her head in the freezing cold water, while demanding that she confess to being a spy. Milchick, Mark and Dylan hear the screams, and come running to the top of the waterfall, where they can only look on in horror. At first, the crew think that Irving has lost his mind, but after a few suffocating dunks in the icy waves, Helena commands Milchick, as her employee, to reactivate her chip and save her.
Milchick radios someone at Lumon HQ and demands that they deactivate a protocol called the “Glasgow block” immediately. For the first time since she was tackled offstage in the final moments of season one, Helly wakes up, and finds herself outdoors, freezing, and being waterboarded by one of her closest friends and allies. Once Helly returns, Irving holds her tenderly, and apologizes profusely for the situation. While Dylan and Mark are completely flabbergasted by the entire state of affairs, Milchick eviscerates Irving with a Shakespearian monologue about the severity of his actions. He assures the MDR innie that he will be fired, erased from history,and essentially cease to exist forever more. Irving accepts his fate, having effectively sacrificed himself for Helly, and uses his final moments as an innie to cryptically tell Dylan to, “Hang in there.”
Things Heat up Back at Lumon HQ
After the calamitous ORTBO has concluded, Milchick has a pretty massive mess to clean up back at the severed floor. For starters, Dylan demands a funeral for Irving, as Helly demands answers for her outie’s subterfuge. Milchick begrudgingly agrees to hold a ceremony in Irving’s honor, though it’s delivered in ultra-creepy Lumon fashion. Upstairs, Milchick is subjected to an extremely harsh performance review, laced with seemingly racial undertones. This performance review, paired with a number of other micro-aggressions from upper management, proves that Lumon doesn’t view Milchick as worthy of his position, no matter how hard he works to go above and beyond the call of duty. One of the most frustrating elements of his performance review is Drummond’s insistence that Milchick is too verbose. Milchick is asked to dial back his flowery language – one of his defining characteristics, and substitute monosyllabic phrases and dumbed-down sentences.
As this is going on, Dylan recognizes a “hang in there” poster outside of MDR, which ironically depicts his heroic act from the end of Severance season one, when he activated the OTC for his peers. After inspecting the poster, he realizes that Irving has left behind a set of directions directly to the testing floor elevator, which he received after speaking to Felicia in the O&D department. Dylan tells Mark and Helly about the note, but refuses to assist them on their mission for fear that Milchick will take away his visits with Gretchen. Mark confesses to Helly that he was effectively sexually assaulted by her outie, and they each take a moment to process the trauma of this deeply bizarre situation. Luckily, Helly comes up with a solution, and tells Mark that they should create their own memory, untainted by lies and deceit.
Mark’s Reintegration
Following Helly’s solution, she and Mark steal away to an unused room on the severed floor, and have proper, fully consensual sex. The two hold an open dialogue about their experience, and progress past an emotional conflict that any other show might have exploited over the course of multiple seasons. Just when things seem to be going perfect, Mark starts experiencing symptoms of reintegration sickness, causing him to go home early. While Helly fears for him downstairs, outie Mark argues with Reghabi about the speed and effectiveness of her procedures. She demands to accelerate the process by “flooding” his severance chip, which is extremely dangerous, though he refuses, having seen what happened to Petey in season one. After getting into an argument with Reghabi in the very basement where Petey once slept, Mark storms out, and grabs a bite at a local restaurant.
As Mark concludes his meal, he’s shocked to see none other than Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon’s CEO, sitting down to eat at a nearby table. She approaches Mark and strikes up a conversation, thanking him for his work as a severed employee. It’s hard to say if she was spying on Mark on official Lumon orders, or if she had simply developed an infatuation with him during her time posing as Helly. Either way, the two outies begin to flirt and actually exhibit some genuine chemistry. Unfortunately, things go sour when Helena brings up Mark’s wife, in a clumsy attempt to sidestep any suspicions he may have about Lumon taking her hostage. A furious Mark returns to his home and immediately demands that Reghabi flood the chip. As soon as she finishes the procedure, Devon comes knocking on the door, and Mark collapses while suffering a seizure.
Gemma’s Harrowing Journey
As Mark recovers from his medical emergency, we see a series of flashbacks that showcase his entire relationship with his wife before her untimely “death.” These scenes, lit with warm sun-kissed tones and scored by joyous overtures, are juxtaposed alongside scenes of Gemma’s current life as a prisoner inside Lumon’s testing floor. Here we learn exactly what innie Mark has been “refining” all along, as Gemma’s severance chip has been split into dozens of individual innies, each with their own nonstop torture experience. One innie is doomed to spend her entire existence undergoing dental procedures, while another experiences endless turbulence on a crashing airplane. One of Gemma’s severed selves exists only to write thank-you cards at Christmas, which, as we learn from a flashback, she famously hates doing. Each of these innies is led by a creepy man named Dr. Mauer, who seems to have a romantic fascination with Gemma.
After a long day of testing different rooms, Gemma decides she has officially had enough. She waits for Mauer to turn his back, and bludgeons him with a wooden chair. With Mauer down, Gemma snatches his keycard and makes a break for the elevator, only to turn back into the placid Ms. Casey once she arrives at the severed floor. Without any knowledge of her own suffering downstairs, Ms. Casey is easily persuaded by Milchick to return to the testing floor without a fight. Once she reawakens as Gemma downstairs, she recognizes that escape is hopeless and breaks down crying. The entire time Gemma experiences this torture as Lumon’s captive, she pleads for Mark to come and save her, not realizing that he’s the one unknowingly designing the tools of her demise.
Cobel’s Shocking Reveal
Throughout season one of Severence, Harmony Cobel was one of the most mysterious characters. She seemed at times to be a die-hard Lumon loyalist, while also working her own angle by testing the strength and efficacy of the severance chips. In season two episode eight, “Sweet Vitriol,” we learn that Cobel got her start performing child labor for Lumon, in a small coastal town named Salt’s Neck. While working in an ether factory with other young children, Cobel displayed an advanced acumen for math and science, and eventually became fast-tracked through the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls. There, she received the Wintertide Fellowship, the very same internship program that Miss Huang is enrolled in. The big reveal in “Sweet Vitriol” is that Cobel actually created and developed the first severance chips, before passing her work up the ladder to Jame Eagan for no money, no recognition and no glory.
It seems that Cobel was given the role of floor manager at Lumon as a reward for her contribution, despite the fact that she never intended to work in a management position. After returning to Salt’s Neck to retrieve her original design specs for the chips, Cobel plots to burn Lumon to the ground. On her way back to Kier, however, she is contacted by Devon, who believes that Cobel is the only person capable of assisting Mark and saving Gemma. Cobel agrees to meet with Mark and Devon, though Reghabi flees, suspecting that Cobel will turn them in for conspiring against Lumon. After arriving back in town, Cobel tells Mark all about his mysterious work and explains that his wife will be killed as soon as he completes Cold Harbor. She then sneaks Mark and Devon into a Lumon-owned birthing cabin, where Mark can converse with his innie directly.
The Gang Carries on in Mark’s Stead
Back at Lumon HQ, Drummond once again attempts to verbally berate Milchick. This time, however, Milchick has reached his limit, and responds by verbosely demanding his boss to “devour feculence” (eat sh**). Milchick further establishes his dominance over the severed floor by sending Miss Huang away on a trip to Svalbard, Norway, after surmising that she has been going behind his back to report him for minor infractions. Meanwhile, Gretchen spills her guts to both versions of Dylan about her emotional affair, and neither take it well. oDylan threatens to quit, ending his innie’s existence for good, while iDylan makes an attempt at a hackneyed proposal. He even suggests that he could provide a life for Gretchen down on the severed floor, though he must know on some level that simply isn’t possible.
Defeated, iDylan finds himself in exactly the same position of Irving at the beginning of Severance season two. Much like Irving, Dylan seeks to resign, as he no longer feels that life is worth living without the love of his partner. The next day, when he returns to the severed floor, iDylan is furious, thinking that his outie has scornfully refused his resignation a la Helena in season one. Instead, Milchick hands Dylan his outie’s response, which provides a fairly measured account of events as he sees them. oDylan explains, in his own colorful language, that he understands what his innie sees in Gretchen, given their “shared physiology.” He thanks iDylan for showing him that there’s still a piece of him that’s a “self-assured badass” somewhere deep down, and asks him to reconsider ending his own existence.
Mark’s Innie-Outie Walkie Talkie
Back at the birthing cabin, iMark and oMark converse freely for the very first time, by delivering their thoughts through camcorder videos. At first, things seem to be going quite well, as oMark apologizes for condemning his innie to a lifetime of wage slavery in a depressing basement. iMark retorts that he and his peers find ways to make the life they’ve been given enjoyable, which is why he has reservations about saving Gemma. Devon and Cobel have assured iMark that saving her is the right thing to do, but doing so would almost surely end Lumon for good, thus eliminating the lives of every innie on Earth. iMark feels that innies deserve to live and not just through reintegration, which seems to be an unfair balance of power, in his eyes. As the discussion continues, oMark makes a number of inadvertently condescending remarks, and the fragile relationship between the two personalities quickly devolves into an argument.
Eventually, iMark storms out of the cabin, and demands not to be woken up until he’s back at Lumon, where he can discuss the situation with Helly. When he does wake up, however, iMark finds that the severed floor has been outfitted with new art depicting him as some kind of messiah. He also sees that the MDR office has welcomed an animatronic Kier, who offers him a joyful congratulations for nearing the completion of Cold Harbor. Mark tells Helly about his experience, and she encourages him to save Ms. Casey. She recognizes that her outie, as heir to the company, would never allow her to reintegrate, or live a full life. Her words echo the sentiments of Cobel, who tells Mark, “There will be no honeymoon ending for you and Helly R.” As Mark puts the finishing touches on the Cold Harbor file, he and Helly conspire to free Gemma, in a scheme which will require full cooperation from both versions of Mark.
What Is Cold Harbor?
The very moment that Mark hits 100 percent completion on his file, Milchick comes running into the office with a full marching band in tow. Always the showman, Milchick begins a song and dance routine that rivals the opening event of the Olympic Games. Downstairs on the testing floor, Gemma is led to a door labelled Cold Harbor. Inside, she severs into a 25th brand new innie, and is asked to disassemble a baby’s crib, which stands in the center of an otherwise empty room. This test utilizes the single-most significant trauma present in Gemma’s life, as it harkens back to her inability to conceive children with Mark, as well as a harrowing miscarriage she suffered during their marriage. Dr. Mauer watches from a security feed in another room, and prods Gemma with questions about herself, to see if the severance barrier is holding.
Back on the severed floor, Helly comes up with a scheme to distract Milchick, and traps him inside the MDR restroom. She gives Mark the instructions that Irving left behind, and bids him farewell as he bolts to the testing floor elevator. Just as Mark arrives at the elevator, however, he realizes that his keycard doesn’t offer him the security clearance required to access it. He bangs on the door violently to no avail. As this is going on, Drummond asks Lorne, the head of Mammalians Nurturable, to sacrifice a baby goat from her department as an offering to Kier. He hands her a captive bolt pistol, designed to slaughter farm animals with a pressurized hunk of metal. Before she can pull the trigger, Lorne and Drummond hear the sounds of Mark pounding on the elevator, and step into the hallway to investigate.
Does Gemma Escape From the Testing Floor?
Drummond grabs Mark and attempts to kill him. The two brawl for a short while, but Drummond is significantly larger and stronger. Just when it looks like Mark is going to die, however, Lorne gets involved, and threatens Drummond with the bolt pistol. Mark winds up taking Drummond hostage with the pistol to his hea as the two go down the testing floor elevator together. Mark plans to force Drummond to help him save Gemma, though the transition down the elevator activates outie Mark, who accidentally squeezes the trigger and slaughters Drummond as the doors begin to open. Horrified, and covered in buckets of blood, oMark wanders through the testing floor halls before coming across the Cold Harbor door. He bursts his way in, and carefully coaxes a terrified Gemma into leaving with him.
When Gemma steps outside of the Cold Harbor room, she reverts to her outie, and embraces Mark for the first time in over two years. It’s a beautiful moment, but the pair don’t have any time to revel in it, as Mauer has sounded all the emergency alarms in the building. Together, Mark and Gemma make their way back to the elevator, and emerge as iMark and Ms. Casey. Ms. Casey is obviously shocked and confused at the situation, but she trusts Mark enough to follow him through the halls. Eventually, the couple make it all the way to the outside stairwell, where the severance barrier breaks. Mark pushes her out the door, and Gemma is finally home free.
How Does ‘Severance’ Season 2 End?
Back in the MDR office, Helly does her best to prevent Milchick from breaching the bathroom door. The members of the marching band, themselves severed employees, refuse to assist her, though Dylan eventually comes in hauling a vending machine to barricade the doors shut. Together, Dylan and Helly rally the marching band, with tales of Lumon’s evil, and a warning that they could be the next department to have their lives taken from them. When Milchick does eventually bust through the door, he faces down a veritable army of severed employees ready to pounce. Dylan solemnly delivers the line, “F*** you, Mr. Milchick,” in a rousing call-back to the season one finale.
With that threat neutralized, Helly makes her way to the stairwell in the hopes of saying goodbye to Mark one last time. When she arrives there, however, Mark is already contemplating whether to go with Gemma, or return to MDR. Gemma, having awoken on the other side of the stairwell door, begs and pleads for Mark to come with her, as Helly watches forlornly. In an absolutely shocking development, iMark chooses himself and his own love over that of his outie, and abandons Gemma to return to MDR with Helly. Mark and Helly take each other’s hands and run through the halls defiantly, ready to take on whatever comes next in the Lumon basement. The screen fades to a blood-red title card, and the credits roll on another excellent season of TV’s most mind-bending sci-fi.
The scene is reminiscent of the final moments of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or The Graduate, in that the couple are almost surely headed toward their own demise. For now, there’s no way of knowing what comes next, though series director Ben Stiller has assured fans that we won’t be waiting another three years for Severance’s third season. With any luck, we may get a chance to revisit the Gemma, Mark and Helly love triangle again very soon.
