Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for the Severance Season 2 finale.
After somebaby steps in Season 2, Episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo”,Severancehas finally explained what the words “Cold Harbor” truly mean. Honestly, it is to be expected that the show took its sweet time in revealing the meaning of those two darned words. After all, Cold Harbor was by far the biggest mystery inSeveranceto date, and now that we all know what it means, well, we can all sleep better at night. WithSeverance’s fate hanging in the balance —the show’s third season was only confirmed after the Season 2 finale went live— creatorDan Ericksongave us an ending that could have served to wrap up the entire show, with Mark S. (Adam Scott)jumping into the unknown hand-in-hand with Helly R.(Britt Lower) and, of course, the resolution of the whole Cold Harbor plot.
While it is nice to know what Cold Harbor means and to see Gemma (Dichen Lachman) free from Lumon’s evil claw,there is still much to be explored when it comes to the world ofSeverance.For starters, while we now know that all the files that Mark has been refining since Season 1 are nothing but new innies for his wife, there is still the matter of what kind of evil plot the other refiners are unknowingly working on. Files like Siena and Tumwater, refined by Helly and Dylan (Zach Cherry), respectively, also have corresponding doors on the floor Gemma was being kept on, but she never goes into these rooms.
We also know that Gemma has 25 innies and that Mark has worked on 25 files — the first of them being Allentown, a name that marks the room in which Gemma is shown writing thank-you notes over and over again with her non-dominant hand. Soif all of Gemma’s innies correspond to a Mark S. file, who are the other files about?What wasMDR doingbefore Mark joined the team, and what have they been doing over the course of the past two seasons?
‘Severance’ Has Mark Creating Numerous Innies for His Wife
But, wait, let’s slow down for a second. All of this talk about numerous innies and weird files needs a bit more explanation. So, while Mark’s outie does tell his innie in theSeason 2 finale, “Cold Harbor”, that he has been mourning Gemma for two years, it is unclear when it was exactly after his wife’s death that he lost his teaching job and decided to join Lumon. What we do know is that Macrodata Refinement already existed before he came into the picture, with Petey (Yul Vazquez) acting as the big boss. This fact also lines up with Dylan’s comment about Allentown being Mark’s “freshman fluke” — a file that he managed to refine in record time despite being a newbie. Now,the Allentown file is believed to be the very first room that was created for Gemmainside Lumon’s walls. The poor woman trapped writing thank-you notes was the first innie that Mark created for her, something that is supported by the aforementioned 25 files to 25 innies theory: we know that Gemma has 25 personalities becauseDr. Mauer(Robby Benson), the creepy man experimenting on her, tells us so, and we have seen the list of files that Mark has refined.
Cold Harbor is the final file that Mark has to complete, and it’s a file that Lumon is desperate for Mark specifically to finish, as, apparently, no one else could do it. It is also a file that will mean the end of Mark’s business relationship with Lumon upon its completion. “Cold Harbor,” the episode, tells us that Cold Harbor, the file, corresponds toa room of the same name on Gemma’s floor in which she is told to dismantle a crib, in a reference to the traumatic miscarriage that she undergoes in Episode 7’s flashback. “The barrier is holding,” Dr. Mauer and Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) repeat — both when Gemma is face to face with the crib or when she’s in the same room as Mark, which seems to indicate thatLumon is testing whether the innie has any memory of their outie’s life. Lumon is exposing Gemma to things from her past to see if her new personality will have any response to it.
No ‘Severance’ Scene Has Made Me More Uncomfortable Than This One
Not every scene weirds me out equally.
The most evocative of those things would be, of course, the miscarriage that drove a rift in Gemma and Mark’s relationship. The fact that Gemma’s innie has no emotional response to having to dismantle a crib that very much resembles the one she and Mark once had means thatLumon’s severance technology might be more powerful than we once thought. It is able to go as far as the subconscious, separating people from their most basic instincts. This goes hand in hand with Jame Eagan’s (Michael Siberry) speech about eliminating pain and withKier’s very own mythos surrounding his taming of the Four Tempers. Inside Cold Harbor, Gemma feels no woe about the loss of her child, no frolic about the baby that could have been, no dread over the possibility of never having a kid of her own, and no malice towards the world that has been so unfair to her. She is completely devoid of emotions. This, however, doesn’t hold up when Mark comes into the room. Having Mark and the crib in the same place seems to be too much for Gemma, and she allows herself to trust this “strange” man and follow him into the unknown.
Still, all of this seems to indicate thatLumon is trying to create a “perfect” innie that will serve their purposes as a company better than the ones that now exist. After all, without feelings, the innies would be perfect slaves, unable to question the lack of joy in their lives and the horror of never leaving their work environment. What’s even creepier to think about is that Lumon might be considering turning everyone into a 24/7 innie, cleansing the world of emotions in an effort to create a so-called perfect human that has full mastery of all four tempers. What exactly Lumon’s plans are. regarding Cold Harbor is something thatSeverancecan still explore. However, that is not the only doubt that remains up in the air after the Season 2 finale.
What Are the Other Files MDR Is Working on in ‘Severance’?
The hallways on the floor on which Gemma lives are filled with doors, all of them marked with a name that corresponds to an MDR file. We see a room called Tumwater, which also happens to be the name of the file Dylan completedright before his waffle partyin Season 1. Another one is called Siena, a file that was attributed to Helly R. Initially, we would expect these rooms to also hold mundane horrors for Gemma. However, we never see her go into any of them — and when Dr. Mauer speaks of her personalities, he speaks only of 25, the same number as the files that have been refined by her husband. So who exactly are these rooms for?Who do the files that the others at MDR are working pertain to?Could there be other people being held hostage on Gemma’s floor? Could they be somehow related to the other refiners? When it comes to life, practically everyone has lost someone dear to them. Could there be people that Dylan,Irving (John Turturro), and even Helly thought they had lost who are currently trapped in Lumon?
These are only questions, and maybe the Macrodata Refiners are working on other people that they have never even seen before, but there is one more thing we have to take into consideration: why was Lumon so adamant that Mark should be the one to finish Cold Harbor? Is it simply because the same refiner has to work on the same series of innies, or does it have something to do with Mark’s bond with Gemma? The refinement that goes on down at MDR is all about hunches and feeling what a certain set of numbers tells you, so maybe there needs to be an emotional connection between the person doing the refining and the one being refined. Questions abound. But, no matter the answers, it is clear thatrevealing the meaning behind Cold Harbor isn’t enough to explain what is going down at Lumon.In fact, it feels like we have barely scratched the surface.
Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives. When a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about their jobs.
