Severance‘s Adam Scott and Britt Lower on That Major Episode 4 Twist

It took nearly three years for the team behind Severance to bring Season 2 to the small screen—and with good reason. The Season 1 finale of the Apple TV+ sci-fi series featured the innies breaking out of Lumon and exploring their outie’s lives. It offered two major revelations: Helly R.’s outie is, in fact, Helena, heir to the Egan fortune and one of the architects of the severance program; and Mark’s wife, Gemma, is alive and living as Ms. Casey on the severed floor.

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Those are the sorts of major plot twists that can trip up even the smartest of puzzle box shows. How would the writers follow through? Somehow showrunner Dan Erickson and producer-director Ben Stiller found a way to surprise the audience again.

In Season 2, Episode 4, the macrodata refinement team ventures outside of Lumon for an “Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurrence.” Over the course of their field trip to a snowy mountain, Irving (John Turturro) begins to suspect that Helena (Britt Lower) is masquerading as Helly R. and has been since the innies returned to Lumon after their Season 1 jailbreak. But an unsuspecting Mark (Adam Scott) finally acts on his feelings for Helly R./Helena and shares an intimate moment with her in the tent. The next morning, in a shockingly violent act, Irving sets out to prove his theory by drowning Helena in a nearby pond until Mr. Milchick returns Helly R. to her shared body with Helena.

TIME spoke with Adam Scott and Britt Lower about the reveal, Lower’s tricky double-sided performance, and whether Helena has feelings for Mark.

Read More: How the Team Behind Severance Made the Second Season Worth the Wait

TIME: Why do you think Lumon lets the innies outside?

Adam Scott: It’s somewhat a reaction to the overtime contingency and us all breaking out in Season 1. Lumon is like, “OK, you want to go out into the world? Here you go.” It’s trying to teach them a lesson. These characters probably got a whole new set of ideas after being out in the world. It’s time to show them what a cruel and unusual place it can be.

For us as actors, it’s fun to get out into the world. Those office sets have green carpet and fluorescent lights, and you are in there for 15 hours, and so it just feels like you’re essentially working in an office. So after six or seven weeks of shooting just in there, it is nice to hop in the van. We were shooting for six weeks, and the actors had to ride snowmobiles for half an hour up the side of a mountain to set every morning. It was like shooting a movie.

Britt, knowing that reveal that Helena has been pretending to be Helly R. was coming, were you dropping hints in you performance in the previous episodes?

Britt Lower: They’re two parts of the same person. So there’s obviously an inner rebel inside of Helena. That’s an aspect of her that’s not totally foreign to her. It is something that she has access to. And in Season 1, we see Helena looking at the innies. We see her studying Mark and Helly’s interaction and having this curiosity about them.

Playing those different layers was kind of like on Adobe Photoshop. You’re kind of working with the saturation or the exposure levels. It’s the same source material, but you’re kind of modulating it based on what’s happening. And then you’re watching the reactions of your teammates, the directors, to see how it’s landing for the group she’s trying to blend into.

The thing that ends up giving Helena away is her cruelty. Do you think that brutality was nurtured into Helena and that’s why it doesn’t exist in Helly R.?

Lower: I think you can extrapolate a lot from meeting Helena’s father in Season 1. That guy is her dad, so you can only imagine what kind of “nurturing” she might or might not have received.

Scott: That cruel comment she makes kind of hits Irving sideways and doesn’t sit right with him. Helena has been doing an admirable job of pretending to be this other person down there and has been tricking everyone. But then this thing she does, we see it as cruelty, but the way it comes out is just instinct, I think. This person was raised in this environment where that’s how you communicate with each other. She probably doesn’t even think twice about saying something like that.

Lower: I think being in Helly R.’s shoes, she learns something about herself by getting to see a perspective that is pure. In the tent scene, she acknowledges it. She says, “That was mean.” She does have some sense of right and wrong there.

Scott: Whereas before her time down there she may not have even flagged it?

Lower: Maybe, I don’t know.

Helena and Mark do end up sharing this intimate moment. Do either of you think that Helena has feelings for Mark?

Lower: The audience should decide for themselves. I mean, without question, this is a person who is isolated. Her experience with her family is so chilling. I think that her meeting the innies has a profound effect on her humanity. And I think that she does share a sense of humor with with Mark, that’s natural.

Scott: It’s something we talked about a lot and spent a lot of time mulling over, the idea of this sort of triangle that’s created with Innie Mark and Helly R. and Helena. For Mark’s outie, Helena is someone he finds frightening and who is responsible for so much tumult and grief in his life. Yet, I think these two people, one way or another, have a connection of some sort. I’ll leave it at that.

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