The 10 Biggest Questions We Have Ahead of the Severance Season 2 Finale

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 9 of Severance Season 2.

After a few episodes that took us away from the action of the severed floor, the penultimate installment of Severance‘s second season centered on the fallout from outie Mark (Adam Scott) not showing up to work on the day Lumon’s bigwigs expected his innie to finally complete the mysterious Cold Harbor file.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

It was a tough shift for the innies who did clock in, with Dylan (Zach Cherry) attempting to resign after his outie’s wife broke up with him, and Helly (Britt Lower) receiving a mysterious visit from her outie’s menacing father, Lumon CEO Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry). Meanwhile, outie Burt (Christopher Walken) was escorting Irving (John Turturro) out of town—apparently in an attempt to keep him out of danger—while Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) was racing back to Kier to either help Mark try to rescue Gemma (Dichen Lachman) or use him as a means to her own ends—jury’s still out on that one.

The episode, notably titled “The After Hours” (which we’ll get into more a little further down), largely served to set up the forthcoming Season 2 finale. We didn’t learn too much new information and a lot of the questions looming over the season were left unanswered. Here are 10 of our biggest ones.

What’s up with all the references to The Twilight Zone?

As some fans noted leading up to Episode 9, “The After Hours” is also the name of a famous 1960 installment of the classic sci-fi horror anthology series The Twilight Zone. In the episode, a woman named Marsha White goes to a department store looking for a gift for her mother and is directed to an empty elevator by an operator who takes her to the seemingly nonexistent ninth floor. There, a saleswoman who knows her name leads her to the only item on the floor, a gold thimble, which just so happens to be exactly what she’s looking for. As she takes the elevator back down, she realizes the thimble is scratched and dented, and she decides to try to return it. Later, Marsha finds herself trapped inside the store and slowly comes to a horrible realization: not only were the saleswoman and elevator operator mannequins come to life, but she herself is also a mannequin who was taking her turn living among humans in the outside world for a month. Marsha enjoyed her stay so much she forgot her true identity and returned a day late.

Ms. Cobel makes direct reference to the episode during her exchange with the birthing center security guard, quoting Twilight Zone host Rod Sterling’s opening narration of, “Miss Marsha White on the ninth floor, specialties department, looking for a gold thimble,” as a secret code of sorts that allows her to gain access to one of the severed birthing cottages without further question. Ms. Cobel referring to Devon (Jen Tullock) as “one of Jame’s” during this scene also begs the question of just how often a woman pregnant with Jame’s child is brought to this facility—a tidbit that could either be just a creepy aside about the reigning Eagan patriarch or a clue about some chilling, yet-to-be-revealed twist.

But, getting back to The Twilight Zone, we fear the episode title may also hint at the finale fate of either Gemma, who’s already trapped on Lumon’s testing floor, or Helly, who is determined to find out what exactly the dark hallway with the elevator leads to.

What does Jame want with Helly?

Speaking of Helly—the only MDR employee left on the severed floor who’s still trying to figure out what the hell is going on—the final minutes of the episode saw a skulking Jame show up to interrupt her attempts to memorize Irving’s directions to the Exports Hall. And unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be stopping by just to say hello.

“You tricked me,” he told her. “My Helly.”

Although Helly didn’t appear to know what was going on, Jame might be referring to the exchange they shared in the bathroom before Helly (who everyone thought was Helena) got on stage to give her speech during the Overtime Contingency in the Season 1 finale. That moment was the one time we’ve ever seen Jame say anything nice to and express genuine affection for his daughter—except it was actually Helly.

If we were betting people, we’d wager Jame isn’t so fond of an innie, whom the Eagans seem to regard as little more than livestock, getting one over on him. Might be time to make a break for it, Helly.

Is Helly going to be the one to find Gemma?

It seems likely that Helly and Gemma, the two loves of Mark’s two separate lives, are destined to have a run-in at some point. And with Helly trying her best to find her way to the Exports Hall elevator just as Mark could be on the verge of discovering where Gemma is being held, Helly may be the best chance he has of staging a quick rescue.

Is Dylan going to get back on the MDR loyalty train?

From taking one for the team in Season 1 by volunteering to be the one to activate the OTC so his friends could experience the outside world to convincing Irv that his life as an innie was worthwhile in the Season 2 premiere, Dylan has typically rode hard for MDR. But as Season 2 wore on, Lumon managed to distract him by offering him a shot at something his innie had never experienced: romantic love, with his outie’s wife nonetheless.

So when Gretchen (Merritt Wever) dumped him in Episode 9, it made sense that Dylan was distraught enough to fill out an innie resignation request form. Still, we have to believe Dylan will have a role to play in whatever’s going to happen to his fellow macrodata refiners going forward. And who knows, his outie might be feeling resentful enough over the whole “cheating” thing to not even accept his resignation, which means Dylan might be back sooner rather than later.

Is Irving really gone for good?

What we just said about Dylan still having a part to play in the overall Severance endgame also goes for Irving, who appeared to leave town at the end of Episode 9. Although he seems to have grudgingly accepted that he and Burt could never have a relationship, there’s just no way Irv is truly out of the picture now, right? Right!?

Is Mr. Milchick on the verge of a crash out?

Current head of the severed floor Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) has spent Season 2 enduring what appears to be racially-motivated abuse at the hands of his Lumon superiors. But, in Episode 9, we finally saw him stand up to security chief Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson). In his own way, Milchick also seems to instinctively have some empathy for the innies (when he’s not being pushed to prove himself to Lumon by disciplining them). If he were to actually rebel against Lumon and ally with MDR, who knows what they could accomplish.

Is that the last we’ll see of Ms. Huang?

Having completed her Wintertide Fellowship—the same program that we now know Ms. Cobel was brought up in as a child—Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock) was presented with a bust of Jame Eagan’s head and sent on her way at the end of Episode 9. Perhaps she was there all along just to give us a glimpse into what young Ms. Cobel went through. But we’re still wondering if she may have a bigger role to play in what’s to come.

Is something weird going on with Devon?

There’s a good amount of speculation out there about whether Devon’s behavior this season—using an Android instead of an iPhone, for example, or calling Ms. Cobel after finding out Mark was reintegrating—is a sign that Devon is in cahoots with Lumon for some reason. We really want to believe Devon is just naive and scared for her brother, not evil. But if you’re intent on finding reasons to think something fishy is afoot, you probably can.

There’s also the matter of Ricken (Michael Chernus), his new book, and his overall involvement with Lumon. All we’ll say is, fall down the rabbit hole of Ricken-is-a-former-Lumon-goat-theories at your own risk.

Does Ms. Cobel actually want to help Mark?

Although it does seems like Ms. Cobel, who we now know is the inventor of the severance procedure, has turned her back on Lumon for the time being, it’s hard to believe she doesn’t have her own ulterior motives for helping Mark try to track down Gemma before his innie can complete Cold Harbor. Is Harmony really willing to sacrifice her life’s work to save Gemma? We’re kind of scared to find out.

What is Cold Harbor?

It’s the mystery at the heart of the show. The current end-all-be-all of lingering questions. What exactly is Cold Harbor—and what will it help Lumon accomplish? We learned this episode that, according to Ms. Cobel, Mark finishing Cold Harbor will in fact result in Gemma’s death. But the file has been stuck at 96 percent ever since Mark started reintegrating. Whatever it is, the entirety of the series so far seems to have been building toward this reveal. Time to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, Severance fans.

Source link