‘Severance’ stars explain Season 2’s harrowing finale and the ‘love hexagon’
This article contains spoilers from the Season 2 finale of “Severance.”
The second season of Apple TV+’s “Severance” concluded much like it started — with a harrowing sprint. And for innie Mark, it also ended with a crisis of conscience that led him to make a critical choice in the face of an uncertain future.
Barring the ability to flood the brain with mind-warping flashbacks, here’s a reminder of where the season picked up: Mark (Adam Scott), Helly (Britt Lower), Irving (John Turturro) and Dylan (Zach Cherry) — the “severed” employees who’ve had a chip implanted in their brains that separates their work and personal lives, known as innies and outies — went to great lengths to have their chips overridden so they could briefly experience life as their outies. Season 2 opened back at Lumon, the eerie biotechnology company that pioneered the controversial “severance” procedure, with innie Mark racing through the stark white hallways in search of Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), the wellness director at the company, after discovering that she is actually Gemma, outie Mark’s wife. It set in motion a season where the characters tried to understand why their outies chose to be severed.
The final moments of Season 2 were a nerve-racking bookend to that initial search.
Innie Mark decides to move forward with the plan to rescue Gemma — schemed up by outie Mark with help from his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) and Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), his scorned former boss. It requires him to complete the Cold Harbor file, the final step of Lumon’s shrouded ploy to create multiple innies of Gemma. Once the file is complete, innie Mark transitions into his outie after an elevator takes him beyond the severed floor, and launches on the quest to rescue Ms. Casey/Gemma before Lumon is finished with her. But in order for them to escape, Mark has to return to the severed floor, where his innie leads Ms. Casey/Gemma to the doors to the hallway. And instead of joining her on the other side, he walks back toward Helly, who is watching in the distance, as Gemma screams for Mark. Locking hands, Helly and Mark sprint down the hall toward the unknown as alarms blare, with the episode closing out on a freeze frame of their run as a red painted image.
“That image, to me, was always there in my head of Mark in the hallway, looking between Gemma and Helly,” says executive producer Ben Stiller, who directed more than half of the series, including the Season 2 finale. “The setup of Helly and Mark’s relationship during the season, then, in Episode 7, the important [flashback] episode that Jessica [Lee Gagné] directed, was so important in creating this backstory for people to experience and to really have stakes in Gemma, more than just an idea of her. That really set up the stakes of this last moment where innie Mark has to make this choice.”
Creator Dan Erickson said the team briefly considered choosing an earlier end point and having a shorter season because of delays compounded by the dual Hollywood strikes, “but] we quickly just realized that we felt this was the end of the season. It was what everything was building toward.”
The Times spoke to Scott, Lower and Lachman on a video call, and Erickson and Stiller in separate calls, to discuss the tense cliffhanger, the classic film that inspired a key moment and hopes for Season 3, which Apple TV+ has not officially announced. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
You realize the finale will kill the internet, right? How many times have you watched it?
Scott: I’ve probably seen it four or five times. I’ve seen different versions of it. We watched and gave notes. Ben did an incredible job. It’s a beast. It’s a big, big finale. It was a lot to get his arms around.
Lachman: I think people will be pitching a throuple situation maybe, where they can all live together. I certainly think [fans are] going to be very upset, but only because they’re so torn. They’ve fallen so much in love for Helly R., who’s just captured people’s hearts, but so aware of Adam’s character being torn between thinking that his wife is gone, but ultimately she isn’t. It’s a real conundrum.
Tell me your first reaction to seeing that innie Mark went back with Helly in the end.
Lower: Originally, there was talk that it was going to end with just Mark in the hallway, not having made a decision. That’s my first recollection. It’s so complex. I’ll just add more shapes — I think it’s really like a love hexagon because you have to bring Ms. Casey into the picture too, right? When Dichen crosses that threshold, there’s ostensibly no more Ms. Casey. I can’t imagine she would come back for that consciousness. Plus, you have all of the 23 other consciousnesses that were on the severed floor that Dichen so beautifully lived out. The end of the series really becomes about all of those different consciousnesses having contrasting desires.
Scott: That was thought of always as the end point for the season — is the big choice in the hallway — and it was a matter of figuring out how to get there. There was a general sense of the direction, but as far as the specific puzzle pieces to put into place, that was really figured out after. It just seemed like the logical place to go with innie Mark and outie Mark on this collision course all season. It starts out with their interests aligning and pretty soon their interests start to diverge. But as far as ending the season before he makes a choice, I’m so glad we didn’t end up doing that. I think that the season ends in the exact right place.
Stiller: The first image for me that I always had in my head was him having to decide between the two, but as we discussed it more and knowing how the end of the first season played out, we wanted this finale to be different and not leave people with a cliffhanger just to leave them with a cliffhanger. As we talked about it with Dan, it made sense to us that innie Mark, especially after that conversation that he has in the beginning of the episode with outie Mark, would be really thinking about what was right for him. And so it evolved into the idea of what Dan wrote of them [innie Mark and Helly] running down the hallway. That imagery was so strong. The idea of the freeze frame on them at the end: OK, we’re together. But they’re stuck in this really hellish reality. That imagery to me was like, OK, this is something I could see as being the end of the season that would be leading you somewhere else that you don’t know where it’s going, but it’s not necessarily a cliffhanger. That felt different and hopefully, in a way, would be more interesting and satisfying for the audience.
What stands out from the shooting of this big moment that ends the season? Britt, the way Helly looks back at Gemma was powerful.
Lower: Helly R. seeing Gemma, Britt seeing Dichen’s performance on the other side of the door, was really affecting. That last moment where she’s seeing this heartbreaking thing happening across the hallway, my eyes were just drawn to Dichen. That was just something that happened on the day. I remember just being like, “I can’t take my eyes off her, even if I’m being pulled away.” There’s a connection there. There’s this moment where I think Helly R. is seeing an outie, having empathy for an outie, maybe for the first time, and seeing this other woman who loves the outie version of the same person that she loves on the inside. That has an effect, even as they’re running away like wild horses. That lingering image, that heartbreaking image stays with her as they’re both, like, “What are we doing? What’s next?” And yet she’s free.
Lachman: On my side, there was a lot of technical things happening on that day because Ms. Casey is transitioning. By the time we got to the other side of the door, what was happening inside me with the frustration and stuff, it really helped my physicality to get into that emotional space. Ben was so gracious. And Adam and Britt being there for me and giving me the time to get to this place where — I mean, they had to put a pad on the back of the door because I was hurting my hand from slamming it against the door. It was cathartic in a way too.
It seemed whether or not Mark S. completed Cold Harbor would be the most important decision he would make, but those final minutes became a true test. What did that reveal to you about the personhood of these innies?
Scott: Once Helly shows up at the end of the hallway, I feel like Mark knows exactly what he’s going to do, but it’s certainly not an easy thing to do. His mission for most of the season has been to get Ms. Casey out of there for the benefit of his outie. It’s only in the very recent past that he’s started advocating for himself and making decisions about what to do for his well-being and getting to communicate directly with the outie revealed a lot. He’s in love with Helly and can see the anguish from who he knows as Ms. Casey. But walking through that door may mean that he ceases to exist. Walking into the [other] unknown, where you’re alive, first of all, but also, he gets to be with the person he’s in love with, I think that becomes the only choice for him. It’s not an easy thing to arrive at. It’s the one choice they did not really consider, Mark and Helen, when they were having a logical conversation about it.
In seeing how people discuss this show, it sometimes makes me feel like I have to question everything. On my third watch of the finale, I started to think, Is that really Helena searching for innie Mark to keep him from leaving?
Lower: That’s Helly R. in the final episode. But I think, in [Episode 9], Dylan has thrown some doubt in her own understanding of herself. She’s lost this father figure in Irving and then she’s lost this brother figure because Dylan seems to have turned his back on her, at least in that episode. When Mark, at the beginning of [Episode 10], presents her with this chance for him to get to live in some capacity, and she’s just seen her weird dad, who’s told her, “Oh, I see Kier in you,” it cast some doubt inside of herself that she has a family anymore.
I think when Dylan comes back and to the vending machine and the marching band [is playing] and he’s on her side, then all of a sudden she’s standing on a desk remembering Irving and remembering that their half-lives are worth fighting for, I think she just runs to go see Mark one last time. Maybe there’s a chance they can do this all together. For all they know, if he crosses that barrier, they’re going to take down Lumon entirely and all of these innies are going to get wiped away. I think it’s just gut instinct that she runs.
There’s such a brief moment in that rescue mission where Gemma and outie Mark are reunited, but they can’t enjoy it for long. So much is captured in that embrace and look. What did you write on the page for that moment?
Erickson: It was pretty similar to what ended up onscreen. What was so interesting about it to me was that you have these different dynamics that you see in rapid succession — in the Cold Harbor room, it’s outie Mark and he’s recognizing his wife, but she doesn’t recognize him. He takes her out into the hallway and they do get that one brief moment where it’s both of them together. But I thought it was important that in that moment Gemma be the one to take his hand and say, “We have to go,” because this is her turf. She knows the way things work down here and even though she’s being rescued, she has this immediate impulse to protect him and get him to safety, even not understanding why he’s there or what’s going on or what he’s doing. She pulls him to the elevator, and, of course, we get innie Mark and Ms. Casey. Then the final tragic pairing is innie Mark and Gemma, where he ultimately turns his back on her for Helly. It was these four different relationships in rapid succession, but the fact that moment in the hallway leading up to the kiss in the elevator, for now, is all they get is extremely sad and it was hard to do that to Gemma, I’ll be honest. For me, caring about her as a character, it was hard to do that to her, but it felt like the right choice, dramatically.
There’s that tender scene where Mark S. is back at the computer, on the cusp of finishing Cold Harbor, and Helly is trying to be supportive about moving forward with outie Mark’s plan. It’s a goodbye of sorts. What discussions did you have together about that moment?
Stiller: “It’s a Wonderful Life” — it’s one of my favorite movies. There’s that moment of that phone call where Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart are together, and they’re listening to her ex-boyfriend, they’re together, side by side, and you could just feel the energy between them. For some reason, that image was in my head when I was thinking about the two of them as they’re finishing the file; where they’re focused on the screen and they don’t know who’s watching them or what, so they can’t really embrace. But I felt like that closeness, that energy, was something that made sense in that moment.
Lower: They’re putting their faces close to the phone, but they’re really just trying to listen to each other breathe. This is their [Helly R. and Mark S.] last moment to listen to each other closely.
Scott: I remember sitting down and we were really connected and it just took its own shape as we were doing it. It was certainly a heartbreaking scene.
Lower: We’re in MDR. It was one of the first times we filmed with the lights low. Typically, it’s this very fluorescent light. So the mood was already shifted by the lighting design and just feeling how many scenes we had done in that space — it felt like time traveling. Even Helly referring to the first conversation they had, which is him asking her to name a state that she remembers. She’s referring back to that moment and she’s also [thinking] this might be the end of her life. It was a really emotional day. Ben was coming over and getting choked up in between takes.
The way innie Mark tells Helly, “But I want to live with you” shattered me.
Stiller: He’s so vulnerable there. It felt to me like I was seeing him in a way I hadn’t seen him before, because innie Mark is more innocent. It just felt like that core reality of when you’re not going to see someone who you love and who you want to be with — almost like a little kid. That was what was so beautiful about what he did and and what Britt did, they were so open and vulnerable and connected. There’s so many different tones to the show that in that moment, it felt like we knew that was an important scene. And it it had to be a very simple scene.
Dan, what interests you in Helly and Mark’s relationship? And what interests you in Gemma and Mark’s relationship?
Erickson: There’s an inherent innocence to their [Helly and Mark’s] romance. You meet them in the beginning of the show, they’re like children, and they have that energy of a first love that I think many of us never recapture, even if we go on and we find other relationships that are even more rewarding over the course of our lives. At the same time, they’re not children, they are adults, and they are trying to fight this thing together. They’re trying to fight for their own autonomy and over their own bodies and over their own lives. There’s a sense of being in a struggle together and the sense that she awakens something in him because he is much more compliant at the beginning of the show. There’s a lot to root for there.
[With Gemma and Mark,] what really becomes fascinating to me is, after they’ve been through trauma together, it juxtaposes the innocence of Mark and Helly. Mark and Gemma have been through some of the worst moments of their lives together, and it has strained their relationship and it’s tested their relationship. I think by the end of that [flashback] episode, you get the sense that it’s not as idyllic as maybe we thought. And they have chosen to stay together, and there’s something really beautiful and powerful in that.
Is there a world where there’s a happy ending for everyone?
Erickson: It’s hard and it’s complicated because with the innie and outie dynamic, it’s sort of a zero-sum game, where however much life one of them has, that means the other has less. Reintegration has been raised as a possibility. But there’s also the question of to what degree does that decimate the identity of each? Who would this new person be and how much would they resemble the innie or the outie? I’m an optimist. I do think that there’s room for a happy ending, but it sure is complicated.
The show has so much social commentary, but what I find myself responding to is that you can’t escape grief and that desire to not feel it is so relatable. I wonder how seeing a life devoid of it has made you appreciate the anguish of feeling it.
Lachman: There’s so much about the show that is an allegory for the human condition to want to avoid things that are unpleasant or difficult or part of that subconscious pain. When I first read the scripts and was preparing for the role, I read a lot of Eckhart Tolle and [Carl] Jung. There’s so many ideas here at play. The whole severance journey could even be a spiritual one and the reintegration of the subconscious and the conscious mind. Maybe all these little innies are just little parts of ourselves that we shut down, that come to life with the severance [procedure]. I don’t know. That’s how I explored my characters as I was approaching it. You can’t experience true joy and happiness without the contrast of that pain, and maybe people respond to the show the way that they do, with such passion, because in a way it’s like looking in a mirror of society and reminding ourselves of our humanity and really embracing all the different parts of our self. I loved where Adam [as both Marks], so beautifully, has this conversation with himself because even though it’s in this soft sci-fi world, it’s so relatable because we do that internally all the time.
Scott: I was just thinking about this the other day because we’re talking about the [idea of] trying to divide up and compartmentalize your life — everything in your life is somewhat compartmentalized. You’re constantly doing that for yourself. If the goal of Mark was to compartmentalize grief and to offset it so he just doesn’t have to deal with it, I feel like it’s not really doing a particularly good job of that because he doesn’t have to exist for a few hours a day, but that grief is following him around. I think that grief is like that. It’s like this formless, invisible gas that’s going to find you wherever you are, and so escaping it is pretty futile. It comes in different forms and sneaks up and presents itself when you least expect it. He’s feeling all of it, he’s just kind of taking a little break during the day, but it’s still there when he gets home.
It’s interesting to see the massive culture of forecasting and analyzing around “Severance.” As an actor, what’s it like to be part of something with that kind of active viewing and analysis?
Lower: It’s such a gift as an artist for someone to take something you’ve made and to think about their lives and make analogies. For a show that’s about consciousness, for the world of the show to be expanding in the audience’s consciousness, it feels wonderful. And for the show to be coming out weekly, it has a chance to continue expanding each week. For people to be sitting around and thinking about it and talking about it and wondering what they would do, that’s just such a great compliment.
Scott: I think it’s incredible. I think it’s so cool that people are taking the time to comb through episodes, not only looking for clues, but they’re not missing anything. They are watching the show. I talked to my dad yesterday and he said he watches it with my stepmom, and then he watches it on his computer so he’s right up close to it so he can look for clues. I was a huge “Lost” fan and huge “Twilight Zone” person, so I totally get it. I don’t really dive into all the theories and stuff on this, but I have seen some on Instagram, which is usually video of a podcast where they’re really diving into one theory or the other. Also, all of the artwork that people are making, it’s overwhelming and incredible. Whenever I see one on Instagram, I save every single one. To be a part of something that is having this particular reaction is incredible —
Lachman: Because it’s inspiring people to be creative themselves. I don’t know how many opportunities you get to do that — being a part of something where it just spawns this whole culture of creativity.
Season 3 hasn’t officially been announced, but it seems like a sure thing. Both Marks and Helena-Helly are going through identity conflicts all through Season 2. How do you see this decision in the finale helping or complicating that?
Erickson: It shows innie Mark, having gone through the growth to see himself as an individual worthy of life and worthy of protection, he no longer feels that he is an appendage of his outie or an offshoot of his outie. He, through his love of Helly and his time on the floor, sees himself as a person. But it’s going to drive a hell of a wedge between him and outie Mark, I’ll tell you that much, because while innie Mark did get her to safety, he didn’t follow her and so he has robbed his outie of that reunion, which is what he’s been wanting the entire series, is to be back with his wife who he lost. I would imagine that to outie Mark, that feels like an extreme betrayal.
Adam, have you asked that there be less running for you in Season 3? Are you tapped out for more of that or still game?
Scott: That is such a good idea. Why have I not thought of this? It might be too late, I don’t know. For Season 3, I really feel like Dylan could take over Lumon, you know?
Lower: [laughs] I agree.
Scott: Life at Lumon would be much easier — or it would get way worse. I feel like it’s a toss-up, but as a viewer, I would like to see it.