Photo: Apple TV+
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It has been said that Severance is playing a game of chess while many other TV shows are playing checkers. This is certainly true — the show engages in intricate and intimate world-building like few other series on television. And the penultimate episode of season two almost plays like an actual chess match, deftly moving pieces off the board to set up an epic final showdown.
As the narrative builds to the finale, Burt has dispatched Irving to a mystery location, Dylan G. has quit his job and may never return to work, and we find Helly R. in a potentially compromising situation with her outie’s creeptastic father. Also, Miss Huang has been ferried away from Lumon to the ominous-sounding Gunnel Eagan Empathy Center in Svalbard. The severed floor has never been warm and welcoming, but by the end of this episode it feels downright abandoned.
The severed floor continues to be of great interest and importance to the Lumon brass. Today is the day Mark was to complete Cold Harbor, but the nimble refiner is missing in action and the file is stuck at 96 percent. Instead of clocking in, he’s still recovering from his reintegration surgery gone sideways and participating in secret meetings with his former nemesis, Ms. Cobel. As Devon and a very out-of-it Mark drive to the meeting location, they briefly voice the audience’s concerns, talking about what a terrible idea it is to be aligning their fates with this unhinged lady. Devon feels they have no other choice. And you know what? She’s right. No one else has the knowledge Cobel does about what’s going on with Cold Harbor — at least no one who’s willing to share that knowledge with them. What else are they going to do? Call the corrupt Kier PD and demand an investigation?
Unfortunately, Cobel is relatively withholding on what exactly is happening with Gemma. In a chilling beat, she actually reveals the name of the project Mark is working on. (This reveal really worked on me as a viewer, but I’m sure Mark and Devon did not have the same goosebump-filled reaction to the words Cold Harbor that I did.) She also reveals a horrifying fact: Once Cold Harbor is completed, Gemma will die. Notably, she does not specify whether this death is a spiritual one, an ego death like the show alluded to in “Chikhai Bardo,” or a physical death. Either way, it’s bad news.
Cobel gets Mark to call in sick. Presumably, he was also out yesterday and didn’t call in to work, so it’s odd that no Lumon goons are out looking for him already. When Mark reaches Milchick, he starts off with a story about getting his nosebleeds checked out, but when Milchick calls him on that, he shifts to say that he basically just needs a mental-health day. In doing so, Mark calls upon the Lumon mantra that work and life must be balanced. (Like tempers!) This hits a nerve with Milchick. His focus moves to the small iceberg painting on his office wall, his body casting a stark silhouette against the window. He’s silent for a moment as he seems to fight an overwhelming wave of nostalgia. This is a lovely and layered moment from Tramell Tillman, who never fails to bring brilliant nuance to Milchick’s inner life, often doing so without the aid of dialogue.
Throughout the episode, Milchick is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Mark’s absence causes the entire company to postpone what was to be the greatest day in the company’s history. (I hope they didn’t make T-shirts.) Drummond also calls Milchick up to the executive floor to reprimand him about Mark being absent, and he takes the opportunity to circle back to the “Uses Big Words” contention. Drummond demands Milchick shorten his apology and then makes him do it again and again … until Milchick finally snaps.
“Devour feculence,” he says to his boss. “Or, eat shit.” Holy feculence! Did Milchick just tell off a Lumon bigwig?! Milchick demands his due respect as the manager of the severed floor and notes he is not responsible for Mark Scout when he’s not at work: Drummond is. As a middle manager, Milchick has been a vehicle for much of the office-related satire that populated season one, and this moment is triumphant, funny, and nerve-racking. (Drummond is terrifying, after all.) In this moment, Milchick becomes a shining hero to all the toiling workers of the world who have wanted to tell their lazy-ass bosses to fuck off.
We know Lumon was surveilling Gemma and Mark for a long time prior to her “death,” and we know it has continued to surveil Mark as we saw Drummond listening in on Devon and Mark’s diner convo earlier in the season. Hell, Cobel even lived next to him, so it’s odd that Lumon is dropping the Mark Scout ball at the 96 percent line. Why did no one check on him the previous day when he was incapacitated by a Gemma fever dream on his couch? Conclusion: The security at Lumon is terrifying but horribly lazy.
Case in point: Burt and Irving. We’re meant to understand that Lumon has sent Burt to “take care of” Irving — it’s not usually a good sign when Christopher Walken unexpectedly shows up at your home — but Burt decides to go rogue. As Irving returns home, he finds his innie’s paramour sitting in a chair perusing all his Lumon research. His information on Burt notes that he’s a “low-level enforcer or Lumon goon.” The portrait of Burt sitting comfortably in a chair and carefully considering this information is striking. Everything but his face is in shadow. This image, coupled with Walken’s commanding presence, fully took my breath away.
Irving goes with Burt without protest. On the way to their destination, Burt explains that he has served only as a driver for Lumon and never knew what was going to happen to his passengers once he got them where they were going. This instance is different, however. Burt brings Irving to an absolutely stunning train station. (For all you location buffs, this is Union Station in Utica.) With its grand columns and stately wood benches, it provides a fitting setting for a wistful farewell between two would-be lovers.
Given all the focus on Lumon and Cold Harbor this week, the scenes between Irving and Burt initially feel as if they were lifted from another show. Yet as the two begin to say their good-byes, we see glimpses of their innie characters, almost as if the severance barrier were being breached by unbridled emotion and desire. Burt explains the rules of departure to Irving: He has to get off the train at an undisclosed location, and he can never come back to Kier. He asks, “Do you understand?” Irving responds, “No.” The two begin to move closer to each other, with Irving finally opening himself up to love and Burt struggling to suppress his emotions for the man before him. It’s an absolute heartbreaker of a moment, and I just dare you not to cry as the two men gravitate toward each other like supercharged magnets. They nuzzle foreheads, exactly as their innies did on the severed floor, before Burt breaks the spell and Irving walks to his train platform, Radar by his side. As Irving boards the train, a smile starts to flicker on his face as he basks in the afterglow of his brief dalliance with love.
I truly hope this is not the last we’ll see of Irving. Prior to this season, John Turturro alluded to possibly being finished with Severance, telling Variety he felt he’d had “a full meal” in his work on the series. Yet many secrets are left for his character, including the identity of the person he kept calling on that pay phone and why his outie knows about that foreboding black hallway at all. (And why he has never known love before. Sob!) Let’s all pray to Kier that he (and Radar) will be back soon.
Irving and Burt’s story mirrors Dylan and Gretchen’s in this episode, as love seems to transcend severance in their relationship as well. Gretchen decides to come clean about kissing her husband’s innie. Outie Dylan is outraged, stomping out the door in a huff. Then when Gretchen goes to break the news to Innie Dylan, he’s also upset. This woman can’t win! She’s in love with both versions of her husband, and they’re both in love with her. It feels as though they could all work this out somehow. In a devastating moment, Innie Dylan throws a Hail Mary by dropping to his knees and proposing to Gretchen with a ring he carefully crafted from a piece of paper. Before he met his child and his wife, this man was motivated by finger traps and erasers, and now he knows a life of love; a mug full of finger traps is no replacement for a hug from your kid or a smile from your wife. The emotional knowledge Innie Dylan now has leads him to believe life isn’t worth living if he can’t have the people he loves — so he quits.
Dylan’s desire to effectively end his innie’s life because of his heartbreak is familiar, as this is exactly what Irving’s innie wanted to do when he realized he could never be with Burt. While Dylan contemplates quitting, Helly tries to convince him to stay, as Dylan did for Irving, but this time it doesn’t work. Helena’s subterfuge has gotten into everyone’s heads, and Dylan claims that maybe he’s not so different from his outie because no one could tell Helly wasn’t Helly. She rebuts this, saying Irving could tell, but Dylan isn’t hearing it.
So with Dylan quitting, Irving gone, and Mark out of the office, Helly finds herself alone. She finally gets Irving’s note from the break room and proceeds to work on memorizing it. She’s in the office past dark when a visitor arrives. It’s Jame Eagan, and somehow he’s the most terrifying Lumon goon of them all. In his trademark rasp, he croons, “My Helly, you tricked me.” Helly instinctively sweeps the directions under her keyboard and responds, “What the fuck?”
I’m getting a bad vibe from Jame in his relationship with his daughter. Of course, we know Helena was not raised in a normal household, but the interactions both Helena and Helly have with Jame in this episode lead me to believe he might have sexually abused Helly when she was younger, or at least engaged in serious emotional abuse. At the start, it is implied that she lives with her father in his glass mansion just beyond the Lumon water tower. She swims in the morning — the ticking clock evoking memories of the OTC, and the water imagery recalling Helena’s almost drowning at the ORTBO — and then goes to see Jame. She prepares herself a hard-boiled egg and arranges it on a plate with a truly insane image on it. For his part, Jame says he’ll just “watch” her eat, which gave me full-body ick.
This feeling returned when Jame sidles up to that door on the severed floor. Is Helly in trouble? Why is he calling her “my” Helly? Perhaps Jame was the one who named Helena’s innie, using the pet name he had for her when she was a child. It’s all just so creepy, and though I know we should be worried for Mark at the end of the episode, I’m really concerned about what’s going to happen to Helly in the finale.
Oh. Mark. Cobel waits until the dead of night to take him and Devon to the Damona Birthing Retreat. She and the guard engage in some cryptic Lumon-speak, with Cobel saying Devon is “one of Jame’s” knocked-up employees, and they’re allowed to go to cabin five. There, Devon brings Innie Mark to life, guiding him upstairs to a fantastic Cobel tableau. She is standing in the middle of a vast room, backlit by a raging fire. As the soundtrack at the end of the last episode promised, she’s the fire woman come to burn it all down. Innie Mark takes Cobel in, and Devon asks him, “Do you remember the last thing you said to me?” In a near-whisper, Mark responds, “She’s alive.”
As this episode moves Irving, Dylan, Miss Huang, and possibly even Helly off the board, it sure feels like the finale is gearing up to answer the biggest question the season-one finale left us with. It has been almost three years since we all had a collective heart attack when Mark S. realized Gemma was alive within Lumon’s walls, and this season has made many promises based on that central mystery. We know what’s on either side of that foreboding black hallway, and we can only hope the innies find their way there soon. Time is running out.
It’s time for my staggered exit, so I’m going to grab the elevator. Until next time …
• The Miss Huang story line came to a very depressing end, but I did like the irony of Milchick making her smash her water toy to smithereens even though the little Kier inside gets destroyed as collateral damage. Also, I hope she got to take her theremin with her.
• If this is, in fact, the end of Burving (please, Kier, no), I just want to give one last round of applause to Walken and Turturro. The fact that Severance got both of these legendary actors to share so many beautiful, emotionally intimate moments in a television show is a wondrous feat, and I have enjoyed each scene equally.
• It’s becoming clear that the path Cobel took through Lumon’s ranks — and the one Miss Huang is now taking — is likely also the one Milchick took. Was he removed from his home as a child too? Does he have a family? Where did he get that fantastic leather jacket? If we’re making wishes for season three, I definitely want more backstory on this man, please and thank you.
• When she’s attempting to console Innie Dylan, Helly tries to convince him Gretchen isn’t his wife. Is Helly trying to reconcile her love for Innie Mark while Mark’s outie’s wife is trapped somewhere in the horrifying bowels of the building? Or perhaps this is part of the continuing conversation the show wants to have about the nature of love and commitment across a fractured persona.
