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Severance - 2x10 "Cold Harbor" - Episode Discussion (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by Kovu@lemmy.world to c/severance@lemmy.world

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Season 2 Episode 10: Cold Harbor

Aired: March 21, 2025

Synopsis: Mark forms a shaky alliance in an all-or-nothing play, while the team makes a dangerous last stand.

Directed by: Ben Stiller

Written by: Dan Erickson

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[–] vaguerant@fedia.io 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The final scene of Mark S and Helly R running down the hall panicked and giddy into a freeze frame zoom quotes Truffaut's The 400 Blows. In that film and several that followed, the character of Antoine Doinel, age 14, represents a younger facet of the director himself. He is an innie Truffaut, if you will, coming of age.

In the climax, the rebellious delinquent Doinel escapes from the reform school to which he has been confined and runs to the ocean. He looks around, without any obvious plan for what to do next, before looking towards camera in a freeze frame zoom that encompasses the uncertainty of his future from here.

On a less literal level, I wonder whether the freeze-frame and fade to red connects back to (outie) Mark and Devon's original after-image plan. We get a fading after-image of Mark S and Helly R and the implied question: "Who is alive?" Besides the literal sense when it referenced Gemma, that's obviously a question that goes to the heart of the show. Who is alive?

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago

It's also the ending of The Graduate and I need to mention it here because it's one of the rare references that I actually saw myself (so many references in this *slaps roof*).

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago

I’ve been a little mixed about this season, but this was pretty awesome. I felt like the first season ended in a way that opened up so many possibilities for season 2. This episode does the exact same. I have no idea where season 3 will go, but I am excited to find out!

[–] Klanky@sopuli.xyz 12 points 2 days ago

Yeah still processing. Lots of unanswered questions but some cool moments for sure.

[–] AlternateHuman02@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Not stoked about cold harbor. Answers no questions, has some weird plot points, and just a super unsatisfying ending. What was the lead in earlier seasons asking if Gemma was more afraid of suffocating or drowning. Also 75 minutes long!? For what? Meh.

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I agree, that was a bit frustrating. All this mystery about what’s going on, and buildup of how incredibly important cold harbor is, and I’m still not sure why it was as such a big deal. They just watched a severed version of herself act like a severed version of herself. And why would she be dead if cold harbor was finished?

I still don’t see the significance.

[–] vaguerant@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't think severing works as well as Lumon would like. We see tons of crossover between innie and outie awareness, even down to simple stuff like Helly R being able to name Delaware, Europe and the equator. The testing floor and Macrodata Refinement seem to be about making severance more precise by refining exactly how much of the complete mind the innie has access to. They are impressed that Cold Harbor Gemma gives no indication of having an emotional response to what they have identified as the most significant trauma of her outie life because the current state of severance isn't achieving that.

We don't really know what an innie's response to being confronted with major outie trauma would be, because the Severed Floor is so clinically sanitized of anything that could possibly resemble the outie's "real" life. Even when the innies are allowed to do something outwardly normal like a dance party or a funeral, it's fundamentally weird and wrong because they are avoiding giving them experiences that reflect life on the outside. I don't think this just comes down to Lumon being incredibly weird, although that helps.

If what MDR has achieved is some sort of perfect severance with no crossover, then Gemma is no longer needed. They can apply this knowledge to all severance from now on and Gemma herself is only a liability: somebody who was kidnapped and tortured for literally years, who the entire outside world believes to be dead. If she gets out and tells people, that's going to damage Lumon. If she dies (again), they don't even have to bother telling anybody.

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This all makes sense, but it’s still a little unsatisfying. They built it up all season and in the end it’s just not very interesting.

Maybe if there was something more emotionally significant than disassembling a crib. It’s been 2 years since she had a miscarriage, right? Would her outie still be this upset? Maybe the kid is still alive, or was born and died or something, but that is not information they have given us.

[–] vaguerant@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Probably a bit blasphemous to bring up BBC Sherlock in the Severance community, but:

Watson: Maybe he used the death of her daughter somehow?

Sherlock: That was ages ago, why would she still be upset?!

Watson: ...

Sherlock: Not good?

Watson: Bit not good, yeah.

People are different all over but two years doesn't seem unreasonable for somebody to still be upset about a loss of a pregnancy. Dr. Mauer has certainly identified it as a sore point for her, since he lied to Gemma about Mark having moved on and had a kid with somebody else, right before he got a chair to the head.

Additionally, we don't really know with any certainty how long it has been from Gemma's perspective given they've had her working as Ms. Casey and also testing for hours at a time in multiple rooms, possibly every day. Even when she gets to be her outie self, she's been in a prolonged traumatic situation of being kidnapped and experimented on, so she probably has limited opportunities to process her previous traumas.

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I see all these points, but the show did not convey to us that the loss of her pregnancy was still affecting her this deeply. I would think being kidnapped and tortured (physically, not mentally) would have made her let go of that pain.

I think maybe if they showed outie Gemma being put in a similar situation and we can judge the difference in reactions, that would have made it more meaningful. As is it just seems like a bunch of way too smart people doing dumb meaningless tests.

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 9 points 1 day ago

Answers no questions

How about the evergreen "what's the deal with the goats"?

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[–] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So I guess next season Mark and Helly are going to be hiding out on the severed floor while Devon and Gemma team up to break him out?

Now that the season is over, what was with all the babies in the opening credits? Was that just because of the infertility backstory, or maybe they're setting that up for something else? I was certain that there would be weird baby clones of the severed employees revealed at some point this season

[–] vaguerant@fedia.io 8 points 1 day ago

I think Jame Eagan trying to make babies in whom he sees Kier is probably a good read. The baby in the opening credits seems to have Kier's face, which in a metaphorical sense is Jame's goal. The innies are also "babies" in a sense, and Jame says he sees Kier in Helly R, so that's another "baby" with Kier in them (although this one is a stretch because they're more like adolescents this season). Third, I guess it contrasts Kier with Dieter, who spilled his lineage in the forest rather than procreate and pass it on.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Mark Scout didn't act like a loving husband in this finale. If I knew my wife was being held against her will and tortured (which Mark Scout did from what Cobel told him), I would give everything to get her out. Even my own life. He had that choice but never offered it.

Mark Scout could have offered Mark S the body forever. So instead of Mark S "dying" because a lack of a severed floor, it would be Mark Scout. How? Permanent OTC.

Mark Scout didn't know that Cobel was the inventor of Severed technology, but Mark Scout could have asked Cobel if there would be a way to make OTC permanent. Cobel would have been able to make that possible because she invented the technology and even OTC. Heck, once both Mark Scout and Mark S knew that permament OTC was on the table, Mark S could have even offered Helly R permanent OTC. Mark S and Helly R could have had a life together and Gemma would have been freed.

If the cost of freeing my wife was my life, I'd take it immediate without a second thought. Mark Scout didn't.

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