Severance Season 2 Finale Recap: What Happened to Mark — and Does Gemma Make It Out of Lumon Alive?

Oh, how the tables have turned in the Severance season 2 finale.

Season 1 ended with Mark’s (Adam Scott) iconic cry heard around the world: “She’s alive!” The moment has been alluded to throughout the Apple TV+ show’s second season. Now, we know Mark’s wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman), is indeed alive and hidden in the depths of biotechnology company Lumon Industries’ basement, but we leave season 2 wondering: Is Mark going to stay alive?

The highly anticipated second season of Severance kicked off on Jan. 17 and has come to an end on March 21 after 10 episodes that gave fans a deeper look — after three years of waiting — into what Lumon does, where Gemma is and Mark’s journey to reunite with his beloved.

Each individual in MDR’s plots came to a head in the final 76-minute episode of the season which saw Dylan (Zach Cherry), Helly (Britt Lower) and Mark come together to seek the answers to the questions they’ve been asking since the start of the show: What’s at the end of the long dark hallway? Where is Gemma, or as they know her, Ms. Casey? And, on a deeper level, what is their innie’s purpose?

Severance uses the final episode to ask the latter question on an even more macro level, questioning the morality and consequences of having two people inhabit one body — and whether a severed counterpart, an “innie,” has a right to a life of their own.

Here’s the Severance season 2 ending explained.

Warning: This post contains spoilers from season 2, episode 10 of Severance.

How does Severance end?

Episode 9 saw Mark’s sister Devon (Jen Tullock) enlisting season 1 foe, Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) to help Mark with his reintegration and plan to save Gemma. Though he is distrustful of her, Mark agrees to meet with Cobel at the birthing house, a Lumon spot for innies to give birth so their outies don’t experience the pain.

When inside, innie Mark comes out, meeting Cobel face-to-face for the first time this season. She instructs him to converse with outie Mark, which they proceed to do through recorded messages in a camera.

While the two are initially in awe of their ability to communicate with one another, the conversation quickly turns sour when innie Mark realizes what outie Mark is asking of him: to sacrifice his life and relationship with Helly so that outie Mark can be reunited with Gemma and bring an end to severance at Lumon as a whole.

The conversation ends with outie Mark promising that with reintegration, the two can become one, and innie Mark rebuts that it sounds like it would be more outie Mark’s life than his, threatening that the next time he wakes up, it better be in the elevator at work.

True to his word, the next day, innie Mark is back in the office, ready to complete Cold Harbor with Helly’s support. Once he hits 100%, the lights dim, and suddenly, a celebration is let loose: Milchick (Tramell Tillman) comes in and performs a (rather eccentric) dance alongside the Choreography and Merriment team, which is complete with a full marching band.

Meanwhile, Dylan is reeling elsewhere from a letter his outie left him, rejecting his resignation and telling him that innie Dylan’s affair with his wife inspired him to be more like his innie.

The meeting comes to a head when Mark uses the opportunity to escape and follow Irving’s (John Turturro) instructions to find the dark hallway that will lead him to Gemma/Ms. Casey. Helly helps him by locking Milchick in a bathroom, and Dylan shows up at a crucial moment to assist Helly in keeping him in there.

What is Cold Harbor?

We finally get an answer to the questions fans have been asking for three years: what is Cold Harbor, the project Mark has been working on since we met him?

Cobel peels back the curtain at a crucial moment at the start of the episode, helping innie Mark understand the consequences of his completing it. She explains that each project Mark has ever done has correlated to the different “tempers,” as Lumon describes personality traits and feelings, in Gemma, and each time he completes one, a new innie is born.

However, Cold Harbor is the final innie. After it’s done, Gemma will be killed as the experiment is complete.

Though it’s unclear what the experiment is (how far can you split a person, perhaps?), we do know what happens when Mark finally completes it: Gemma is asked to put on the clothes she was wearing the last time she saw Mark before she was presumably kidnapped and enter the final room, being Cold Harbor.

In it, her newest innie comes to life and is a completely blank slate. She is asked to take apart a crib standing in the center of the room, and while she seems to have an emotional response to it, she does as she’s asked without any questions or retorts.

As Eagan and other executives at the company watch on, it appears Cold Harbor was a success: Gemma seems to have no recollection of why the crib would be triggering for her, though as viewers know, Gemma previously cried in the kitchen as she heard Mark taking apart a crib following numerous failed attempts at conceiving a child.

What happened to Mark and Gemma?

After several trials, Mark, as his outie, finally makes it to the floor where Gemma resides. He enters the Cold Harbor room, marking the first reunion we see between the pair, though Gemma does not recognize him in her innie form.

Calmly, Mark persuades Gemma to leave with him and once she does, the two finally reunite as husband and wife, both their outies. But their woes are not over.

To leave, Mark and Gemma need to return to the severed floor where Gemma will once again not know who he is, as her Ms. Casey persona will return, and Mark will have a decision to make: leave with Gemma and fulfill outie Mark’s desires or, stay with Helly — though, they may both die if they do.

After successfully getting Gemma out the emergency door, where her outie returns to her, Mark locks her out while he stands inside the hall, deciding whether to stay or go. Helly suddenly appears at the end of the hallway, and though they previously said their goodbyes, Mark’s love for her is put to the test.

Ultimately, Mark decides to stay, and the episode ends with him and Helly holding hands and running through the halls of Lumon’s severed floor together. Meanwhile, outie Gemma wails outside the door, begging Mark to return to her.

Since outie Mark’s plan was to reveal to the world the horrors taking place at Lumon, the innies already realized their time alive was coming to an end since they could not exist outside the office. So does this mean this is the end for Mark? Will innie Mark never leave Lumon to preserve his relationship with Helly? Will outie Mark kill innie Mark anyway and reunite with Gemma? Those questions are left unanswered … for now.

What happened to Helly, Dylan and Irving?

Irving’s story seemingly comes to an end in the season 2 finale after his innie is supposedly deleted in episode 4. After having dinner at Burt’s (Christopher Walken) home, in which the retired Lumon employee seemingly alluded to his outie working for the company as well, he is met by his former lover at his own abode.

However, the meeting is more ominous — Burt has discovered Irving’s notes surrounding Lumon employees that he was looking into. He asks Irving to join him for a drive, but it is clear he has more nefarious intentions.

During their ride, Burt reveals that his outie’s job was to do exactly what he was doing at that moment: take people Lumon has sentenced to death for a drive, drop them off at a location and not ask further questions.

But he doesn’t seem to be able to do that with Irving, knowing that their innies were in a relationship. Instead, he takes Irving to the train station where he buys him a ticket to the furthest destination possible. Irving tells Burt he’s ready to live his true self and have love, but Burt denies him. Burt leaves and Irving looks ready to get on the train — and that’s the last we see of him.

Meanwhile, Helly and Dylan are working overtime at Lumon, trying to keep Milchick from stopping Mark. Though Dylan is depressed about losing the semblance of a life he gained this season — from meetings with his wife to more knowledge of his children — he recommits himself to helping his friends.

Helly, on the other hand, is reeling from her meeting with her outie’s father and accepts that she and Mark can’t continue to have a relationship because, as she puts it, “I am her,” referring to her outie, Helena Eagan.

However, by the end of the episode, she may have renewed hope as she and Mark run hand in hand.

What was going on with the sacrificial goat?

One question — what are they doing with all those goats? — is finally answered in the season finale.

In one scene, Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), an executive at Lumon, meets with Lorne (Gwendoline Christie) to sacrifice a goat. Trembling, Lorne asks how many more baby goats will need to be killed, to which Drummond replies as many as needed.