Goats, guts and a glorious day: "Severance" closes with a man divided

“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” The Gospel of James, Chapter 1, Verse 8

She’s alive. But who cares? We ask this because it is the question steering Mark Scout. Both of him.

“Severance” can only provide part of an answer since Mark, played by Adam Scott, is two men in one body. Both exist for the same reason: Mark was so shattered by the untimely death of his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) that he consented to Lumon Industries’ severance procedure, dividing his consciousness.

The "outie" version of Mark remains despondent yet motivated by a renewed sense of hope. Thanks to a little at-home brain surgery, courtesy of a mysterious ally (Karen Aldridge) who never confirms whether she’s a licensed physician, Mark flashes back and forth between the office and his home. He knows Gemma is still alive and somehow connected to the workplace of his "innie."

That’s where Mark’s innie half exists unburdened by grief or any memories linked to life and the world beyond the office. He is content to lead Lumon’s Macrodata Refinement department and his shared life. Mostly.

A few doubts nag him, such as: what are he and his team accomplishing by sorting random numbers? Why is his manager, Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), pressured and controlling?

How can he trust that his co-worker and crush Helly R. (Britt Lower) is who she says she is and not her outie, Lumon heir apparent Helena Eagan? How can he trust anyone?

Britt Lower in "Severance" (Apple TV+)Much about “Cold Harbor,” the Ben Stiller-directed “Severance” second season finale, borrows its biblical undertones from that line about a divided man. Lumon casts Mark as its Messiah, and his work is “mysterious and important,” worthy of a massive and alarming painting in the elevator lobby on the severed floor. It depicts him surrounded by his co-workers, managers and the cult of Kier Eagan's mythical figures as his hand floats above his keyboard, eyes squeezed shut.

Once he hits the blessed keystroke — Praise Kier! — Lumon’s manager Mr. Drummond (Darri Ólafsson) marks the occasion by readying a baby goat for sacrifice. “Has it verve?” he sternly asks Lorne (Gwendoline Christie), the head of Mammalians Nurturable. “It does,” she answers, devoid of enthusiasm.

“Wiles?” he asks.

“The most of its flock,” Lorne assures him.

“This beast will be entombed with a cherished woman whose spirit it must guide to Kier's door,” Mr. Drummond says.

Mark isn’t aware of any of this, however. All he’s told is that he must complete Cold Harbor.

As for why, series creator Dan Erickson answers that question and others in this hour and 16-minute episode. Audiences only have so much patience for drawing out the unexplained, however minor. Now we know what that indoor goat farm is for, and why its shepherds stay angry.

This is also the right time to bring the mystery of what really happened to Gemma to a close, since it began with last season’s finale, along with explaining Mark’s inscrutable job.

A few levels down from the severed floor, Gemma is Lumon’s test subject, enduring assorted life scenes and tortures before returning to her baseline self, where she’s asked what she remembers. The answer is always nothing, although some discomfort lingers – a sore mouth from a dental visit, a cramped hand from signing stacks of Christmas cards. None of the women she dresses up to be are natural parts of her. But Cold Harbor is.

Mark’s innie spends his days placing number clusters into digital folders based on feelings sparked by certain groupings, as his ex-manager Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) tells him. Kier’s followers call these the Tempers: Woe, Frolic, Dread and Malice. Assembling each file creates a corresponding personality for Gemma.

The last connects to the bleakest memory outie Mark and his wife share – a miscarriage that followed months of difficulty conceiving. The chilliest, darkest place in the unseen ocean of the soul. This is Cold Harbor, the name of the last room Gemma is set to visit on the testing floor. Mark's innie has no concrete memory of this but the feelings are part of his physiology nevertheless.  

Prior episodes establish this narrative's runway, setting Mark and his sister Devon (Jen Tullock) en route to meet Ms. Cobel, who sneaks them into a “birthing cabin” in an out-of-the-way Kier compound.

Ólafur Darri Ólafsson in "Severance" (Apple TV+)The cabin works much in the way Lumon’s office does: once Mark S. steps inside, his innie assumes control. Since Devon and Ms. Cobel are unsevered, they can speak with both versions of Mark. With the help of a camcorder, innie and outie Mark converse for the first time, which is when each discovers that, although they share the same body, they want different things.

Erickson and the writers prepared us for this scenario through Mark’s co-worker Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), whose innie met and fell in love with his wife Gretchen (Merritt Wever), angering his low-vibration outie. Because of this, Gretchen told innie Dylan she had to stop seeing him, leading him to tender his resignation. But outie Dylan declines to free his innie, leaving it up to innie Dylan to decide whether to stay. “I guess I like knowing you’re there,” Dylan-at-home wrote.

Of the two Marks in that dark cabin, which is the better man? They pass messages back and forth, with outie Mark explaining that he needs his innie to save his wife, expose Lumon’s crimes and free the severed workers from what he assumes is a nightmare. Outie Mark assumes his innie wants to be reintegrated and free. That way they both get to live with Gemma, he says, while acknowledging his innie's relationship with Helly as a nice thing for him to have had. 

The Bible casts the double-minded man as insecure in his faith, divided between divine direction and worldly distraction. Mark's quandary is that his two sides disagree on which love is true and worth preserving, and which is the disposable illusion. Thus, what Mark's outie assumes about Helly incenses his innie, who insists his love for Helly is real. Even if she is an Eagan.

This is where their conversation abruptly ends. Despite Ms. Cobel assuring innie Mark that Lumon will dispose of him and all of his co-workers once Cold Harbor is complete, he threatens to betray everyone if the next thing he sees after stepping outside isn't the office’s elevator doors opening.

His wish is granted, and what comes after the seamless transition between the cabin’s front door and the severed floor is horrifying. He’s greeted by Helly – who experienced her own haunting encounter with Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry), her outie’s creepy father – and that bone-chilling painting. It's a real Kubrickian mind screw, only 23 minutes in.

The rest of the episode combines bloody, frantic action; a thriller; an absurd stage play; and “choreography and merriment.”

When Helly and Mark step into their usual workspace, it's dark, aside from a dimly lit life-size animatronic statue of The Founder, Kier Eagan. It holds a letter congratulating Mark, instructing him to finish the 25th file, Cold Harbor, as Helly. bears witness. "Goodly splendors await upon your victory. Love, Mr. Milchick."

That's when they notice their office space holds three desks instead of four, since Irving B. (John Turturro) is on a train to parts unknown, likely saving his life. But Irving left behind instructions to a dark hallway with an elevator at the end — the passage to Gemma. Helly previously intercepted Irving's note, having taken it from Dylan, and passes it to Mark just prior to him hitting the last key.

Before that, she lets Mark know that Jame Eagan came to see her, and Mark shares what he knows about their work and Gemma. Upon hearing this, Helly urges Mark to fulfill his outie's plan, to have a chance at living. "But I want to live with you," he says tearfully.

Michael Siberry in "Severance" (Apple TV+)"But I'm her, Mark," says Helly, reminding him of immutable realities. So he steels himself and proceeds. As he files, she wistfully lists names of places that linger in her deep memories but have no meaning: Delaware, Europe, Zimbabwe and the Equator.

“The Equator?" Mark asks in response, smiling. "Is that a building?” They lightly banter until the moment of truth.

With one click, the lighting changes and the Alan Parsons Project’s banger “Sirius” (Michael Jordan’s entry theme at the height of the Chicago Bulls’ championship dynasty, a nice touch) blares over the speakers. A few floors below, Gemma dons the outfit she wore the last time she saw her husband and walks into the room, which is all white and empty except for a crib.

Back on the severed floor, Milchick bounds in and launches into a stilted skit with the statue of Kier that ends awkwardly, with the fake Kier taking jabs as Milchick speaks, which he takes personally. The manager insults Kier in kind, who tersely thanks him for the "feedback," referring to him as "Seth" before shutting down. Milchick's forced smile returns and he introduces, with a flourish, “Choreography and Merriment.”

On cue, a marching band enters, filling the MDR area with music and raucous dance moves.

Tillman, by the way, is fantastic here – moving and undulating along with the instrumentalists, lacing the music's joy with the character's menace. (Stiller loves marching bands, Tillman previously told Salon, and he designed this performance in the style of drumlines from historically black colleges and universities). And the organized chaos is the distraction Helly and Mark need. Helly rushes Milchick, grabs his walkie and dashes into the bathroom. She misdirects him to an empty stall, then slips out behind him and pulls the door shut, using her whole body to prevent him from opening it.

As this transpires, Mark dashes into the hallway and follows Irving B.’s instructions to the black hall. Unfortunately — or fortunately, from Emil the goat and Lorne's point of view — he interrupts the bloodletting ceremony. He and Drummond tussle and it almost ends with Drummond strangling Mark to death before Lorne joins the fight, eventually overpowering Drummond and pointing the bolt pistol he would have used on the kid at him.

Mark talks her down and takes Drummond hostage, holding the pistol to his throat as they enter the elevator. This was only meant to keep the security goon under control, but when Mark shifts between his innie and outie as the lift descends, he squeezes the trigger, accidently and messily killing the senior manager. But the gore turns out to be useful since entry to the Cold Harbor room requires a blood sample. There, Mark finds Gemma serenely disassembling the crib, and coaxes her to run with him.

Their reunion is painful, beautiful — and weird. Once they shift in the elevator, mid-kiss, from loving husband and wife to Mark S. and Gemma’s severed-floor wellness counselor, Ms. Casey, the moment takes on a surreal quality. This is also the moment of truth — and innie Mark fulfills his task, rushing Ms. Casey to the emergency stairwell per Ms. Cobel’s instructions and making her step out of that persona into that of his wife. Once Gemma is in the stairwell, she calls her husband to open the door and come with her.

But this Mark S. is not the man she married.  

Once Helly's part in distracting Milchick is done, she finds Mark just in time to steer his indecision in her direction. He chooses the girl who is as real as he is — which is to say, not at all.

On the day of the finale's release, Apple TV+ officially picked up a third season of "Severance." The finale writes that as a foregone conclusion, though. Milchick is enraged at having been hoodwinked but doesn't seem to entirely disagree with Helly's rebellion, aided by Dylan and the Choreography and Merriment players she persuaded by letting them know their lives were on the line. The severed floor's manager has some explaining to do although, thanks to Mark, he doesn't have to deal with an abusive superior anymore.

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Helly, meanwhile, may be the focus of Jame Eagan’s new mission. Before Mark's arrival, the Lumon CEO sneaks up on Helly in the dark and creepily confesses, “I do not love my daughter. I used to see Kier in her, but he left her as she grew . . . I sired others in the shadows. But he wasn’t in them either. Until I saw him again. In you.”

“Why did you come here? What do you want from me?” Helly yells as Jame walks away. And there we have it, the next stage of this mystery.

As always, the blissful artistry of “Severance” is in the details – the completed circle of Mark opening the season with a mad dash through the halls and ending it hand in hand with Helly, jogging to who knows where as Mel Tormé croons a wending carpet of easy listening psychedelia behind them.

That finale closing song selection, “The Windmills of Your Mind,” is spot-on and portentous; its lyrics speak of the dreamy confusion enveloping these two. “Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own/ Down a hollow to a cavern, where the sun has never shone…” If the severed workers' utility has ended, where can Mark and Helly run to?

Mark's choice leaves us to marinate on all the possible consequences of that and all the other action. Until that date is set we can only quote what Helly tells Mark S. before he turns on himself and capsizes our expectations.

“See you at the Equator.” Whatever or whenever that might be.

All episodes of "Severance" are streaming on Apple TV+.