Warning: This article contains spoilers for the show “Severance.”
A goat, a marching band and a big decision.
“Severance”, the Apple TV+ series that has become a cultural phenomenon, ended its second season Thursday with another major cliffhanger. The finale provided answers — or at least some semblance of clarity — around many major questions, but the future of the show’s main characters (both innies and outies) remains in doubt.
Fans can take some solace in Apple’s announcement Friday morning that the show will return for a third season.
By far Apple’s biggest streaming hit, the show has generated a sizable viewership as well as a cottage industry of internet sleuthing and memes. “Severance” was among the top trending topics on X on Friday morning.
And much like the first season, “Severance” waited for the last scene to throw its biggest curveball. Just as it looks like Mark Scout (Adam Scott) will be able to escape Lumon with his wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman), his “innie” makes a startling decision: to stay inside the building and with his own love, Helly R. (Britt Lower).
The decision marks a turning point for the show. While the combative dynamics between the innies and Lumon remain, the growing tension between the innies and outies on the show is poised to become the primary source of conflict — between Mark S and Mark Scout, and between Helly R and Helena Eagan.
It’s a split that is already showing some signs of fracturing fans who are inclined to root for either the innies or the outies.
Some fans were moved by the grand gesture from Mark S.
“SEVERANCE IS A LOVE STORY,” wrote one X user, with an image of the final shot.
As has become common for “Severance” fan reactions on the internet, the memes flowed.
The sci-fi series follows a group of workers at fictional Lumon Industries who have undergone a so-called severance procedure, permanently dividing their consciousnesses between their work and personal lives. “Innies” and “outies” have no memories of the other’s life.
Fans have become captivated by the show’s dystopian premise, as well as the cohort of “innies” that make up Lumon’s dedicated Macrodata Refinement (MDR) team: Mark S., Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), Helly R. (Britt Lower) and Irving B. (John Turturro). Throughout season two, all of the members grapple with their existence as they learn more about their “outies.”
Mark Scout (the outie of Mark S.) secretly begins “reintegration,” a painful brain surgery process that would meld his “innie” and “outie” in order to try and remember his experiences as both. It’s all part of an effort to find his wife, Gemma, who was thought to have died in a car accident two years prior but is actually being experimented on by Lumon employees somewhere in the building.
The season two finale revolves around “outie” Mark’s mission to save Gemma from the depths of Lumon. Thanks to help from his sister, Devon (Jen Tullock), and former severed floor manager Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), Mark Scout is able to make an appeal to his “innie,” Mark S.
Adam Scott in season two of “Severance.”Jon Pack / Apple TV+
Their conversation — conducted via recorded messages back and forth on a video camera — becomes heated. Mark S. shares his reluctance to save someone he doesn’t actually know, especially because Gemma’s reunion with Mark Scout would likely mean the lives of all “innies” (including his love interest, Helly R.) will come to an end.
Back on the severed floor, Mark S. decides to fulfill his outie’s request after all. Helly R. and Dylan G. help by distracting floor manager Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman), who has thrown a celebration featuring “choreography and merriment” — a particularly surreal scene featuring an animatronic version of Lumon’s mythological leader Kier Eagan and an extended performance from a marching band — to commemorate Mark S.’s completion of his work.
Mark S. makes his way to the testing floor where he becomes his “outie,” Mark Scout, and reunites with Gemma. They escape to the severed floor, where “innie” Mark S. escorts Gemma to a stairwell to help her leave Lumon for good.
But rather than go with her, Mark S. ends up choosing to stay behind with Helly R., and they run off, hand-in-hand, down the hallways of Lumon as Gemma looks on screaming Mark’s name.
“NEVER. LET. YOUR. WIFE. STOP. YOU. FROM. FINDING. YOUR. SOULMATE. #severance” another fan wrote.
“MARK AND HELLY WOULD RATHER LIVE IN HELL THAN A WORLD THAT DOESNT INCLUDE EACH OTHER. this is romance!!” another X user wrote.
But others were outraged he would choose navigating the unknowns of the severed floor with Helly R. instead of letting his “outie” be with Gemma.
“mark being able to walk towards helly with gemma screaming like that on the other side of the door is actually so black hearted and evil … he will never deserve her #severance” wrote one fan.
“i just don’t understand how anyone could look at someone screaming and crying like gemma was and go nah bye.. mark s you will pay” wrote another fan.
“i love markhelly but honestly… it’s not the same to me now,” added another X user. “they’re almost turning into the villains themselves. i don’t want them to find love and freedom and humanity in this way, you know?”
Aside from the dramatic twist at the end, the season 2 finale also revealed one mysterious aspect of the show that fans had been speculating about since season 1: What exactly are the MDR employees doing for Lumon?
According to Cobel, Mark S. and the team have been refining Gemma’s four tempers, creating 25 different consciousnesses — or innies — of her. In Gemma’s storyline, it appears each of her consciousness’ experiences is personal to her outie’s tempers in some way, as Lumon tests the limits of the severed chip on the company’s quest to fulfill Kier Eagan’s imagined world without pain.
The countdown to Season 3 begins
Since the show returned in January after a three-year hiatus, fans have inundated platforms like X and Reddit with memes, theories and even fan-cam edits. The massive fandom has helped make “Severance” Apple TV’s biggest hit, with millions of people tuning in week after week.
Ben Stiller, a director and executive producer of the show, has assured fans that there will not be as long of a hiatus between season two and three as there was between seasons one and two.
“No, the plan is not to [wait three years],” Stiller told Travis and Jason Kelce on an episode of their podcast, “New Heights.” “Hopefully we’ll be announcing what the plan is very soon.”
During a recent appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Stiller also teased that the creatives behind the series “know what the ending is, but how we’re getting there is the creative process.”
In the meantime, fans will have to sit tight — though that may be easier said than done.
“More Severance please…NNNNOOOWWWWW!!!!!!!” wrote “The Daily Show Host” Jon Stewart, tagging Stiller in a post on X. “(but actually thank you for what we got!)”
