10 Lingering Questions After the Season 2 Finale of “Severance”

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

After weeks of wondering what the hell was going on (and coming up with our best theories), we finally got a few answers from the wild season 2 finale of Severance. We now have a vague sense of what Lumon’s endgame is with the severance chip — it seems like they’re trying to create a product that will allow people to avoid any and all pain and trauma by creating innies to handle life’s messier moments for them — and we also got some answers about how the Mammalians Nurturable department fits in with everything.

It was a stunning, supersized episode that featured everything from an unexpectedly bloody hallway battle to Mr. Milchick body-rolling his way through a marching band routine. But of course, we were never going to get all the answers we wanted. (That’s what season 3 is for, right?) For every bit of resolution, there was a handful of new questions raised. Below, we’ve outlined the biggest ones we’re left scratching our heads over as we wait for the show to return.

How many other test subjects have there been?

We’ve known for several episodes now that Gemma was basically a Lumon guinea pig, doomed to die after she completes her final test and the company no longer has any use for her. In the finale, we also finally learned what the goats are all about. They’re essentially animal sacrifices, meant to guide the spirits of the humans like Gemma through the afterlife to meet Kier. But Lorne — the keeper of the goats who eventually snaps and saves Mark from being strangled by Drummond — is fed up with being forced to kill her whole flock, which would imply that Gemma is far from the first Lumon test subject. How many more were there before her? Did Lumon kidnap them and fake their deaths, too?

Do Outie Mark and Gemma have any real shot at reuniting?

The big twist at the end of the finale — that Innie Mark would choose a shot at life with Helly R. inside the halls of Lumon over nonexistence — wasn’t exactly unexpected. (We should have all known Outie Mark wasn’t going to get his happy ending as soon as he messed up Helly’s name.) But it does leave Gemma in a pretty uncertain position, stuck outside screaming to her husband’s innie as he chooses another woman over her. She’s been held captive inside Lumon for two years and is, presumably, a bit disoriented. Does she know how to get home? Are Devon and Cobel outside waiting for her? Won’t the Lumon goons come looking for her and try to dispose of her like they did Irving? Without Outie Mark by her side, she’s on her own for the second half of her great escape. What’s he going to do if he wakes up after work and she’s not there like he’s expecting her to be?

Has the Choreography and Merriment department been there the whole time?

The marching band reveal was one of the show’s most surreal (and, frankly, hilarious) moments thus far, but it doesn’t totally make sense from a narrative perspective. Helly R. gets them to join her and Dylan’s rebellion by asking how many of them have lost a friend after their outie quit or got fired, implying that they’re severed too. But has there really been a whole marching band on the severed floor this entire time? Wouldn’t the Macrodata Refinement team have noticed or heard them before? And it’s one thing for office drones to want to create an innie slave to do their mundane work for them, but what motivation would a creative person like a musician have for getting severed? Were they kidnapped and severed against their will, and have they been waiting two whole years to actually perform their routine and share their choreography and merriment?

Have we seen the last of Irving?

When we last saw Irving, he was boarding a train to leave town and escape being killed by Lumon for investigating them. It seemed like a pretty final resolution to his storyline with Burt, but there are still a bunch of unanswered questions about his character. He was absent in the season finale, but it seems safe to assume we haven’t seen the last of him. We still don’t know who he was talking to on that payphone — and presumably, whoever it was will be looking for him.

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Will Milchick join the innie revolution?

Season 2 has seen Mr. Milchick grow increasingly dissatisfied with the way his employers at Lumon treat him, and we see more flashes of that when he starts bickering with the animatronic Kier statue. (Who was voicing that thing, by the way?) When he finally busts out of the bathroom he’d been barricaded inside — looking scary as hell, by the way — he’s immediately greeted by Dylan and the angry marching band. He’s completely outnumbered, so it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll be able to fight his way out, and with the way Lumon’s been exploiting him, maybe he’s finally realized that there’s no reason for him to try. It’s to his advantage to join up with Dylan and the band. Will he follow in Cobel’s footsteps and become the next Lumon defector?

What happens to Helly R.?

The finale’s saddest moments came when Helly R. and Mark S. realized that they’ll never be able to be together, even if Mark fully reintegrates, because her outie is Helena Eagan. There’s no universe in which Helena would leave Lumon — or in which Lumon would let their heiress leave. But more importantly, the revelation that both the innies and outies die when the severance chip is removed from their brain raises a big question of what sort of punishment can be handed down to Helly for locking her boss in a bathroom and helping Gemma escape. Now that he’s completed Cold Harbor, Mark is of no use to Lumon, and his outie stands to expose them, which means they’ll likely try to kill him. But they can’t really do anything to Helly inside the halls of Lumon because harming her is also harming Helena Eagan. And Jame Eagan’s creepy visit to the severed floor where he told Helly that he sees “the fire of Kier” inside her but not in Helena seems to indicate he may have bigger plans for her.

Will Devon, Cobel and Gemma actually be able to expose Lumon?

The reason Innie Mark eventually ditches their plan is because he realizes that once his outie and Gemma escape, Lumon will be exposed and shut down, thus effectively killing all of the innies. But is that really how that whole scenario would play out? It seems like he, Devon and Cobel are all greatly underestimating just how strong of a hold Lumon has on the entire town of Kier. Mark and Gemma met at a Lumon blood drive, and they received IVF treatments at a Lumon fertility clinic. It seems like Lumon controls the entire town, and if that’s the case, why would anyone believe Devon and Gemma over the cult that has seemingly infiltrated their whole city? And won’t there be Lumon loyalists doing their damnedest to get rid of them as soon as they dare speak out about the kidnappings and the killings?

Now that he knows Gemma is alive and (possibly) safe, what’s stopping Outie Mark from quitting Lumon and thus killing his innie?

Innie Mark still exists for now, running the halls and having his own version of the ending to The Graduate with Helly, but presumably his outie is going to be pissed that he didn’t follow through with their plan. Now that Gemma is out of Lumon custody, wouldn’t Outie Mark’s first order of business be sending in his resignation? It’d kill his innie, but Outie Mark was never particularly concerned about that anyway, and he’s most likely going to be busy trying to find his probably very confused wife and then getting the hell out of Kier. Unless there’s some reintegration complication we don’t know about yet, it seems like Innie Mark is living on borrowed time.

What happens if your innie kills a guy?

The accidental killing of Drummond in the elevator when Mark’s transition from innie to outie triggers a reflex that causes the gun to go off and hit the Lumon enforcer right in the jugular was one of the funniest parts of the finale, but it also raises some interesting legal questions. Can Outie Mark stand trial for his innie’s actions? Is the severed floor operating under something similar to international sea law? Who has jurisdiction here?

Who were Irving, Helly R. and Dylan refining?

The finale finally explained the mysterious numbers the Macrodata Refinement team has been working through. As Cobel explains, each file that Mark S. completed was another severed persona for Gemma, and the numbers are her “tempers.” He’s been creating a map of her mind through his connection to her and her emotions. But if that’s the case, what have Irving, Helly R. and Dylan been doing during their time on the severed floor? Who are they “refining”? Helly is an Eagan plant, of course, but do Irving and Dylan have missing loved ones who were also kidnapped by Lumon? Are there more test subjects besides Gemma currently locked away inside Lumon? And most importantly, how are we expected to wait patiently until season 3 to find out?