[This story contains major spoilers from the season two finale of Severance, “Cold Harbor.”]
On the same day that the final episode of Severance‘s second season arrived on Apple TV+, the show’s cast and creative team united at PaleyFest LA for a conversation about that ending.
Stars Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, Dichen Lachman, Jen Tullock, Sarah Bock, Tramell Tillman, Michael Chernus, Gwendoline Christie and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson were all on hand at the Friday night event at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, alongside director/EP Ben Stiller and creator Dan Erickson.
The group sat down for a chat moderated by Ben Schwartz, who worked with Scott on Parks and Recreation, as Stiller noted the event was the first time truly celebrating the show publicly because the first season debuted during the pandemic and the season two premiere was cancelled due to the L.A. wildfires.
To add to the night, Tillman — who plays floor manager Seth Milchick — made a grand entrance as he entered the theater accompanied by the USC marching band, in reference to the big band moment in the finale episode.
Following a screening of the finale — which sees Mark (played by Scott)’s Innie free his Outie’s wife Gemma (Lachman) from Lumon but opt to stay on the severed floor with Helly (Lower) instead of leaving with her — the trio broke down that big decision.
“I guess on the surface it looks like a triangle, but if you know me, you know I love talking about shapes,” Lower told the crowd, musing, “It might be a tetrahedron or a hexagonal prism, and to add complexity, maybe in that last moment Helly R. is in love at first sight seeing Gemma across the hall.”
Scott added that the finale was filmed “right at the end of the shoot so we were all kind of depleted and tired — which was good for the scene I guess, but it was heartbreaking, because Dichen was really pounding on that door for hours and hours, and it was awful. It was awful to see her there and what Gemma has come to mean to all of us.”
“I think for Innie Mark at the end of the day, [Gemma] is someone he doesn’t know in that way and he crosses that threshold, and the life might be over, he doesn’t quite know,” the actor continued. “And he’s madly in love with Helly so he had to make a choice for a few different reasons.”
As for Gemma, Lachman said “initially she’s just very confused, and then very quickly realizes that he’s probably gone through this procedure [of severance]. It all has to happen really fast and then I think ultimately, she’s just trying to get through to him, like break through that barrier.”
The episode is also uncharacteristically violent, as Mark and Lorne (Christie) fight Drummond (Ólafsson) in the halls of Lumon. “I loved the fight scene, I loved it,” Christie teased of the face-off. “I deliberately chose not to do anything that involved any kind of combat after Game of Thrones, and then unfortunately one day I got a call from Ben Stiller and he told me about this fight scene in Severance, my favorite TV show in the world. So I had to say yes, and I found I still had a bloodlust.”
Christie, whose character is shrouded in mystery as the woman in charge of Lumon’s many goats, also joked she was just as lost as the audience and “I feel great freedom in that actually. As someone that used to demand all of the answers, I found actually a huge liberation in not being given really anything at all.”
Now that the finale is finally out in the world, Erickson told The Hollywood Reporter he’s seen some of the fan reaction but “I’ve sort of had to try to distance myself a little bit from the chatter because we’re working on it and we’re deep in talking season three. But it’s fun, it’s really fun to see people discover this thing that feels like it’s been our secret for the last couple of years.”
The creator noted that upon seeing the division between those siding with Innie Mark and Helly versus those supporting Outie Mark and Gemma, “I’m not that surprised. It seems like a lot of people have complex feelings about the end, maybe some divisive things about the end and who is right and who is wrong, shipping different couples which I do understand.”
Stiller added of seeing the fan split, “I feel like that’s what we were hoping, that you could take one character’s side or the other and really think about where we’re coming from to justify the choice. I feel like that’s what’s interesting, when the filmmakers aren’t telling you what’s interesting and what you should feel or what you should do… I think there’s an argument to be made on either side for Innie Mark or Outie Mark.”
And as for when season three will arrive, both Erickson and Stiller say they intend it to be less than the three-year gap that was between the first and second seasons, with Stiller confirming, “we’re in the [writers] room and working on it” currently.
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