Severance Season 2 Finale Offers A Satisfying First For The Series

This article contains spoilers for “Severance” season 2 episode 10, “Cold Harbor” 

From innies and outies to characters who are entirely unsevered (as far as we know), you can count on nearly every “Severance” character to face untold existential hurdles that few mere mortals are equipped to comprehend, let alone handle. Unless a character is armed with the ironclad self-obsession of Ricken Hale (Michael Chernus) or the megalomaniac devotion of Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry), the world Lumon Industries created seems custom designed to grind a person down. 

The company, on the other hand, is built to endure. Over two seasons of “Severance,” nothing the protagonists have managed to do has really swayed Lumon in any significant way beyond tiny inconveniences, minor PR crises, and the occasional personnel change … until now.  

The “Severance” season 2 finale, titled “Cold Harbor,” bucks the trend of Lumon invulnerability in a massive and potentially irreparable way. The episode manages to wreck every single major Lumon antagonist, dealing the venerable company a truly unforeseen — and, let’s face it, extremely welcome — defeat. There’s nothing quite like watching a close-up of Jame Eagan screeching profanities as his family’s grand plan crumbles in front of his eyes, and while the road to that moment is far from easy, “Cold Harbor” sure knows to let the camera linger on this unpleasant but oh-so-satisfying sight. 

Let us count the ways Lumon Industries face-plants in the “Severance” season 2 finale. 

Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) is Lumon’s most resounding physical loss when Mark S. (Adam Scott) disrupts his goat sacrifice ceremony, Lorne (Gwendoline Christie) beats him up, and Mark’s outie accidentally kills the big man soon afterward. In a clever turn of fate, Drummond’s failure to sacrifice the baby goat ends up making him the sacrificial lamb in the failure of “Cold Harbor” when Mark uses the fallen Lumon heavy’s blood to gain access to the Cold Harbor room and save Gemma (Dichen Lachman). This, in turn, interrupts Cold Harbor and foils Jame Eagan and Dr. Mauer’s (Robby Benson) plans, reducing both into screaming wrecks. Meanwhile, Helena Eagan has simply ceased to exist, at least for as long as her hated innie and Mark are on the run.

Elsewhere, Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) — ever the company man — contributes to the losing streak. While he continues to flaunt the anti-authority attitude he discovered in the previous episode (titled “The After Hours”), he nevertheless spends the season 2 finale in wise-cracking, dancing lackey mode while visibly hating every second … and that’s before Helly (Britt Lower) and Dylan (Zach Cherry) lock him in the Macrodata Refinement bathroom and turn the entire Choreography & Merriment department against him. The pain in his eyes and the absolutely furious way he breaks out of his bathroom prison imply that we may not have seen the full extent of Milchick’s evidently ongoing big breakdown just yet. Then again, it’s hard to feel too sorry for the erstwhile severed floor manager after seeing him send the very frightened-looking Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) to a facility in faraway Svalbard. 

Seeing Lumon take immediate damage is satisfying enough, but the show is always looking ahead, and “Cold Harbor” sets up multiple ways for its characters to further hurt the company in “Severance” season 3. Gemma has escaped and retains her personality, which means she can blow the lid on her kidnapping and what she knows of Lumon’s human experiments. Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), a major former antagonist, had already severed ties with Lumon earlier in the season, but the season’s end firmly establishes her as an ally. Considering what she knows about Lumon, this is a massive threat to the company; As “Severance” season 2 episode 8, “Sweet Vitriol,” reveals, she’s the true inventor of the severance procedure instead of Jame Eagan, which is a PR nightmare waiting to happen even though she seems to lack solid evidence. 

Oh, and speaking of Jame: Thanks to his arrogant monologuing, Helly now holds some deeply discriminating information about his hatred of Helena Eagan, not to mention his many illicit children and other shady activities. She or the reintegrating Mark could easily get this information out there, which would severely compromise Jame’s integrity as Lumon CEO.

Really, Lumon’s sole stroke of luck by the time the credits of “Cold Harbor” roll is innie Mark’s decision to stay on the severed floor with Helly. Should Mark have entered the outie world with Gemma as intended, they and Cobel could have had a much better chance of raising a ruckus that could bring Lumon down. With Mark still inside the Lumon complex, the company might have a shot at damage control … or, all else failing, keeping him as a hostage to prevent his loved ones from speaking out.