I know, most of you who have been watching Severance devotedly for the past nine weeks might have expected the season 2 finale to finally give you some definite answers. But unfortunately, the ending was as ambiguous as the rest of the show. In the end, we are still stuck with the same question: what does Lumon Industries really want? At this point, no one knows the answers, except for Dan Erickson and his team of writers, but that’s what they are going to reveal in season 3, and that’s a long wait right now. So, the question I want to raise is, what exactly was the point of season 2?
In the season 2 finale, Harmony finally cleared up the mystery around the files Mark’s Innie had been working on in the MDR department. She explained to Mark’s Innie that the MDR numbers from his console were a doorway to Gemma’s consciousness, and the clusters were the four tempers, i.e., malice, frolic, dread, and woe. These tempers were the building blocks for Gemma’s mind, and each finished file created a new consciousness for her, i.e., a new Innie. In the seventh episode of season 2, we saw Gemma visiting several rooms on the export floor, and as she entered each room, her personality changed, suggesting a new consciousness had taken over her. However, in all these rooms, of which, according to Harmony, there were 24 in total, Gemma didn’t lose herself completely. She subconsciously remembered things from her past or shared the fears of her Outie, implying that none of these files were completely perfect and Gemma still wasn’t entirely severed from her past self. Now, with the Cold Harbor file, Lumon wanted to create something that would erase a person’s consciousness completely, turning them into an empty vessel… a robot.
In the Cold Harbor room, Gemma didn’t have any memory of her former self and was a completely new person. As soon as she entered the room, Dr. Mauer instructed Gemma to disassemble the baby crib sitting in the middle of the room. This wooden crib looked eerily similar to the one Mark had tried to build when Gemma first got pregnant. So, in a way, the crib was an important part of Gemma’s traumatic past in which she suffered a miscarriage. It’s almost impossible to make a mother forget such a tragic loss in her life, but with Cold Harbor, it seemed like Lumon was on the verge of perfecting such a technology. I believe that’s what Gemma had signed up for. The loss of the baby had taken a toll on her married life, and the couple were no longer the same. I believe Gemma contacted Lumon so they could help her get rid of the painful past so she and Mark could give their relationship a new start, but it turned out Lumon had some other plans for Mark and Gemma.
In the season 2 finale, Harmony told Mark that once the Cold Harbor file was completed, Lumon would do a test on her, and then they would kill her. Well, I believe what Harmony meant was that once the experiment was successful, Lumon would push a button to wipe Gemma’s soul completely. In simple words, they would erase her memories, her emotions, and above all her consciousness so that she was no longer a person. And there might not be any way to bring her back, which I feel was the reason why Harmony used such strong words while trying to explain the gravity of the situation to Mark’s Innie. So, even though Mark’s Innie had successfully rescued Gemma from Lumon’s grasp, the Cold Harbor file still exists, which means they could test it on other subjects, if that’s how it works. If not, then there’s still a possibility that Lumon might try to get Gemma back to the exports department so they could re-test the file on her and conclude their experiment, through which they’d been trying to create a perfect severed employee.
But let’s entertain the possibility of an outcome where Gemma had successfully taken apart the crib, and soon after, Lumon had wiped her clean. I guess, in such a case, Jame Eagan might have made copies of the same file or tried to create similar files with other severed workers so he could use it to do a complete reset of all the severed employees. He likely wanted to create an army of emotionless, compliant workers who would never revolt, never fall in love, never feel jealous or angry, and never get tired on the job. And when I say army, yes, he might have shared his technology with the country’s leaders so that they could use it on the military and turn the switch on before sending their men to the battlefield, so they were no longer slaves to their emotions and could become cold-blooded killers. These soldiers would never think twice before taking a man’s life, and would never have to feel the weight of their actions, meaning no PTSD after the war. Therefore, I believe the whole point of season 2 was to tell the viewers about the inhumane but extremely powerful weapon in Lumon’s possession that could turn the whole world upside down. With this new addition to their severance technology, Lumon could exploit their workers in the most unimaginable way possible. And I don’t think they’re going to give up soon. Gemma’s escape might be a significant hiccup in their plan, but they would soon recover from such a blunder and use all their resources to finish what they started, and something tells me that next time, Jame might conduct an experiment on his own daughter using Mark’s Innie to create a file similar to Cold Harbor.
