Everyone is still reeling from the Severance season 2 finale where even if you may not have loved the rest of the season, it was hard to think it was anything but stellar.
There are many questions to be asked, but there’s one that is not based around a specific mystery. Rather, it’s about taking sides between Innie Mark and Outie Mark when it comes to the final scene. In it, while Innie Mark has gotten Outie Mark’s wife, Gemma, through the exit of Lumon, he decides to stay inside with Helly, locking Outie Mark inside his head and not allowing him to go back to Gemma.
Who is in the right here? My argument is both, in the context of the situation.
Outie Mark – If you knew your dead wife was alive and effectively being tortured inside the bowels of an evil corporation, you would do anything to save her. That anything includes lying to your Innie by saying he’s the reason you started reintegration to help free him, when that’s not remotely true. The point of that was a way to remember and potentially get to Gemma. Would you sacrifice your entire Innie personality who you’ve only just spoken to once, even if he has a love interest (you’ve never met), if it meant reuniting with your not-dead wife? Yes, you would.
Innie Mark – There is absolutely no reason to trust that Outie Mark would keep his word to continue reintegration to “save” him, and even if so, either way, you’d be losing the only bright spot of your so-far miserable existence, Helly. So, leaving Lumon would likely be akin to committing suicide and dooming Helly to some unknowable fate. You have “helped” by at least getting Gemma out alive, but are you willing to allow the reunion of your Outie if it cost you your life and the woman you loved? No, you would not.
Both are making an understandable decision based on their situation, and neither one involves trusting or working with each other past getting Gemma out. Outie Mark probably would have had a better chance of success being able to live and potentially flee Lumon in the upper world. Innie Mark running around hallways on the severed floor with no way to leave without flipping personalities is not a great situation, and it’s unclear what on earth they can do now.
But no, there is not a clear answers about who is right and wrong here, because as you might expect, with Severance, everything is gray.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
