Severance - 2x10 "Cold Harbor" - Episode Discussion
Season 2 Episode 10: Cold Harbor
Aired: March 21, 2025
Synopsis: Mark forms a shaky alliance in an all-or-nothing play, while the team makes a dangerous last stand.
Directed by: Ben Stiller
Written by: Dan Erickson
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Not stoked about cold harbor. Answers no questions, has some weird plot points, and just a super unsatisfying ending. What was the lead in earlier seasons asking if Gemma was more afraid of suffocating or drowning. Also 75 minutes long!? For what? Meh.
The question about drowning might have just been a misdirect for the audience, I suppose? The purpose of the actual Cold Harbor test is clear, though, they present her with a task of dismantling a baby crib, essentially giving up on the dream of motherhood that Outie Gemma had, yet their analytics show she’s feeling no pain about it, meaning their quest to separate a human completely from their trauma has worked. There’s a reason an earlier line mentions freedom from pain.
I’m left uncertain about why they wanted specifically to get ready of her after this test, though. Is that really the biggest pain they could test for? Is there a limit on innie instances? Or is it again some bullshit Kier limitation that’s part of their rituals?
Also seems like there's more of a backstory with Lumon possibly creating Gemma's infertility to traumatize her and then see if they can reverse the trauma completely via the Severance procedure.
Answers no questions
How about the evergreen "what's the deal with the goats"?
I agree, that was a bit frustrating. All this mystery about what’s going on, and buildup of how incredibly important cold harbor is, and I’m still not sure why it was as such a big deal. They just watched a severed version of herself act like a severed version of herself. And why would she be dead if cold harbor was finished?
I still don’t see the significance.
I don't think severing works as well as Lumon would like. We see tons of crossover between innie and outie awareness, even down to simple stuff like Helly R being able to name Delaware, Europe and the equator. The testing floor and Macrodata Refinement seem to be about making severance more precise by refining exactly how much of the complete mind the innie has access to. They are impressed that Cold Harbor Gemma gives no indication of having an emotional response to what they have identified as the most significant trauma of her outie life because the current state of severance isn't achieving that.
We don't really know what an innie's response to being confronted with major outie trauma would be, because the Severed Floor is so clinically sanitized of anything that could possibly resemble the outie's "real" life. Even when the innies are allowed to do something outwardly normal like a dance party or a funeral, it's fundamentally weird and wrong because they are avoiding giving them experiences that reflect life on the outside. I don't think this just comes down to Lumon being incredibly weird, although that helps.
If what MDR has achieved is some sort of perfect severance with no crossover, then Gemma is no longer needed. They can apply this knowledge to all severance from now on and Gemma herself is only a liability: somebody who was kidnapped and tortured for literally years, who the entire outside world believes to be dead. If she gets out and tells people, that's going to damage Lumon. If she dies (again), they don't even have to bother telling anybody.
This all makes sense, but it’s still a little unsatisfying. They built it up all season and in the end it’s just not very interesting.
Maybe if there was something more emotionally significant than disassembling a crib. It’s been 2 years since she had a miscarriage, right? Would her outie still be this upset? Maybe the kid is still alive, or was born and died or something, but that is not information they have given us.
Probably a bit blasphemous to bring up BBC Sherlock in the Severance community, but:
Watson: Maybe he used the death of her daughter somehow?
Sherlock: That was ages ago, why would she still be upset?!
Watson: ...
Sherlock: Not good?
Watson: Bit not good, yeah.
People are different all over but two years doesn't seem unreasonable for somebody to still be upset about a loss of a pregnancy. Dr. Mauer has certainly identified it as a sore point for her, since he lied to Gemma about Mark having moved on and had a kid with somebody else, right before he got a chair to the head.
Additionally, we don't really know with any certainty how long it has been from Gemma's perspective given they've had her working as Ms. Casey and also testing for hours at a time in multiple rooms, possibly every day. Even when she gets to be her outie self, she's been in a prolonged traumatic situation of being kidnapped and experimented on, so she probably has limited opportunities to process her previous traumas.
Yeah, I see all these points, but the show did not convey to us that the loss of her pregnancy was still affecting her this deeply. I would think being kidnapped and tortured (physically, not mentally) would have made her let go of that pain.
I think maybe if they showed outie Gemma being put in a similar situation and we can judge the difference in reactions, that would have made it more meaningful. As is it just seems like a bunch of way too smart people doing dumb meaningless tests.