Severance’s Penultimate Episode Was Both Heartbreaking and Fascinating

How can Severance season two almost be over? We waited what felt like forever to see what was next for the team at Lumon and now, with only one episode to go, it all feels too sudden. Especially since this week’s penultimate ninth episode worked as a revealing but slightly stunted place setter, moving all the pieces on the board to exactly where we needed to be. It’s heartbreaking that it’s almost over, several of the stories in the episode were heartbreaking, and when you arrive at this episode’s final line, it’s fascinating to consider the brilliance of the storytelling.

“The After Hours” was, once again, one of those episodes that jumped between all the characters so we’re going to break it down by individual character/storyline. Full spoilers below.

Helena/Helly

The episode started with Helena so we’ll do the same. We see her getting ready for her day in what we can assume is her family’s house, since her father Jame Eagan, CEO of Lumon, is there. It’s a very creepy scene layered with information. We learn it’s going to be a “momentous day,” we learn that Lumon is “seeing to Mr. Bailiff,” and we learn that Jame would prefer his daughter eat her eggs raw. Who is he, Gollum? What the hell, man? We also learn that the Eagan house is, presumably, close to Lumon itself, thanks to its proximity to the water tower we saw in that weird claymation thing.

Helly then arrives at work on a mission. She’s looking for Mark who, for the second day in a row, isn’t there. Helly busts into Mr. Milchick’s office to ask about it and really pushes his buttons, bringing up her outie—his boss—and digging at his interchangeability with Cobel. After her interactions with Dylan (more on that in a second), she takes it upon herself to investigate the directions Irving left to get to the Exports Hall.

As Helly makes her way to the “Hang in There” poster hiding the directions, we notice the poster is of Dylan, or someone who looks like Dylan. Why or how that is, we don’t know, but it makes more sense for why Irving left the directions there. Helly takes them back to her desk to study them like it’s the Contra code when she’s interrupted by Jame. “You tricked me,” he says to Helly, who is very confused to see Jame in this setting.

Basically Helly’s journey this week was kind of the glue to keep all the stories together. She checks in on Mark, Dylan, Milchick, gets Irving’s instructions, even links us to the man himself, Jame. What trick did she pull? Did Helly somehow do a reverse Glasgow block we don’t know about? Did Jame not know about Helena posing as Helly? Is he just finding out about Irving trying to kill her?

Miss Huang

Miss Huang has been an enigma all season. She pops in and out, acts way too nice to work at Lumon, but is also oddly in awe of the whole thing. She’s also a literal kid. Here though, she’s the first tale of woe in the episode as we, presumably, see the end of her journey.

Last week we learned that the Wintertide Fellowship she is doing is the same one Harmony Cobel did to cement her place at Lumon. However, Miss Huang’s is ending. Mr. Milchick tells her that she’s moving from her parents’ house to the “Gunnel Eagan Empathy Center in Svalbard, where you will work to steward global reforms.” Svalbard, by the way, is in the Arctic Circle. Basically closer to the North Pole than anywhere else. Not a great assignment.

Then, if that wasn’t enough, Mr. Milchick reveals that this “betterment” must be marked with a “material sacrifice” and makes her smash her ring toss game to bits. One of the very few things we know about Huang is how much she loves that ring toss game, so to see Milchick make her smash it is needlessly cruel.

After a sad interaction with Dylan, we see her waiting for a Lumon shuttle. Is she really going from here right to the Arctic Circle? Will we ever see this character again? I kind of hope she turns on Lumon and brings the whole place down.

Dylan

We always love Dylan but, in our minds, “The After Hours” was the best Dylan episode yet. Just a tour de force by actor Zack Cherry and Merritt Wever, who plays outie Dylan’s wife, Gretchen. Things start there, with the couple going through their morning routine. Gretchen then drops a bomb on him we thought would’ve remained a secret a little bit longer. She kissed his innie “for about a minute.” (Did she really have to add that last part? That was a bit much, right? Too much detail.)

Dylan is confused and angry about this, both because he feels as if he’s been cheated on using his own body, but also because Gretchen suggests it was meaningful to her. He’s been “adrift,” she says, and Dylan’s innie reminds her “of how you used to be.” Furious, Dylan says he might quit Lumon just to end his innie’s existence, a statement that comes back in a very unexpected way.

Though Dylan told Gretchen not to follow him to work, she does just that, telling his innie what she just did. “Was he glad for us?” he asks, in the most precious manner ever. He wasn’t, Gretchen says, before telling the innie she can’t see him anymore. Innie Dylan is crushed. He thought he was making Gretchen happy, which he was. But she can’t do it at the expense of his outie. All of this makes your mind do backflips because she’s breaking up with her husband, to be with her husband, who she cheated on with her husband.

This declaration leads to Dylan professing his love for Gretchen and proposing. He proposes marriage! Seriously, one of the biggest, best Severance twists ever. “I love you, I made this for you, I can give you a life,” he tells her with a paper ring. So rarely have romance and pain been weaved together so beautifully. Gretchen cries, apologizes, and leaves.

Dylan goes back to the office where only Helly is there to greet him. She suggests he saves the ring for someone else on the severed floor, which is meant to be helpful but clearly is not. “It’s just O&D and the goat people,” Dylan says. He then talks about how innies are stuck with no life, no family, and no real purpose before blaming her for all of it. “If we’re so different from our outies, how come we couldn’t tell when you were gone?” he asks.

It’s a fantastic question that Dylan is about to challenge himself. He decides to quit Lumon which, when you think about it, is a very big decision. He’s not only choosing to end his own existence—basically Severance suicide—he’s choosing to punish his outie and family by denying them a steady paycheck. It’s big, it’s brash, but it’s the only thing he has the ability to do. And so, Dylan fills out a very odd form where he’s asked why he’s resigning and he checks literally every box. We can’t see them all but we can see “freedom, anger, fatigue, loneliness, guilt, shame” and “annoyance.” Sounds about right. Mr. Milchick is displeased about this, saying it “reeks of ingratitude” (a reference to them allowing him to see his wife), and as Dylan leaves, Miss Huang blames herself. Dylan tells her not to.

We last see Dylan at the elevator to the severed floor, presumably about to go back upstairs completely oblivious to the damage his innie just caused. Again though, what a Dylan episode. Just everything great about this show rolled into one.

Irving

Irving’s story this week began before we saw him on screen. Remember the throwaway line where Helena tells Jame that they’re “seeing to Mr. Bailiff?” That’s Irving and that one line reshapes everything that comes after.

Everything starts with Irving, in a very cool leather jacket we must add, returning home to see his trusty dog Radar staring at something. It’s Burt, who has broken into Irving’s apartment and found some notes he wrote about him. Burt reads the notes back to him, which surmises that Burt might be a “low-level Lumon enforcer” or “goon.” Irving swears that was before and now he doesn’t think that anymore, but after Burt asks him to take a drive, we learn that’s exactly what Burt was, and still is.

So what is “seeing to Mr. Bailiff?” Lumon has, we think, hired Burt to drive Irving somewhere where something bad is going to happen. That’s what Burt does for Lumon, he reveals, but we soon see he’s apparently making an exception. The pair go to a train station where Burt buys Irving a ticket that goes all the way to the end of the line, and tells him not to reveal to Burt where he’s planning to get off. Irving realizes this is him defying Lumon, but Burt is okay with that. He loves Irving. Irving says he’s never been loved but is ready, while Burt says it’s impossible. It’s an intense, emotional scene between two acting juggernauts that results in Irving leaving Kier.

Emotionally, Irving’s story with Burt this week was fantastic but it didn’t feel that cohesive. We still don’t really know about Burt’s present situation with Lumon. We don’t know what Lumon was planning for Irving or why. And then just logistically, it’s off. Burt bought Irving’s ticket and said go to the end of the line. He knows where he’s going. He bought the ticket. There are specific stops. If pressed, he’d have an idea. Plus, he thought to tell Irving to bring Radar, but not a bag with a change of clothes or anything? The whole jump from when last saw them at dinner to Burt breaking into Irving’s home and making him leave forever didn’t quite sit right. But, in Severance we trust.

Mr. Milchick

Before we get to the episode’s most significant thread in terms of the overall narrative, we’ve gotta talk about Mr. Milchick, whose story is directly tied into that. From the episode’s first scene, we know that this day is going to be a big one at Lumon because it’s the day they expect Cold Harbor to be completed. After we watch the super creepy Dr. Mauer check in on Gemma, he notices Cold Harbor is still at 96%. It’s 9 a.m. and the numbers aren’t moving. Mauer complains to Mr. Drummond. Drummond calls Milchick to ask why Mark isn’t working but, of course, Mark isn’t there.

After multiple unsuccessful attempts to contact Mark, Mr. Drummond gives him the business. He belittles Milchick by bringing up things he was dinged on in his performance review, such as using words that are too big. Milchick cowers for a while until, finally, he snaps. He tells Drummond to “devour feculence.” “It means, eat shit,” Milchick says. He then goes off on Drummond, telling him Mark’s whereabouts when he’s not in the office aren’t his problem, they’re Drummond’s, so maybe he should back off. And as much as Milchick is clearly a villain on Severance, you couldn’t help but cheer for him in this moment.

But why? Why give Milchick a moment of triumph over an even greater foe? Well, the answer would come when he finally talked to Mark, which brings us to our last section.

Mark/Devon/Cobel

When last we saw Mark, two episodes ago, he was passed out on the couch reliving his life with Gemma in his mind. When last we heard from him, his sister Devon had called Harmony Cobel for help, something Reghabi specifically asked her not to do. And so we pick up with the pair driving to meet Cobel somewhere, with Mark still a little out of it and clearly not on board with Devon’s plan. He still doesn’t trust Cobel because she has yet to give them any information and, frankly, he’s probably right. Even with everything the audience learned about her last week, can we trust Cobel? Meanwhile, Milchick keeps calling Mark and Mark still has that cough. What IS that cough?

Cobel arrives late and despite remaining very cagey, does reveal a few things. The biggest is that she believes when Mark completes Cold Harbor, Gemma will be killed. Second, she will take them to the birthing retreat with the severance-equipped cabin where they can talk to Mark’s innie, but not until evening. (This, by the way, is odd because we know Milchick first calls Mark around 9 a.m. and then we see Mark wait for evening. Do they all just stand in the cold all day? It doesn’t track but, we’ll forgive it.)

Mark continues to be weary of Cobel who refuses to be forthcoming about anything. It’s another scene that is just oh-so Severance because the characters we want together are on screen, asking the questions we want them to ask, but no answers are given. Cobel merely suggests Mark call Mr. Milchick and let him know he won’t be in today so as to not spark suspicion. Mark does so, which happens after Milchick’s confrontation with Drummond, and at first lies that he’s still sick. Eventually, though, Mark tries to be human with Milchick and tells him he needs a day for “life stuff.” Milchick doesn’t seem to buy it at first but, because we just saw him have this human moment in the confrontation with Drummond, he actually decides to trust Mark, as long as Mark promises to come in tomorrow. Mark promises.

As evening falls, Devon and Cobel pull up to the cottage farm compound with Mark hiding in the back of the truck. The exchange that follows is the most mysterious of the whole episode and maybe even the season. Cobel has to convince the security guard that she should be let through without notice. So she tells the security guard that Devon is “one of Jame’s” and that “no one’s to know.” She references “Miss Marsha White, ninth floor” which the guard recognizes as the “specialties department.” Cobel adds that she’s looking for “a gold thimble.” The security guard buys all of this and lets them through.

Though this may all sound like weird, cryptic Lumon stuff, it both is and isn’t. First of all, there’s the implication Jame Eagan has women brought to this place covertly. What does he do with them? Are his odd interactions with Helena/Helly in this episode, talking about raw eggs and tricks, related? We have about as much of an idea of that as we do what a “gold thimble” is which is to say, none at all.

More concretely though, all of Cobel’s verbiage goes back to the episode’s title, “The After Hours.” That’s also the name of a Twilight Zone episode from 1960 which is about a mannequin come to life, though she doesn’t realize it at first. Her name? “Miss Marsha White.” And, you guessed it, she visits “the ninth floor, specialties department,” and is, in fact, “looking for a gold thimble.” How the two things tie together we aren’t quite sure yet but, it’s clearly a very deliberate, literal, homage.

Finally, after all of that—and it was a lot—innie Mark awakens in the cabin. Devon greets him, calms him down, and brings him upstairs where Cobel is standing there waiting, bathed in fire like she’s the devil. “Do you remember the last thing you said to me?” Devon asks. “She’s alive?” Mark says and then—that’s it.

Basically, the entire episode slash the entire first nine episodes of season two have been about getting back here. Back to innie Mark saying the line that left us hanging for three years after season one. That season ended with “She’s alive” but there were no more episodes. This episode ended with “She’s alive,” and there is one more episode. It’s been a long, long time coming and we’re sad it’ll be over soon, but we are finally, hopefully, going to dig into the line that started it all.

Nevertheless, it’s sad. Sad that this season is almost over. Sad that this episode seemingly wrote off Irving and Miss Huang, and almost Dylan in a way too. Surely, at least Dylan and Irving’s stories will continue, but the sadness each is dealing with will make them less than fun to watch. Everyone else though, from Mark, Cobel, and Devon, to Helly, Gemma and Jame, are right where they need to be to give us another unforgettable finale of Severance.

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