[This story contains major spoilers from the season two finale of Severance, “Cold Harbor.”]

Directed by Ben Stiller and written by creator Dan Erickson, the ominously named “Cold Harbor” season two finale finally answered the mystery at the heart of the title: what is Cold Harbor, and what’s going to happen to Gemma (Dichen Lachman) once Mark (Adam Scott) completes the file?

The resolution (spoiler alert!) is a violent one, with the innie and outie versions of Mark collaborating with one another to spring Gemma out of Lumon once and for all — even though it’s not a collaboration that comes easily, nor is it one that ends particularly well, at least not for Outie Mark.

Below, The Hollywood Reporter rounds up the biggest highlights of the finale, with the Severance cast and crew weighing in on how it all went down and what it sets up for the future of the Apple TV+ series, which was officially renewed for season three the morning after the season two ender.

“This is a scene that I’ve always known I wanted to get to.”

That’s what creator Erickson tells THR about the finale’s opening act, in which the two versions of Mark finally come together as one, at least in a sense. Outie Mark and Innie Mark manage to communicate with one another via camcorder, recording messages and exchanging them back and forth, articulating their needs from one another. Outie Mark needs Innie Mark to save Gemma; Innie Mark is concerned doing so will effectively end the innies’ existence. They end the conversation on a tense note, setting the stage for a continued conflict between the Marks as the show goes forward.

“I wasn’t sure exactly when we would get here, but I knew it was coming,” says Erickson of the scene. “These guys were always going to have a lot to say to each other, and they both have reason to want to work with the other, but also a reason to distrust and resent the other. So we had talked about different iterations of how it could look and where it could take place.”

Ultimately, they landed on the birthing retreat featured in season one as a place where Mark could easily access his innie. It’s visually represented with Outie Mark recording his messages from a moonlit lakeside patio, while Innie Mark records his end from inside beside a fire.

“I always liked the idea of doing it visually with a camera, as opposed to trying to do it with notes or something,” says Erickson. “I wanted them actually face to face, but we knew that would require some sort of editing to make it feel like a conversation, like an actual sit down, because of course, they can’t literally do that. We talked about doing it in the Lumon building, finding a way to do it there or some other way. Then at one point we remembered like, “Well, we’ve got the birthing cabin,” and that’s a location that we’ve never returned to and it’s just kind of out there. Why not?”

Adam Scott and Britt Lower in the season two finale. Apple

When Outie Mark fails to convince his innie, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) steps in. An unlikely ally in Mark’s cause, given her treatment of the man across season one, Harmony turns out to have some secrets of her own — namely, that she’s the one who invented the severance chip in the first place. 

“Is she a hero? Is she a villain?” Patricia Arquette asks herself when speaking with THR. “I’m not sure. She’s someone who is really indoctrinated. There are people in the Charles Manson cult who killed people, and others who didn’t, but you could still stay they were bad for just being a part of that. But were they bad, or were they brainwashed? I don’t have a lot of respect for Harmony in some ways, because I think she’s capable of doing some very intense, horrible things. And yet, I have some empathy for her, because I also felt she’s survived as best as she could in the world she grew up in.”

The finale drops another big reveal about Severance, once again from Harmony: Mark’s role at Macrodata Refinement is all about building different innies for Gemma. When he and his team are clearing files and sorting through numbers, what they’re actually sorting through are emotions. We know Mark’s work led to the various versions of Gemma, but what about his colleagues? What are they refining?

“There are some things we’ve left intentionally vague,” adds Erickson. “As is often the case, I wrote a version of the script that kind of answered everything, and then we went through and we pulled things out, and there were elements that we said, ‘Well, let’s let people speculate on that’ — including the question you just asked. We talked about whether it was too early to reveal what the numbers are. But I really felt that was one piece of such an intricate, bigger mystery that it felt like it was time. I didn’t feel like that was something we needed to kick down the road anymore. Let’s give people an answer to this, because it then opens us up to these other bigger questions that I think are just as interesting.”

Britt Lower in the season two finale. Apple

After confronting his outie, Innie Mark wakes up in the severed floor, on the morning where he must refine Cold Harbor, the last file required to achieve whatever nefarious ends Lumon needs from Gemma. Once the file ends, both Mark and Gemma will no longer be needed, leading to a ticking clock rescue where Mark has to find the elevator leading down into the testing floor.

Things take a blood-red turn when Mark is attacked and nearly killed by security head Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson). The tables turn, thanks to an assist from Gwendoline Christie’s severed shepherd Lorne. Once Mark and Drummond descend down the elevator into the testing floor, the innie abruptly transforms into his outie, pulling the trigger on a bolt pistol originally intended for one of Lumon’s goats. Instead, the bolt finds itself lodged in Drummond’s throat, killing the big bad and showering Mark in blood for the rest of the episode.

“That was something we thought about,” Stiller tells THR about preparing for the finale’s violent nature. “I felt like there was sort of a precursor to it in season one, when Reghabi hits Graner with a baseball bat. So I knew we’d had violence like that [before], but I felt like this could be a moment that was hopefully a little shocking to the audience. It feels like everything is implied at Lumon, and then finally when it gets pushed to the limit, underneath there is a very ugly reality of what they’re doing there.”

The violence is shocking by Severance standards, but one thing the show has already demonstrated is a propensity for riveting music sequences. The finale’s no different. Once Mark refines Cold Harbor, Tramell Tillman’s Mr. Milchick embarks on a music dance experience to end all music dance experiences, leading a severed marching band through an elaborately choreographed jubilation. 

Already used to being the subject of the most popular Severance GIFs on the internet thanks to last season’s “Defiant Jazz,” Tillman knows he’s going to be seeing even more Milchick memes thanks to the march. 

“We can’t repeat the music dance experience,” Tillman tells THR. “You cannot. It’s beautiful. And it was spontaneous in the moment. But then when Ben came up with this idea to have this marching band, I was like, ‘Oh wait, okay, come on.’ And I was like, ‘What kind of marching band?’ And he said, ‘The kind of the marching bands you see at the HBCUs.’ And I said, that’s fantastic. I went to two HBCUs, so I was like, ‘I know what to do. I know how to navigate this. This is going to be great.’ When I saw the clips of it, I was hoping that this would be something, I don’t want to say that it’s better than the music dance experience, but it’s just as satisfying, right?”

It’s maybe more satisfying in some ways, as Tillman reveals the music from the march reflects his character’s journey through season two from freshly promoted floor manager, to a man who is beginning to question his Lumon loyalty.

“There’s something in him that is pulling him to kind of shake things up a bit,” he says. “He’s been doing it ever since he became floor manager. I think [this dance] is subconsciously purposeful. He needed it. And I think it’s also his way of trying to negotiate. He’s trying to get an understanding of who he is and what he wants and how to move forward.”

The finale ends on a provocative note: Mark gets Gemma safely out of Lumon, but decides to stay behind as he and his colleagues have staged an open rebellion against their evil overlords, taking over the severed floor by force. 

“I always knew that I wanted this season to end with Mark freeing Gemma. What I didn’t necessarily know was that he was not going to follow her,” says Erickson. “That was something that came about in the writer’s room. There are certain things that we are leading to story-wise that I knew we were going to do, and this ended up working really well for that.”

He continues, “But it just occurred to me because at the very beginning… I mean, literally the first thing that we see innie Mark do [in season two] is come out of the elevator and run to go find Ms. Casey. At that point in the story, he still feels totally beholden to his outie and that life, and I think still on some level, sees his outie as more important than himself. And so, what if this season you try to get Mark to the point where, as he’s standing at that door about to go out and finally give his outie what he’s always wanted — his wife back — he doesn’t do it because by this point, he has come to value himself as a person and value his life and the lives of his friends and work family as much or more than the outies? That just seemed like a really interesting place, a challenge to try to get his character to that point.”

Mark makes his choice when he sees Britt Lower’s Helly, deciding he’s not ready to abandon her and the rest of his severed brethren.

“I think it’s just instinct,” Lower tells THR about why Helly comes to see Mark in those final moments. “She knows that Mark must be getting close to the exit and just wants to see him one last time. I don’t know. She just goes, she doesn’t hesitate. And the way that scene played out I think was really giving Mark the choice. She shows up, but she lets him make the choice.”

Mark picks Helly, leaving Gemma outside in the stairwell looking on in agony. Lower says in filming that scene, she was surprised by how much she felt she was connecting with Dichen Lachman’s performance, and how that impacted her own work as Helly.

“I felt like that’s a really important moment for where things will go in season three,” she says. “Helly has to have this reckoning and to see this woman who she’s never met on the outside, who loves the outie part of the person that she loves on the inside, was a really important moment. That really was a surprise to me on the day.”

Zach Cherry and Tramell Tillman in the season two finale. Apple

With season two in the books, season three was officially renewed just hours after the finale released. The ending leaves us now with a brand new status quo: Lumon’s severed workers are not just on strike, they have actively sieged the severed floor and are effectively holding their outies hostage. That means Mark Scout won’t get to reunite with Gemma right away. That means Helena Eagan is trapped down here as well. The possibilities are wide open: the innies become their outies on the testing floor, suggesting the ability for innie and outie to communicate with each other ala Mark’s two halves communicating earlier in the finale.

“Oh my gosh,” Lower says, when contemplating that possibility. “I almost don’t want to say what I think that would be like. Because what if it does become a scene? But it’s so fun to daydream, about all of these characters.”

“It’s just like it was at the end of season one,” says Zach Cherry. “I’m really excited by the possibilities for next year. When we got the scripts for this season, it was so fun to see, ‘Oh, this is the direction they’re taking it. This is how we’re starting off.’ So I’m really just excited to see what we do.”

“I definitely want to know what he’s going to do next,” Tillman says about Milchick’s next moves. “I could give you my theories of what I think it’s going to look like, but it doesn’t really matter. Not because no one wants to hear them, but because it could just go in a totally different direction. That’s the nature of this show. What we think is going to happen may not happen at all, but what does happen will be brilliant and thought-provoking. I think that’s the most satisfying part. And I look forward to the conversations from our fans both old and new and coming to the forefront, as they start to ask each other, ‘Well, what now? What’s going to happen?’”

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All 10 episodes of Severance season two are now streaming on Apple TV+. Read THR‘s season coverage and interviews, including our finale interview with Ben Stiller.