There were many revelations in the Severance finale, but one packed a particular punch. Gemma Scout, the imprisoned wife of the show’s protagonist Mark, finally faced her biggest emotional challenge in the mysterious “Cold Harbour” room, and it was an empty crib.
While viewers still don’t know how Gemma (Dichen Lachman) ended up in the basement of Lumon as a captive, the season two finale did answer some burning questions.
Spoilers, detailed plot threads, and very specific Severance speak obviously ahead.
While her husband believes Gemma died in a car accident two years ago, she has actually been forced to undergo the “severance” procedure multiple times, creating a new “innie” every time she enters a new testing room.
Once she’s in the room, her innie is forced to engage in an activity which coincides with things she fears (going to the dentist, airplane turbulence) or dreads (writing thank you cards). In each room and with each innie, Lumon seems to be testing if engaging in these activities she dislikes breaks the “severance barrier” or allows her real “outie” personality to bleed through to her innie.
The last room waiting for her was Cold Harbour, which offers the biggest emotional test of all. As we learned in episode seven, titled “Chikhai Bardo,” Gemma and Mark (Adam Scott) had struggled for years to have a baby, undergoing rounds of IVF and miscarriage without success. One of their worst moments was when Mark angrily took apart a crib he had optimistically assembled in a spare room. As he tore it to pieces, the couple’s anguish was clear on both their faces. In Cold Harbour, Gemma is forced to disassemble the same crib, as a test to see if being forced to relive one of the worst moments of her life would break the severance barrier.
To put it 'monosyllabically', we want it now.
The couple’s arc throughout the season depicted how infertility can strain a marriage in a way that was both poignant and realistic, and getting it right was something Lichman tells Glamour she took incredibly seriously, speaking to friends who had suffered pregnancy loss and drawing on her own experiences as a woman.
This research and Lichman’s innate sense of the character led to one of “Chikhai Bardo’s” most heart-breaking moments, when Gemma apologises to Mark after they arrive at the fertility clinic for the first time. The line was something Lachman improvised, when she realised Gemma would feel guilty that she couldn’t get pregnant even though, of course, she had no reason to.
“It just sort of came out,” she says. “A lot of women, even though it is not our fault and we have no control over it when something like that happens, we feel this need to apologise. We tend to do that. Generally, we tend to be quite apologetic about things that we can't control.”
Lachman chatted with Glamour about how her own experience as a mother informed her character, how she thinks Gemma ended up at Lumon, and that crazy Severance finale cliffhanger.
Glamour: Gemma is absent for much of season two, but then stars in “Chikhai Bardo,” which revealed a great deal about both her current situation at Lumon and her relationship with Mark. What was your first impression of the script?
Dichen Lachman: I was excited to have more to do and to be able to participate in the show more, obviously, but I was so very nervous. I wanted to make sure the infertility issues were handled the right way. That was also really important to Jessica [Lee Gagné], the director. She wanted to try and make that as authentic as possible, and so it was a mixture of excitement and fear.
It was such a lovely opportunity to really deal with something that women go through like that every day, but isn't often dealt with on television. I think it's important that it's represented, especially because women now, we're burdened with so many roles.
I think modern women are constantly being pulled in this direction and that direction. And sometimes we feel, I know I do, I feel like I'm failing at all of it. I try to be there for my daughter and my husband and our little family, but work pulls me away…It's really difficult. There's a lot to balance.
It’s so difficult! Being a working mum is so hard.
Patricia Arquette [who plays Harmony Cobel on the show] said something to me because I asked her, how did you cope? You know, with being both a mum and the powerhouse that she is. She told me… it's important for them to see mummy go to work.
The infertility scenes were incredibly realistic, in a way I had never seen before on TV. How did you and Adam approach telling this story?
Adam's as extraordinary a person as he is an actor. In terms of developing the relationship, I think his generosity and kindness helped create that sense of familiarity. In terms of the miscarriage scene, I spoke to a lot of women and it's more common than people admit or talk about. It’s one of those things that just isn't in the conversation. It's something that a lot of women feel like they go through alone, and it's very difficult, I think, for a male partner to understand what it feels like.
…It was so important for Jessica to make it feel authentic. I think both our desires to really deal with it that way, hopefully landed really well with the audience and the writers and Ben [Stiller, who executive produces the show] and everyone. Obviously they’re men who haven't been through something like this, but they were really encouraging in terms of just saying, whatever you guys want to do with this, however you want to approach it to me and Jessica. They were great that way.
“I needed to be pregnant again so it was like no time had passed”
You mentioned speaking to women who had experience with miscarriage, who were they?
I have a couple of girlfriends, I'll let them be nameless, but people who've had multiple miscarriages and also people who had multiple miscarriages in the IVF process. I've personally had my own experiences with things too, but I didn't want it to only be my point of view. I wanted it to not just make it like, oh, well, because everyone's experience is different.
In some instances where there's that real desire and you've tried multiple times, it's really heart-breaking and you feel like you are failing, you feel like the one thing that should come so naturally is so difficult. It's a real thing that women go through regularly. Often they feel like they're going through it by themselves,
There is a scene where Gemma has a miscarriage that I thought portrayed the experience so beautifully, without explicitly stating what happened. Afterwards, I was reading some of the show chatter on Reddit and there were multiple (male) posters being like: “Wait, what’s wrong with her? What happened?” When to me, and assume most women, it was pretty obvious.
I think the men who really understand what women have to go through, even on a regular basis on any given day, they're few and far between. We're constantly going through a transformation every month, and then as we age, it changes, and then we have to deal with a whole host of things…I actually wondered, when I watched it, I was like, I wonder if the male audience is actually going to understand what's going on.
From Gareth Southgate to Jordan Stephens.
There’s a lot of fan theories about Dr Mauer (Robby Benson), the Lumon employee running the experiments on Gemma who seems to be a little obsessed with her. He was also lurking in the background when Mark and Gemma were at the fertility clinic, leading people to wonder if they somehow recruited Gemma from her treatment. What do you think?
I see the theories and I'm like, oh, wow, I didn't even think of that. It's incredibly fun to see the level of investment that people are putting into it and the level of thought into what situations could have got her in this whole thing. But I try to just tell myself, you know what? Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. But at the end of the day, I'm just going to trust the process and enjoy what it is for now. And [show creator] Dan Erickson is such an incredible talent. I'm just looking forward to seeing what he comes up with. Although I know he's admitted to reading the Reddit thread. I don't know, maybe he'll find inspiration.
My main question on Gemma’s captivity is what’s with all the weird outfits for each different room?
I feel like it was Dr Mauer's infatuation with her. He’s enjoyed living out this fantasy. I mean, this is me speculating—disclaimer—but I think the clothing would maybe inform her innie when she was in that space, and it would just change the whole environment and it was part of the experiment. That's how I justified it. He's left up to his own devices and then even [Lumon executive] Drummond says to him in an earlier episode, why are you wearing that ridiculous sweater? It seems like it's just part of his little experiment down there, and which makes it even more creepy.
There’s a lot of speculation as to how Gemma ended up trapped at Lumon, with Mark thinking she died in a car crash. Some think she was kidnapped, while others are speculating she went willingly, possibly because she was lured by a promise of an infertility treatment that could work. What do you think?
When my character says goodbye to Mark that day [of the alleged car crash], I really believe she was going to her friend's house. To be honest, I didn’t even ask Dan that question. But now that I've seen it, it does make me think, oh, maybe she knew that he would never want to go, and she did sign up. It's possible. The thing is that the possibilities are so endless, and I'm with the fans, I'm like, when are we going to see what happens?
You'll never pull a sickie again.
You have a 9-year-old daughter. How did your own motherhood journey inform your portrayal of Gemma?
In terms of my daughter, I feel like she was coming whether I was planning it or not. I can't imagine my life without her, as hard as it is sometimes. I think that intense love and understanding of what that love is now, which I couldn't quite understand before, thinking about not having experienced it, especially when you're really wanting and yearning for it, helped me have more empathy, more understanding of how heart-breaking it was for her.
I have a feeling fans are going to have a lot of thoughts about Mark’s innie, Mark S., ditching Gemma in a stairwell to stay on the severed floor with his love interest, Helly R. (Britt Lower), rather than help outie Mark and Gemma flee to safety at the end of the finale. How do you feel about the cliffhanger?
Even though I'm on the show, I'm a fan of the show, and I'm so torn. Britt's done such a wonderful job of giving this Helly character life and with Mark S. and their dynamic. Then episode seven does kind of throw a spinner in the works because finally you are introduced to what Mark had on the outside world, which feels meaningful too. So it's a real conundrum. Sometimes I joke that they have to find a new, modern way of a timeshare relationship.
I was rooting for Gemma and Mark to escape, but I think I’m in the minority. A lot of the audience seems to be more pro-innie.
It's really interesting to see how connected the audience has become to the innies. But I mean, it makes sense. That's who they've been spending time with the most. So I don't know what's going to happen. I have no idea. I mean, the best emoji to describe it is just the brain exploding.
Well Ben Stiller has promised we won’t have to wait another three years for season three, which is good, because we can’t just leave Gemma in the stairwell!
I know, and it's so complicated too. She has so many different innies. I wonder if she'll do the backyard brain surgery. Who knows? It's like, what do you do when you have so many innies? I can't wait. But yeah, I have no idea what's going to happen, but I just hope the fans are really invigorated by episode 10 and they enjoy the ride.
This article originally appeared on GLAMOUR US.
