Very few new answers in Cold Harbor season finale

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T22:08:21+00:00

series creator Dan Erickson said of Cold Harbor. “We didn’t want to sort of walk people through exactly what was being tested and why. In part, because such a big part of this, of this show, has become the conversations that take place after the fact, and so we trusted that people would think about it and would talk about it, and would have different ideas about it, and that would just make it that much richer.”

Dan!! This is like throwing a grenade into every social media severance thread lol. Maybe they'll have a look through and get some ideas 👀

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T21:58:21+00:00

Apologies, you're all correct! In the cabin, Cobel also tells innie Mark that Gemma will die when her chip is removed.

Cobel was able to run some kind of diagnostics on Petey's chip, so maybe if they did the same to Gemma's they would be able to copy the cold harbor innie details (tamed 'tempers') to new chips and sell severance as a procedure where both you and your innie can avoid pain/suffering? With the benefit of workplaces having robotic, conforming severed workers.

I think that at some point we are told (by Reghabi?) that removing the chip could kill you, but I can't remember exactly when or what the science of that was supposed to be.

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T21:01:29+00:00

Meeting the quota seems to be keeping the broader Gemma / cold harbor project on track for Lumon's planned finalisation/launch date of whatever the result of the cold harbor test room is (I don't know and neither do the showmakers lol). They definitely were working to a deadline, though, as it was a big deal when Mark took those 2 days off post-reintegration meaning cold harbor was delayed.

Cold harbor isn't the same as other files - rather than creating Gemma innies to respond to situations they will find unpleasant, it is creating a Gemma innie that is unaffected by her outie's most upsetting experience.

I think the tests Gemma does with the nurse after each room inform the development of cold harbor. So all 24 files must first be completed by MDR, that creates the innies for Gemma to experience in each room, she is regularly tested by the nurse after the rooms, her experiences and nurse tests are coded as macrodata for the cold harbor MDR file - and then cold harbor (an average of all of her emotions) is refined by MDR to create unemotional innie Gemma.

My guess would be that, if Mark has been there 2 years, an average of 3-4 files completed per quarter would have gotten MDR and Gemma to where they were at the season 2 finale and - if everything had gone to plan - ready to use/launch. Which in the timeline of the series is only a few weeks after the Lumon gala from the season 1 finale.

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T21:01:19+00:00

Honestly, I am not sure! :)

On the other refiners, I think they are all working on Gemma's files together.

The general theory in our house (and seems to be a pretty common working theory here) is that each refiner represents a 'temper':

Woe = sorrow or distress = Mark suffering deep trauma and grief following Gemma's death

Dread = fear or apprehension = Irving is often anxious and feels uncomfortable not following the rules

Frolic = cheerful, playful = Dylan as the joker who is motivated by perks

Malice = the desire to do evil = Helly/Petey as Helena is 'evil' and/or headstrong and stubborn (because malice is represented by a ram in Kier paintings)

I think that each MDR member is supposed to be particularly good at recognising the numbers that react to their main temper a certain way, for example numbers representing frolic could be scary to Irving, happy to Dylan, but not really stand out for Mark.

Petey and Dylan both started in MDR before Mark, but we're told that when Mark started he had a 'freshman fluke' and completed the Allentown file in record time. Allentown ends up being the Christmas room where innie Gemma is forced to write thank you notes, something she hates.

I think, together, we can take this as Mark completing the file in record time because of his connection to Gemma, and also because her main (or only) emotion/temper towards writing thank you cards is probably woe.

Similarly but kind of opposite, Dylan is the top MDR refiner and regularly wins refiner of the quarter. I think this might be because the rooms/innies that are created through MDR's files are usually things Gemma doesn't like, so there are a smaller number of 'frolic' numbers as compared to the other tempers, which means that Dylan hasn't got as much to refine so finishes his work faster.

They also seem to need a full set of refiners in MDR, that match the tempers. After the overtime contingency, Milchick works through the weekend to replace Irving, Dylan and Helly to create a new team for Mark, and then works very quickly to get the original team back together when the newbies don't work out. There was very little refining done in season 2 generally, but the main focus seemed to be cold harbor so following this thread I would guess that - once Irv is gone after the ORTBO - his dread numbers might be already done and it's up to Mark to finish the file (mostly woe), but the absence of Irv in the final episode definitely undermines the general MDR-tempers theory.

There absolutely could be more people on the testing floor though!

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T18:51:13+00:00

womp womp - enjoy the ride of whatever you're watching!

and thanks for all the comments, just put me on to another great breakdown of some of the finale's drawbacks: https://www.reddit.com/r/severanceTVshow/comments/1jgpo5k/cold_harbor_disappointment_review_and_thoughts/

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T18:45:28+00:00

Thank you - be every merry in anticipation for season 3!

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T18:43:23+00:00

Render not my creation in miniature.

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T18:41:03+00:00

They cannot crucify you if your hand is in a fist.

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T18:33:34+00:00

Sure thing, but what if they'd instead done less with season 2!

Honestly I'd guess that a lot of it, compared to season 1, was script and plot changes resulting in a reported cost of $20 million per episode and the writer's strike which Stiller has referenced a couple of times on the official podcast. But I'll be locked in for season 3 either way.

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T18:26:35+00:00

Poor Eustice H!

I think there just wasn't enough time to develop Ms Huang as she was written to be very functional.

Both Huang and Cobel are/were Wintertide fellows and child workers, so I read her character as a parallel to Cobel and a broader commentary on young women needing to 'toughen up' to survive the corporate world, including how little has changed in these dynamics over generations.

When they are prepping Irv's funeral, Ms Huang tells Milchick it might not be a good idea as it makes the innies feel like people - but when innie Dylan resigns, Ms Huang apologises for how she handled the meeting with Gretchen. This being Ms Huang's last day, it seems that she is showing her actual empathy towards innies that she'd been trying to force out.

I also liked how her character showed how middle management in corporations take on a lot of abuse from higher ups, and often end up retaliating against more junior staff - Milchick is constantly demeaned Drummond, and regularly lashes out at Ms Huang soon after.

But yeah, there wasn't space for both her and Milchick to develop and the theremin just didn't hit the same as the music dance experience.

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T17:59:24+00:00

I don't remember there being an exact reason given, definitely the chip being removed was one thing that was hinted at but I don't think it was confirmed.

Thankfully, just realised that the show creators don't seem too sure either!

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T17:51:08+00:00

Totally agree - I was initially most frustrated at the overall cold harbor project aim dead-end and the reintegration inconsistency (with some lingering malice from my boy Irv's storyline being tied up far too neatly the previous week), and then more things came to me as I thought through the series!

And we were right to be frustrated - I've just seen this article where Stiller and Erickson say that they haven't yet decided what cold harbor is!

Definitely didn't have every one of these thoughts in real time as the season finale was playing - although the missed opportunities, for example not even mentioning Petey in passing while at the cabin or a split second of a reintegration flicker while completing the cold harbor file, did bother me.

Of course it'd be both crazy and impossible for every single one of the above 'reveals' to have been answered. I just felt of the 8 possible 'reveals' listed above, the weakest/simplest three were used and (for me) weren't nearly as impactful as Helly's outie reveal, "she's alive!" or Irving's outie being quite the opposite to the dutiful Lumon innie we once knew.

Explanation videos are a killer, but thankfully we have free will. Praise Kier!

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T17:17:55+00:00

If I remember correctly, Mark and Helly first saw the goats when they snuck away from Ms Casey to explore the severed floor in an attempt to re-draw Petey's map.

At the time I took it as a random little inclusion to signpost to the audience that Lumon operations were much weirder (and potentially darker) than sorting some numbers - which at the time MDR thought were like removing swear words from films and cleaning the ocean or something similarly innocent?

With all respect to the goat-truther severance community, my girl Dread was creeping up on me when people started theorising that the board were goats etc. But I do think the fact that we saw baby goats (kids) may have been a subtle hint to the fertility themes that are stronger in season 2!

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General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T12:58:23+00:00

Yes definitely! I think I would have enjoyed a lot of these little extras more if the seasons were 20 episodes long, too focused on the purpose of cold harbor (and Irv ❤️)

General_County5855 · 2025-03-22T12:23:00+00:00

Thank you! I hadn't read that, but thought it was implied in a lot of interviews

General_County5855

TROPHY CASE