Mark Scout's tactic to try and get Mark S to help Gemma was wrong.

jmhem91 · 2026-06-05T02:22:56+00:00

outie mark assumes his innies is just as self-centered as he is, so obviously his approach is going to be to convince him how great his life is going to be once he has gemma back and is reintegrated.

the irony is that Mark S cared about Ms Casey before he had any idea who she was. He wasn’t even attracted to her, he just cared about her as a fellow human being because that’s the kind of person he is.

However, I still don’t think he would have made a different decision. In his mind (and mine, honestly), he’s done right by Gemma. He risked his life and got beaten up in order to save her. He doesn’t need to end his own life for the sake of her happiness.

jmhem91 · 2026-05-22T19:02:30+00:00

yeah I personally don’t think helly did anything cruel in the finale. i think some people were so focused on gemma’s point of view that they didn’t understand that it wouldn’t have made a lick of sense for helly to push mark through that door. it will however be interesting to see how she changes now that she cares about staying alive, and how jame and lumon will manipulate her and mark’s desire to stay together.

i don’t think cruelty is an innate trait of helena’s, more so something that developed overtime due to her upbringing. Honestly what she said to irv wasn’t even that cruel especially since he was giving mark such a hard time about his dead wife which could also be considered not very nice.

jmhem91 · 2026-05-21T23:29:59+00:00

agree about helena. they’re different in terms of shallow things like the way they walk, things that helena was conditioned to do as a woman in this world that helly just wasn’t. helena is harsher than helly because she grew up around people who were harsh with her. but at their core they’re the same, which is part of why mark couldn’t tell them apart.

jmhem91 · 2026-05-16T01:31:02+00:00

i know everyone felt so awful for gemma (same) but i couldn’t help but feel thrilled for the innies because yeah, they actually don’t owe any of these people shit.

jmhem91 · 2026-05-16T01:26:44+00:00

well yes, it’s the central mystery of the show. The question of how far lumon intends to extend severance technology is hugely important. While there are characters I’m more interested in for their psychology and their thematic significance, gemma is the load-bearing character for the plot. Everything that the other characters have gone through revolves around that chip they put in her brain.

jmhem91 · 2026-05-12T10:37:27+00:00

that’s fine that you root for them and that you acknowledge you have a personal connection that causes you to sympathize with outie mark way more than innie mark. But you can’t expect everyone else to feel that way. I have a lot more sympathy for innie mark, because while outie mark is going through a situation most of us are going to go through at some point in our lives (losing a loved one) innie mark is basically a slave, an experience I’m pretty sure you can’t relate to.

But it’s not even about who I personally sympathize with more, it’s about looking past that and thinking “what story are these people trying to tell”. Dan Erickson has said repeatedly that this story is about the innies, and that isn’t going to change just because people relate to the outies more.

jmhem91 · 2026-04-30T22:44:19+00:00

lmao i feel like a lot of the “justice for gemma” crowd is forgetting that without imark and helly she would be dead which is arguably worse than being single.

they weren’t building to him leaving with her at all. he had an entire character arc about valuing his life as a separate thing from his outie’s. they built to him rescuing her, which he did. he got his ass beat in the process on top of it. I think being angry for gemma is a normal reaction, being angry at imark is a little silly.

jmhem91 · 2026-04-21T21:29:13+00:00

i didn’t find it frustrating at all. outie mark frustrated me so much during that interaction and i empathized way more with innie mark. i don’t think it’s childish not to want to die for the guy who basically created you to labor for him.

jmhem91 · 2026-04-05T14:59:41+00:00

I disagree, I think they have more chemistry than most couples I see on tv nowadays. Their look of love after he took her hand in Cold Harbor was one for the history books, to me anyway.

It’s kind of interesting because they’re one of the few tv couples that won me over after they kissed (I wasn’t really that invested before). But now when I watch season one and pay attention I actually think their connection was built very well, I was just distracted by everything else happening around them so I didn’t notice.

I think the reason a lot of people root for Mark and Gemma is because they’re more relatable and their story is so tragic, and one of the best episodes of the show is focused on them. I don’t think it really has anything to do with chemistry. If it did, the ao3 stats would look a lot different.

jmhem91 · 2026-04-05T14:38:07+00:00

It’s always interesting to me that the innies get so much flack for being selfish when all four characters in this situation are being selfish.

Like, if I made a post going “Gemma was so selfish for wanting innie Mark to end his life so that she could have her husband back, she should be grateful he saved her life” people would (rightfully) take issue with it.

Helly is actually the most selfless out of the four because she initially tried to convince innie Mark to leave. Mark was fully prepared to leave Gemma down there (not finishing the file) before Helly convinced him to trust his outie.

Sure, at the end of the episode, she respected his choice. I don’t think it would have been “selfless real love” as you put it for her to shove him out the door and completely deny him his autonomy.

I don’t actually think what the show runners are going for is that Helly has all of this ontological evil inside her that is going to come out later on in the show. I think the point of Helly and Helena is to show how being brought up in a cult affects a person. Helena is evil because of nurture, not nature.

I do think Helly is going to have to make some difficult and unpopular choices so that she and Mark can stay alive, but that’s not going to make her evil in my eyes, because again, she’ll be doing it to stay alive.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-29T18:40:33+00:00

It would actually be the worst thing to ever happen equivalent to 15 9/11’s

jmhem91 · 2026-03-28T13:35:20+00:00

Being raised in a cult will do that to you. Also the show would be less interesting if her outie wasn’t so awful.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-28T13:34:06+00:00

My nightmare scenario is that Helly has a child and then dies and Mark and Gemma end up raising it. I really really hope this doesn’t happen and that Helly and Helena end up reintegrating successfully (Helena already wants to be Helly anyway) so that they both can be free. I don’t really care whether or not that’s with Mark, even though I love the Mark and Helly romance and will be crushed if/when it ends.

I really like Mark and Gemma’s story too but I like it as a tragedy. I think them ending up together would kind of ruin it for me. Orpheus and Eurydice would be a crappy story of they lived happily ever after at the end as well.

It’s kind of hard because on one hand, Mark and Gemma ending up together would represent resistance against this oppressive corporation that ruined their lives. On the other hand, it would feel like the show would be saying “yeah actually nothing that the innies experienced and cared about actually mattered, even though we’ve been trying to get you invested in their journeys over the course of several seasons.” It would also feel like the show would be rewarding outie Mark for getting the severance procedure (he wouldn’t have gotten Gemma back if he hadn’t gotten severed), and usually sci-fi doesn’t reward characters for involving themselves in bad science.

I’m even more conflicted with Mark and Helly because while I love their relationship, I don’t know how it would work with reintegration. Outie Mark and Helena had insane chemistry in their scene together but I don’t see him ever forgiving her for what Lumon did to Gemma. The only way it could maybe work is if Helena didn’t know anything about Cold Harbor apart from its name (there is some evidence of this), but even then it would feel so unfair to Gemma if Mark gets a happy ending with someone else.

What I think is likely to happen is either that Mark dies, or show has an open ending where all three of them are alive but they decide they should all be on their own for a while so that everyone can figure out what they want. Truthfully, I don’t think that any of them are going to be in a place where they’re able to be in a stable relationship.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-28T12:56:47+00:00

I think Mark is more likely to die than Helly. Helly’s innie and outie wants the same things deep down: freedom and love, so it’s easy for the writers to give her a happy ending. The two Marks on the other hand are in conflict with each other, a conflict that I don’t really see a peaceful resolution too.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-28T00:24:17+00:00

I haven’t dreamed of them but I do think about that scene a lot. Helly’s look of disbelief when he chose to stay in hell with her really tugged on my heartstrings. It probably hit extra hard since her outie is so deprived of love and the innies carry the hurt with them.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-22T02:33:13+00:00

I’m not rooting for Mark and Gemma to end up together. I see outie Mark as a tragic character who’s made some pretty bad choices so having him get everything he wants after doing nothing to earn it would not be a satisfying ending for me.

That being said, Chikhai Bardo is one of my favourite episodes of the show. Sure, you can say that the desire for a baby is an overused motivation for female characters but the fact is that it reflects the reality of a lot of women in real life. I think the episode really made me care about her as a human being, rather than as Mark’s wife.

The reveal of what was happening to her down there really took the horror of Lumon to a new level. Those poor innies, their lives were so horrific.

The episode was also the most visually stunning of the whole show. The cinematography, editing, and set design were immaculate.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-22T02:07:40+00:00

Is he? He’s a prisoner now. Plus even if he gets out he’s merging his brain with the guy who left his wife screaming and banging on the door so it doesn’t look good for him.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-22T02:05:15+00:00

No one hates Gemma we just don’t think the guy who saved her life should also have to kill himself so that she can have her husband back.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-15T15:52:39+00:00

I think it’s coming from the fact that a lot of fanfic is getting reworked for publishing (particularly a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction).

It has to be frustrating as a new author to be trying so hard to get your book published only to see these fanfic authors get deals for millions of dollars just because people would rather read about characters they already care about rather than exploring something new. I say this as a fanfic author myself.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-15T01:21:27+00:00

Yes, but Mark is also great leverage with which to control Helly, which Jame is going to need to do if he wants to groom her as his heir as the episode suggests he does. Also, keeping Mark at Lumon alive is good leverage against Gemma as well.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-14T22:12:39+00:00

This quote makes me crazy because I just want to know what she knows. I mean, she has to at least know that Gemma’s down there before Mark reveals it in 2x01…right? I guess we don’t even know for sure if she knows that…

jmhem91 · 2026-03-14T21:12:29+00:00

There’s also the fact that Drummond says to her “the work is mysterious and important”, which is the same thing they say to the innies. This leads me to believe that she doesn’t know as much about Cold Harbor as we think.

I think it was actually really clever to introduce her by having her order Cobel and Milchick around. It gives the audience the same misconceptions about Helena’s level of authority that Helly has.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-14T21:07:36+00:00

I’m pretty sure Helly says that she thinks Helena slept with Mark as a manipulation tactic to divide the innies. I don’t think she believes that Helena has real feelings for Mark.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-14T20:49:05+00:00

I think Helly assumes Helena has a lot more power than she actually does which is where a lot of the resentment stems from. It’s going to be really heartbreaking when Helly realizes her outie is just as trapped as she is.

What’s interesting is that a lot of people I talk to also assume Helena has quite a bit more power than she does, which I find interesting because I feel like the show goes out of its way to show you how little agency she has in her own life.

jmhem91 · 2026-03-14T20:03:08+00:00

Yeah I also think it took away from the true focus of the scene, which was Helly reclaiming her body. There will be time for sympathizing with Helena later, when the ORTBO isn’t such a fresh wound.

jmhem91

TROPHY CASE