Full spoilers follow for Severance season 2, including episode 7.
Episode 7 of Severance season 2 has joined its forebears on Apple TV+ – and this week’s installment, titled ‘Chikhai Bardo’, is not only a Gemma-focused installment, but also one packed with big reveals and new mysteries. I suspect, then, that you’ve got many more questions about the where the increasingly popular Apple TV Original’s story is going.
So, if you want more information about Gemma’s past, fresh details on Project Cold Harbor, and more besides, I’ll do my best at providing them. Massive spoilers immediately follow for this season’s seventh episode, so turn back now if you haven’t watched it yet.
Severance season 2 episode 7 ending explained: Gemma’s backstory revealed
Gemma Scout is one of the most mysterious characters in Severance. In a series full of enigmatic individuals, that takes some doing, but it’s true! The only things we knew about Gemma until ‘Chikhai Bardo’ were that she’s Mark’s wife, isn’t dead (which, until the season 1 finale, Mark had been led to believe for over two years), and was a severed Lumon Industries employee who, until season 2 began, was the wellness director of the nefarious biotech company’s Severed Floor division.
Severance‘s newest entry just disclosed many more details about Gemma’s past. It opens with Gemma attending a blood donation drive at Ganz College library, which is where she meets Mark, who’s a history professor at said college. Long story short: they fall in love, move in together, get married, and eventually try to have a baby.
As it happens, Gemma falls pregnant, but suffers a miscarriage. It’s a soul-destroying, traumatic event that eventually sees Gemma and Mark become increasingly distant, but not before they try once more to have a child (this time, via IVF, which proves to be a fruitless endeavor).
Thankfully, Gemma and Mark’s relationship proves stronger than I anticipated and they appear to be doing far better by the night of her ‘death’. Mark is unable to join Gemma a social gathering because he’s got a paper to finish writing or grading. Gemma informs Mark she’ll be home around 10pm, but that conversation proves to be the last one they’ll have as a married couple. In the very next flashback scene, one that’s absolutely devastating to watch, two police officers arrive at the Scout household to tell Mark about Gemma’s demise. Evidently, Mark felt an incredible amount of guilt over his wife’s death because he wasn’t the car’s driver, or couldn’t save her after her allegedly fatal car crash, which serves as another key reason why he opted to undergo the severance procedure.
We learn more about Gemma’s hobbies and interests during this trip down memory lane, which Mark is experiencing after slipping into a coma in this season’s sixth episode, too. You can read more about why he fell unconscious in my Severance season 2 episode 6 theories piece. Anyway, during episode 7’s various flashback sequences, we find out that Gemma loves plants, can speak Russian, and is a well-read individual. The latter is made clear by her lecturer profession and her understanding of Bardo, a Buddhist concept regarding life and death. I’ll explain what this is in more detail later and how it ties into this episode’s title.
Severance season 2 episode 7 ending explained: what is Lumon trying to accomplish with Gemma and does she escape?
Lumon’s endgame remains a mystery, but ‘Chikhai Bardo’ provides some new details about what’s going on within the walls of the clandestine organization.
For one, Gemma is as key to the puzzling project know as Cold Harbor as Mark is. We first heard about this during this season’s premiere and you can read more about it in my Severance season 2 episode 1 theories article.
Regardless of what Cold Harbor ends up being, we know it’s the final test subject room (more on these later) that Gemma must visit – indeed, she says as much during a conversation with Lumon’s cryptic scientist (more on him later, too) in episode 7. Clearly, she’s integral to the “mysterious and important” (Lumon’s words, not mine) work that Lumon is carrying out, but Mark’s ‘innie’ needs to achieve 100% completion of his Cold Harbor work before Gemma can access it. I suspect, then, that we won’t learn what Cold Harbour actually is until this season’s penultimate or final entry.
That’s if Mark’s ‘outie’ doesn’t find a way to help Gemma escape, anyway. She tries to do so on her own – she’s been held against her will for years, so it makes sense that she’d attempt to do so – in one of the best Apple TV+ shows’ latest episode, but it’s a mission that proves to be a futile one.
After knocking the mysterious, unsuspecting doctor unconscious with a chair in her room, Gemma steals his all-access key card and, after stealthily avoiding her orderly via this floor’s labyrinthine corridors, she arrives at and uses the elevator. However, Gemma soon passes through the elevator’s severance barrier, which causes her Ms Casey persona to emerge. Upon exiting the elevator on the Severed Floor and walking down the corridor to reach the sector itself, she’s greeted at the exit by Seth Milchick, aka the Severed Floor manager. He instructs the bewildered Ms Casey to turn around and head back to where she came from, which she duly does. Gemma re-emerges after the elevator passes through the severance barrier again and, after being met by her nurse as the elevator doors open, a visibly upset Gemma is led back to her room.
Severance season 2 episode 7 ending explained: who is the mysterious doctor who seems obsessed with Gemma?
Until now, this enigmatic individual has remained nameless. We’d only seen him once before, too – he’s the mysterious man who’s seen visiting Optics and Design to acquire some tools in Severance season 2 episode 5.
Thanks to ‘Chikhai Bardo’, we now know who he is: Doctor Mauer, who appears to be a full-time, permanent Lumon employee and, like many of the corporation’s elite workforce, a Kier devotee.
As I mentioned earlier, it seems he’s developed an unhealthy obsession with Gemma, which appears to go all the way back to her IVF treatment. In a blink and you’ll miss it moment, Mauer can be seen passing (and staring!) at Gemma and Mark as they decide where to sit in the fertility clinic’s reception/waiting area. In the confines of Lumon, he’s not only responsible for noting down Gemma’s answers at the end of every day, but also conducts each experiment with Gemma in the aforementioned test rooms. He even uses numerous disguises so that none of her ‘innie’ personalities can work out who he is.
It’ll be interesting to see how he reacts to Gemma in season 2’s final three episodes. After all, she attacked him with a chair and stole his all-access pass to mount an escape effort. Will he hold that against her, or will his clear feelings for Gemma override any hostility he may have towards her? Whatever happens, Gemma is clearly not safe with him – and, with Drummond telling him (in the previously mentioned secret observation room) that he’ll “have to say goodbye” to Gemma once Project Cold Harbor is complete, I’m worried that a potentially unhinged Mauer will try and keep Gemma for himself.
Severance season 2 episode 7 ending explained: what’s with the test rooms that Gemma visits and how many are there?
If the above didn’t have enough theory-inducing material for fans to pore over until season 2 episode 8 arrives, the reveal of this sub-Severed Floor area certainly does.
Dubbed the ‘Testing Floor’ by director/executive producer Ben Still on this week’s episode of The Severance Podcast, it’s a sector with a seemingly infinite number of rooms that Gemma is the test subject for. Each doorway contains its own severance barrier so, each time Gemma enters a different room, it unlocks a different ‘innie’ persona within her. Still confirmed that Gemma has multiple ‘innie’ personalities on The Severance Podcast’s latest episode, too.
But I digress. Essentially, each room is akin to a role-playing scenario, with Gemma forced to act out various everyday and/or life-threatening situations, such as Christmas Day or a flight that’s experiencing extreme turbulence, with Doctor Mauer. On this particular day, Gemma visits six different rooms: Billings, Cairns, Lucknow, St. Pierre, Wellington, and Zurich. She also visits the room known as Allentown the day after.
We don’t learn about each room’s scenario in episode 7, but we do find out what many of them are called. Other room names I spotted as Gemma walks down this floor’s hallwasys include Dranesville, Siena, Loveland, Rhodes, and Tumwater. Many more are revealed on a blink and you’ll miss it shot of a computer monitor in Lumon’s secret observation room (more on this in a moment), too, which you can see in the image above.
It isn’t among the test room names in the above image, but there’s one experiment space that’ll have immediately piqued the interest of many of you: Cold. Harbor.
Severance season 2 episode 7 ending explained: what do these test rooms have to do with Project Cold Harbor?
First mentioned in Severance season 2 episode 1, Project Cold Harbor is the biggest enigma of the hit mystery thriller series’ sophomore outing.
Unfortunately, ‘Chikhai Bardo’ doesn’t shed any new light on what it actually is. We do learn, though, that its progress bar has been stuck at 96%. This much is made clear during a conversation between Drummond and Mauer in Lumon’s secret observation room (I’ll discuss this next, promise!), with Drummond saying it hasn’t updated since Mark S had that nosebleed in season 2 episode 6, which is a temporary but significant setback for whatever work he’s carrying out.
Will Mark’s ‘innie’ return to Lumon and complete Cold Harbor before season 2 ends? His ‘outie’ will need to wake from his coma first – and you can see if he does by scrolling through the rest of this article.
Severance season 2 episode 7 ending explained: why is there a secret observation room at Lumon?
Alright, so what’s this secret observation room that Lumon has? It appears to be a place that the company can spy on its Severed Floor workforce. That much is evident by those unsevered Lumon employees being able to watch each severed employee via a camera feed that’s plugged directly into Mark S and company’s computer monitors.
One speedy time lapse later and it’s clear why Lumon is keeping tabs on its severed workers: it wants to ensure that they attain 100% completion on each test room, which will allow Doctor Mauer to conduct his roleplay experiments with Gemma. During said time lapse, we can see Mark’s ‘innie’ completing work on Cairns and Dranesville – and, as I outlined above, these are two of the rooms that Gemma visits at different points in episode 7. That serves as more proof that Lumon’s severed workforce needs to complete each project before Mauer and Gemma can access a new test room.
Severance season 2 episode 7 ending explained: does Mark wake from his coma?
Yep! Before episode 7’s end credits roll, Mark regains consciousness. At the very least, this implies he’s partway through the reintegration process – i.e. the experimental procedure that combines the ‘innie’ and ‘outie’ personas of a severed individual.
And when I say ‘partway’, it’s because I don’t believe he’s achieved full reintegration. Remember, Reghabi – the former Lumon scientist who devised the innovative but dangerous technique – told Mark’s sister Devon that they needed to restart the process once he’d come to. With Reghabi leaving Mark’s home after Devon devises a plan to call Harmony Cobel, aka the former Severed Floor manager, for help, I don’t think Mark’s reintegration has been completed. I fully expect him to continue ‘jumping’ between the real world and Lumon in this season’s last three episodes, then.
Severance season 2 episode 7 ending explained: what is ‘Chikhai Bardo’? And does it tell us anything about this show’s story?
In some Buddhist traditions, the concept of Bardo refers the intermediate, transitional, or unseen state between death and being reborn. It has six stages (known as bardos), of which Chikhai Bardo is the fourth bardo and the first that relates to the ‘during death’ cycle. It marks the precipice of the ‘final inner breath’, too, which a living being takes before it passes.
The term Chikhai Bardo appears to have a double meaning in this episode, then. The first relates to Mark’s comatose state as, until he reawakens, it’s unclear if the reintegration process will succeed (he’s still alive!) or fail (well, he’s dead). Essentially, he’s on the cusp of death until he regains consciousness in episode 7’s final scene.
Chikhai Bardo also relates to Gemma. Not only does she mention it by name during a conversation with Mark as they discuss some laminated cards (see the image above) during one flashback, but Gemma is also on the edge of a knife when it comes to the life-death experience. Any one of her ‘innie’ personas could be snuffed out by Lumon in an instant (it’s already done this to Burt and Irving) and, let’s be frank, she’s not exactly living while she’s being held captive as a test subject by Lumon. In fact, you could argue her imprisonment is akin to being stuck in purgatory, which, per Catholic doctrine, is a intermediate state between life and death. Hmm, where have I heard such a similar description like that before…
One final thing on Bardo. It’s a classical Tibetan word that’s not the only one uttered in episode 7. Indeed, during a sit-down meal (shown via flashback) with Mark, Devon, and Ricken, Gemma uses the Tibetan name for Mount Everest, which is Chomolungma. Dichen Lachmann, who plays Gemma/Ms Casey, was also born in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, which is considered to be the gateway to Tibet for tourists. The more you know, eh?
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