The Questions Severance Season 3 Needs to Answer

The second season of Severance answered many of viewers’ most burning questions: We now know what Mark S. has been doing with those numbers in Macrodata Refinement for the past two years, and what was inside that 25th severed room that awaited Gemma, Cold Harbor. We know what the goats are used for, lived to see Dylan G.’s innie once more, and got more meme-able Milchick dance moves. But Season 2’s finale still ended on a cliffhanger—with Mark’s innie choosing Helly R. over escaping the Lumon offices with Gemma—leaving us with many pressing questions for the show’s next season. 

Here’s what we’ll be thinking about between now and whenever Season 3 arrives.

Is getting out that door enough for Gemma to escape? Will Season 3 be about Gemma trying to save Mark now that she’s out and he’s still inside?

It’s hard to imagine that Lumon doesn’t have some security outside the severed floor given the sensitivity of their unethical experiments. But it would really stymie the momentum of this show if we find Gemma captured again at the beginning of Season 3.

Gemma would surely try to contact outie Mark as soon as he leaves the Lumon building, at which point he would have little incentive to go back inside the office of the company that faked his wife’s death and tortured her. So I think the question becomes: Will innie Mark ever leave the severed floor, knowing that his outie would likely never return, or will he try to camp out there with Helly? Can Lumon somehow use the conflict between innie Mark and outie Mark to their advantage? Will Lumon deploy every acolyte it has to track down Gemma in the outside world before she runs to the closest TV news station?—Eliana Dockterman

In addition to Ms. Cobel directly stating that innie Mark completing Cold Harbor would result in Gemma’s death, Mr. Drummond revealed prior to his…