【Never Sleep Alone (1984)】

All season long,Never Sleep Alone (1984) viewers of Severance Season 2 have immersed themselves in the chilly mystery of Cold Harbor.

In its Season 2 premiere, Severanceintroduced Cold Harbor as Mark's (Adam Scott) latest file, which is of extreme importance to Lumon. In episode 7, "Chikhai Bardo," we learned that Cold Harbor is the name of the final room Gemma (Dichen Lachman) has to enter on the testing floor. And in Severance's Season 2 finale, Gemma finally stepped through that door.

SEE ALSO: 'Severance's brilliant Season 2 finale, explained

What's in the Cold Harbor room in Severance?

Cold Harbor is unlike any of the rooms Gemma went into in "Chikhai Bardo." Those rooms contained elaborate sets: a full dentist's office, a plane cabin, a living room decorated for the holidays. Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson) was also present in each room, playing the role of a dentist, a flight attendant, or an overbearing husband.

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But Dr. Mauer isn't in the Cold Harbor room. Nor is there any extravagant set dressing. Instead, all Gemma's Cold Harbor Innie finds is a wooden crib and a screwdriver: an echo of Gemma and Mark's unsuccessful attempts to have a child, as seen in "Chikhai Bardo."

SEE ALSO: 'Severance' creator Dan Erickson breaks down Gemma's 'nightmarish' experience at Lumon

That painful struggle culminated in one of Severance's most heartbreaking sequences. An angry Mark disassembles the crib he and Gemma built for an eventual child, while Gemma grieves in another room. It's a scene Dr. Mauer forces Gemma's Cold Harbor Innie to recreate, telling her to disassemble the crib. All the while, Billie Holiday's "I'll Be Seeing You" plays in the background, just as it did in "Chikhai Bardo."

Over Severance's run, that song has become Mark and Gemma's unofficial theme. It played during Mark's Season 1 date with Alexa (Nikki M. James), a reminder of his lost love. It also played during the scene in which Severance reveals Gemma is also Ms. Casey. Having it resurface in the Cold Harbor testing environment feels like a cruel joke on Lumon's part, with the company forcing something warm and meaningful into a sterile, upsetting context.

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What does the crib scene in Severance mean?

"I'll Be Seeing You" and the act of disassembling the crib are both intense emotional triggers for Gemma, reminding her of her miscarriage and her troubles conceiving a child. The outfit Lumon makes her wear for Cold Harbor is also a painful reminder. It's the very same coat and scarf she wore the last time she saw Mark, right before Lumon faked her death. With all these stimuli, it's clear that Lumon is throwing everything at the wall to try to elicit an emotional reaction from Gemma's Cold Harbor Innie.

"I do think that it's telling that [Cold Harbor] is one of the most traumatic things that happened to Gemma on the outside," Severance creator Dan Erickson told Mashable in an interview. "[Lumon] is always looking at how those things affect you on all sides of the severance barrier."

SEE ALSO: 'Severance' puts a spin on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth in its Season 2 finale

The emphasis on the severance barrier has been a common thread throughout Gemma's time on the testing floor. In each room, Dr. Mauer subjects one of her many Innies to an unpleasant experience, like a turbulent flight. Once Gemma leaves the room, nurse Cecily (Sandra Bernhard) grills her on whether any memories or emotions from her time in the room linger with her.

Based on this line of questioning, it's likely that Lumon is using Gemma to create a chip that can sever multiple painful experiences so the user never has to feel pain. But there's a world of difference between the mundane pains of dentist trips and the grief of loss. If ever anything was going to break through the severance barrier, it would be that, which is why Cold Harbor is so specifically tailored towards Gemma's personal trauma, and why it's the final test she faces.

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Now we know that Cold Harbor is testing whether severance can block some of the strongest emotional pain someone can feel — but that's not the end of our Severance questions. What is Lumon's endgame with Gemma's chip? And why was Gemma key to their experiments?

These are questions Erickson relishes going forward. "My favorite questions on the show are the ones that both the audience and the characters will hopefully be having," he told Mashable. "I think that for Outie Mark, assuming that we do see him again, one of his first questions is going to be, 'What the hell were they doing to her down there? Why did they seem to be using this traumatic experience that we had had in this test? What exactly was being tested there?'"

Whatever the answers, we're certainly looking forward to finding them out alongside Mark as Severance continues.

Severance Season 2 is streaming on Apple TV+.

Topics Severance