This article contains spoilers for season two of Severance 

In true Severance style, we have been delivered yet another devastating cliffhanger. Instead of answering our questions, fans have been left with even more to ponder and theorise on as the second season wrapped up. And what a season it’s been. We need to give every single actor in this show an Emmy award as soon as possible.

A third season of Severance has been confirmed, which is unsurprising as director Ben Stiller had previously hinted at the story continuing on. In an appearance on Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast, Stiller shared that the next season will likely not face the same delays that the second did. “No, the plan is not to [wait three years]… Hopefully, we’ll be announcing what the plan is very soon.”

While we patiently wait for any nugget of information about season three, here are all the questions we still want a new season of Severance to answer.

What happened to Gemma?

Gemma had it pretty tough in season two (to say the least) but we now know what was happening in those dreaded rooms below the severed floor. In the finale, Harmony Cobel tells innie Mark that the numbers he’s been refining for the last two years are in fact Gemma’s emotions. These emotions – dubbed the ‘four tempers’ – are split into woe, malice, frolic and dread. For each file completed, Mark unlocked a new innie for Gemma and a new temper for her to face in the rooms.

“The numbers are your wife. The MDR numbers. From your console. They’re a doorway into the mind of your outie’s wife, Gemma Scout… The clusters of numbers are her tempers. The building blocks of her mind… Every file you’ve completed is a new consciousness for her. A new innie,” Cobel says to Mark at the Damona Birthing Retreat at the start of the episode.

And Cold Harbour was the worst room yet. A brutal re-enactment of Gemma’s deepest trauma, the 25th room involved Gemma taking apart a baby’s crib – harking back to her miscarriage and infertility issues we saw in episode seven.

But after beating up Mr Drummond and saving a baby goat, innie Mark manages to find the lift down to the testing floor, where he becomes outie Mark again. He gets into Cold Harbour and manages to get Gemma out, in what’s a beautiful but short-lived reunion. After getting back up to the severed floor, innie Mark pushes Miss Casey out of the exit corridor (so she’s Gemma again) but doesn’t go with her. Instead, he sees Helly and stays on the severed floor.

Will we see a role reversal in season three with Gemma having to save Mark’s life?

Where are innie Mark and Helly running to?

Severance involves a lot of running… In the final scene, we see Mark and Helly holding hands and running through the severed corridors once again. But where are they going? Do they have a plan? Initially, they said goodbye to each other with the phrase “See you at the equator,” which may have just been a more lighthearted way to leave each other. Part of me thinks, however, that there’s more to this line and that Mark and Helly may have a plan in motion.

Will Helly R become Helena Eagan?

Jame Eagan is incredibly weird and the finale just cemented this further. The eerie conversation between Jame and Helly in the finale was strange but telling. Jame tells Helly that he “does not love” his daughter and that he’s “sired others in the shadows. But he [Kier] wasn’t in them either. Until I saw him again. In you.” This confirmed that the Damona Birthing Retreat is likely one of many retreats where Jame impregnates women, as Cobel hinted at earlier in the season.

So, Jame wants Helly R. Will Jame attempt to swap between Helena and Helly? Reintegrate them? Or does he have another plan for Helly?

Another question that popped up in the finale is whether Helly is really her severed innie or if she’s Helena again. When innie Mark completes the Cold Harbour file and he tells Helly he wants to stay with her, Helly tells him, “I’m her, Mark.” Did Jame put the Glasgow Block on when he left Helly on the severed floor? Has Mark made a mistake?

What is the deal with Mr Milchick? Will he turn on Lumon?

Mr Milchick is truly the star of the show and the finale only proved his icon status in the Severance world. A dance number? Ripping into a statue version of Kier for his fake height? Going full Hulk in the bathroom? I will be rewatching his scenes repeatedly. Yet, it seems Mr Milchick is approaching breaking point with Lumon. They haven’t exactly treated him well, and we may see him go down the same path as Cobel and set out to get revenge on Lumon.

Also, where’s Natalie? And what does Cobel really want with the innies?

Will Irving come back?

The storyline between Irving and Burt was not mentioned in the finale but it’s unlikely we’ve seen the last of them – especially after the strange dinner Irving had with Burt and his husband, Fields. We know Burt lied about how long he’s worked for Lumon (before the severance procedure was invented), so how deep do his ties to Lumon run?

Well, in episode nine, Burt reveals to Irving that he’s been working as an enforcer for Lumon, driving people to places to make them disappear. A reveal that may be linked to Gemma’s initial disappearance on the night of the car crash and her alleged death. Now, this reveal happened in the car where Burt was told to drive Irving to a sinister end. However, Burt takes Irving to the train station so that he and his dog, Radar, can go into hiding, telling Irving he cannot tell him where he goes. Will Irving come back in a third season? It seems likely; I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.

What is Lumon actually doing?

This is the big question. Some of the plot lines seem to indicate that Lumon is attempting to bring its leader, Kier, back to life, and that’s what Gemma’s testing has all been for. Or it could be that they developed the severance procedure for the mass-market or the chips for commercial use. Or both.

However, now that Mark has scuppered Lumon’s plans, will they need to find others to refine and test on? For example, if Mark was building Gemma innies, then what have Dylan, Irving,and Helly been doing this whole time? Have they been refining their loved ones? Or even themselves? Does every outie have a stint on the testing floor and then Lumon erases their memories?

But, because of Lumon’s intense focus on Mark and Gemma, perhaps the testing only works because it’s these two people specifically. There does seem to be a borderline obsession with the pair, especially when you go back to the Chikhai Bardo episode, in which we see hints of Lumon (at the bloodbank where they initially meet and at the fertility clinic) in the very early days of Mark and Gemma’s relationship.

So many questions and a long time to wait for answers. Time for a rewatch.

Images: Apple TV+