Warning: The review of Severance season 2 episode 10 will contain spoilers.

“Cold Harbor”, the season 2 finale of Severance, had a lot to live up to, and it mostly succeeds, further establishing the show as one of the best on TV today. The season 1 finale so memorably opened up the world with a shocking final sequence that was unlike so much of what we see in modern television, and while this week’s installment offers a lot of similar flavors, I don’t know if it goes down quite as smoothly. We’ll get to the final moments, and how it sets up the future, in a moment, but first we should talk about what episode 10 is primarily concerned with.

The bulk of the character drama comes as Mark (Adam Scott) has a literal conversation with himself, as his outie tries to convince his innie that this is a fight worth fighting. Episode director Ben Stiller and writer Dan Erickson find an ingenious way to make this happen, first showing one side recording a message to the other side, and the receiver recording his reaction to what he just saw. This soon shifts into more of a straight-on conversation, and it’s a genius trick of editing (along with everything else within episode 10), plus it gives Adam Scott more opportunities to show how phenomenal he can be.

The struggle between each individual innie and their outie has been lurking in the background of so much material this season, whether it’s Dylan (Zach Cherry) fighting for the affections of his wife, or Helly (Britt Lower) reckoning with the monstrous person she knows she is on the outside. To his surprise, outie Mark’s back-and-forth conversation doesn’t go the way he thinks it will, with innie Mark pushing back for his own autonomy. He knows that he’ll cease to exist if Gemma (Dichen Lachman) escapes from Lumon’s clutches, and outie Mark’s borderline condescending tone doesn’t help to convince him. The innies have always felt like pawns for their outies, only existing for their own selfish purposes, and while it’s a thrillingly dense conversation that Severance has trafficked in since the beginning, it almost comes out of left field from innie Mark, who’s spent so much time this season trying to find Ms. Casey. We know there’s implicit resentment from the innies, but it hasn’t come to the forefront so much – rather, it’s more frequently been curiosity about the lives they live.

Thankfully innie Helly (Britt Lower) is so vastly different from her outie, actively advocating for Mark to finish the file, even when it means that they’ll no longer be able to be an item. Lower and Scott’s chemistry together has been one of the better aspects of Severance season 2 overall, and their time alone as he completes Cold Harbor provides more evidence that, deep down, they want to be together. Another genius detail of dialogue: Helly and Mark agree to meet “at the equator” once all of this is over. Not only is it smartly written because it’s a place the two literally know nothing about, and it fits in with their characteristically jokey repartee, but it’s at the exact center of the Earth, where no half is greater than the other.

I can imagine the Reddit sleuths are rejoicing once Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) confirms the theories about the origins around the MDR numbers: each box represents the four Kier “tempers” – woe, malice, dread, frolic – and every file he’s completed has created a new innie of Gemma. But the episode offers a number of bizarre Easter Eggs to froth over in the (hopefully short) wait for Severance season 3. Yes, this includes the full-on marching band led by Milchick (Tramell Tillman) – from the Choreography and Merriment Department no less – and the Laurel and Hardy routine between him and the animatronic Kier.

It’s a show-stopping sequence, with Severance clearly flexing its inflated budget – a more expansive sequence than the “Defiant Jazz” scene from season 1 – but my first reaction was more concerned with how and why all of this was happening. Is there a complete marching band composed exclusively of severed Lumonites somewhere in the halls of the severed floor, or were they just brought in for a quick gig? Why do they continue to play and ignore Helly’s pleas for help after she traps Milchick in the bathroom? This feels less purposeful to the universe of Severance than the bit with the Mammalians Nurturable Department, which we see again this week – though if they turn out to be instrumental (pun intended) to the plot in season 3, I’ll be more satisfied. Maybe I just need to sever the part of my brain that picks apart these almost inscrutable details and just enjoy what I’m witnessing.

The chaos of the moment allows Mark to escape to find the black hallway, and at the very least, it’s a well-executed sequence, and gives Tramell Tillman an opportunity to unleash all of Milchick’s rage, so I can’t be too mad about it. I wrote last week that I was slightly worried that Severance would jump the shark with the magic birthing center and all the talk about resurrecting Kier Eagan. The bits in the second half of episode 10 tiptoe closer to crossing that line, but I remain optimistic that this is just a temporary symptom, not a function of the show going forward.

I feel similarly ambivalent about Gemma and her quest within the Cold Harbor room, as she’s told to dismantle a crib piece by piece while Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry) watches remotely. Why is he watching, and what are they hoping to accomplish? Truth be told, I watched the episode before the season started, and before the theories around Gemma resurrecting Kier started bubbling around the internet. There’s been a frustrating lack of clarity this season surrounding Lumon’s ultimate goals, and this feels like a development that would have been better fleshed out within the textual world of Severance season 2, so I wonder how those who haven’t spent their days combing through Reddit theories will perceive this aspect. But, at the end of the day, Mark and Gemma are reunited and escape to the upper level of the severed floor together.

Left conspicuously absent from episode 10 entirely are Irving (John Turturro) and Burt (Christopher Walken). I also wrote last week about my fears that we’d never see Irving again, and I hope that “Cold Harbor” is not an indication of the future. We still don’t know who he had called at the pay phone earlier this season, and that’s OK, so long as he comes back. If not, it feels like unfinished business which the creative team simply forgot to follow-up on or couldn’t fit in organically. That said, I obviously don’t need every single mystery solved at the end of each season (see you next year, Ms. Huang???), so a few threads left dangling isn’t the end of the world.

Severance is a solid reminder that television can still be shocking and suspenseful without killing off any major characters (sorry, Drummond). Okay, yes, it’s an open philosophical question of whether you “kill” an innie when a severed employee stops working at Lumon. But in a post-Game of Thrones world, Dan Erickson has shown that you don’t need a high body count to create exciting drama. “Cold Harbor” utilizes all of its 75 minutes with perfect efficiency, featuring season-best crafts, performances, and storytelling, and sets up a number of juicy questions for season 3. And that’s how I feel about season 2 overall, even if there has been the occasional hiccup here and there. Dan Erickson, Ben Stiller, and the entire Severance creative team have leveled up what was already stellar work, creating some thought-provoking storylines and expansions of wholly original material. Mystery-box shows always have to inherently wrestle with when they will answer the questions they’ve set up, and it seems like the show is playing the long game with when it will provide those answers, since there have been so few in the grand scheme of things this season.

With the events of “Cold Harbor”, the possibilities for future seasons are still limitless, and with 2 amazing seasons under its belt, Severance has earned my trust. Though I have to admit that, as Mark and Helly ran away from the stairwell in the final moments of episode 10, forsaking Gemma on the outside, I greeted the development with a bit of a shrug, and not with a host of questions like I did with the season 1 finale. After all, outie Mark will just be reunited with her as soon as his work day is over. Lumon has to let our heroes out eventually, right? Right?

Severance season 2 overall grade: A-

• You Got Your Lost in My Severance!: “You’ll kill them all!”, the creepy doctor yells as Mark and Gemma escape up the elevator. While the Eagan’s grand designs for Gemma remain mysterious and important, I can’t help but wonder what this could possibly mean. Is the world truly going to end, or is he just another Eagan acolyte? This is exactly the type of line or cliffhanger which Lost would utilize so perfectly in its season finales to get viewers hooked until the next season, a la “We have to go back!”