Posted in: Apple, TV | Tagged: Severance

Severance: Adam Scott & Britt Lower Continue Love "Triangle" Debate

Severance stars Adam Scott and Britt Lower on whether Scott's Mark/Mark S. should end up with Lower's Helly R or Dichen Lachman's Gemma.

One of the lingering discussions surrounding the season two finale of AppleTV+'s dystopian drama Severance is who Adam Scott's Mark/Mark S should end up with in the Dan Erickson series, Britt Lower's Helly R., or Dichen Lachman's Gemma Scout. To set the scene, Mark S is the innie persona of Mark, the person who lives his life outside of Lumon Industries. He was initially with the outie, known as Gemma Scout, before getting trapped at Lumon as Ms. Casey. Helly R is the innie persona of Helena Eagan, the daughter of Lumon CEO. Scott and Lower spoke to Variety's Award Circuit Podcast about which should Scott's character should end up with.

Severance Stars Adam Scott and Britt Lower on Whether Mark/Mark S Should End Up with Helly R or Gemma Scout

To catch up on the mess of Severance, the innie personalities sometimes can differ greatly from the outie, which complicates matters when the outies are the ones who agree to the procedure in the first place. The outie gets his/her memory wiped before getting into work, and they're expected to be compliant in their environment. For example, Helena is quite loyal to her company, as Helly R initially does everything she can to escape before trying to upend the questionably ethical company along with her co-workers Dylan G (Zach Cherry) and Irving B (John Turturro). At the end of season two, the team successfully establishes a procedure where their innies would gain awareness of their outie counterparts' memories, which drives Mark S to try to free his wife, Gemma. As Mark gets Ms. Casey to escape, he gets a crisis of conscience and sees Helly R at the other end of the hallway, and chooses to stay with her at Lumon, with Gemma looking from beyond the door through a glass pane.

"I think Mark S. is in love with Helly," Scott told Variety. "He starts the season wanting to help his outie, of course, and help Miss Casey/Gemma. He sees the injustice there and looks up to his outie as sort of, for lack of a better term, the celebrity version of himself. They all have kind of this outsized image of their outie, and he wants to help. They're on the same page, but by the time he's in the hallway making the choice, he is not entirely sure he can trust that person. This person he's in love with is at the other end of the hallway, and he isn't sure if he crosses that threshold, if he's going to cease to exist or not. So, yeah, I think he's completely in love with her."

Lower added, "We're barreling towards that question of Mark getting to make a decision at the end, and is he allowed to make that decision? And that's the question for me, at least embedded in that finale of, do we think he's human? Or is the real human the outie, and that's the one he should be making a decision for? I don't have the answer, but it's an interesting question."

When it came to Helena pretending to be Helly R, "I often hear people saying, 'Oh man, the building I was in was so Lumen' or they'll send me a picture of where they had lunch that day and say, 'I had lunch at Lumon today,'" Lower said. "I think there is this ability to kind of cosplay as an innie in our everyday lives, because there's so many elevators, so many hallways. Part of what was fun for me this season was getting to give Helena the task of being an actor, and so I got to decide how good of an actor she was, or not, pretending to be Helly. The hardest part for me was coming back to play Helly, but not the real deal… it felt like I was drinking Diet Coke. It felt wrong."

For more, including how Scott and Lower discuss the show's popularity, debating the humanity between innies and outies, and why Lower is "secretly rooting for" Gemma-Helly, you can check out the interview. Renewed for a third season, you can check out both seasons of Severance, which also stars Tramell Tillman, Jen Tullock, Patricia Arquette, Michael Chernus, Christopher Walken, and Sarah Bock, on AppleTV+.

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