Severance Season 2's Finale 'Cold Harbor' Originally Had A Hilarious But Profound Title

When you consider just how much buildup there was to the season 2 finale of "Severance," which bears the extremely important title "Cold Harbor," it feels impossible that it could have been called anything else. Not only is Cold Harbor the mysterious project that — as we learn at the beginning of season 2 — everyone at Lumon Industries is desperate for Mark Scout's innie Mark S. (both played by Adam Scott, obviously) to finish, including Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) and Seth Milchick (Trammell Tillman), but it's also directly related to Mark's past ... especially when it comes to his not-so-dead wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman).

Be that as it may, Dan Erickson, who created "Severance" and penned "Cold Harbor," has revealed that he almost went with a different — and much sillier — title. When he released the full script to Deadline, Erickson included a foreword ... and noted he almost named the episode after a massive argument between Marks Scout and S.

"There was a not-insignificant period of time during the development of the 'Severance' season 2 finale where I was convinced the title should be 'Innie Sandwich,'" Erickson wrote. "It made perfect sense to me: Mark is his Outie on the surface, his Innie on the severed floor, and his Outie on the testing floor below. This 'sandwich' is the arena he must navigate in order to save his wife and attain the peace he's sought throughout the series. Also, maybe it's a callback to the sandwich Devon [Mark's sister, played by Jen Tullock] made him in the pilot or something."

Erickson went on to say that, in the end, the creative team behind the show talked him out of this funny yet deeply unserious title. As he put it:

"Ultimately, I was convinced to change the name to 'Cold Harbor,' which in hindsight was probably the right call. This is illustrative of how 'Severance' benefits from the collaborative process, with many people working together to create something insane that also somehow works. For this episode, we wanted it to feel as distinct as possible from our season 1 finale. Where that chapter was short and tight, this one would be big and epic and move wildly between tones and contain a full marching band, if in any way possible."

To Dan Erickson's point, I understand why he originally wanted to call this episode "Innie Sandwich." After all, amongst a series of standout moments, the argument between Mark Scout and Mark S. is downright unforgettable. As the episode opens, Mark — who has been undergoing a reintegration process to merge his "innie" and "outie" throughout the second season so that he can figure out what happened to Gemma and, in the process, probably realize that her "innie" is Lumon's in-house wellness counselor Ms. Casey — uses a camcorder given to him by Harmony to have a full-fledged conversation between his two severed selves. Safely hidden in Lumon founder Kier Eagan's mysterious birthing cabin and aided by Harmony and Devon, Mark has a chat that turns into a blowout fight with ... himself. It's a superb acting showcase for Adam Scott, a truly incredible scene overall, and according to Erickson, it was really hard to write.

"The first sequence is one that I've been excited and terrified to write since the show began," Erickson said of this scene in the foreword. "I knew Innie and Outie Mark had to face off at some point, and with their needs and resentments both coming to a head, this was the time to do it. The challenge was to make an interesting scene out of a man filming videos to himself on a deck, and here again I had to rely on the skill of my collaborators. We had to sort of build the language of that sequence as we were shooting it, between the performance, editing, direction, and writing. We probably rewrote this more than any scene we've ever done, and I think if you listen closely in the final cut, you can hear me typing feverishly on my laptop just offscreen."

Ultimately, Mark S. (the "innie") basically betrays Mark Scout ... by choosing to continue his life and romance with Helly R. (Britt Lower) rather than escaping Lumon and saving Gemma in the process. The whole situation is really, really complicated, but let me try to break it down as simply as possible. While Outie Mark grieves Gemma and tries to figure out whether or not she's being held at Lumon, Innie Mark is carrying on an "affair" of sorts with Helly R., even though Helly R.'s "outie" Helena Eagan — the heir to Lumon Industries — spent some time impersonating her own "innie" and seduced Innie Mark without revealing her true identity. Outie Mark finds Outie Gemma on the testing floor in the bowels of Lumon and frees her, but once he becomes Innie Mark again by changing floors, he ignores Gemma — a woman he only knows as Ms. Casey — and triumphantly runs down the hallway with Helly.

As Dan Erickson noted, this was the other particularly challenging sequence to write — which, again, isn't surprising, because it's such an emotional triumph and gut punch at the same time. "The other moment that really scared me was the final one, because I knew we had to get it right," Erickson mused in the foreword. "In a season that starts with Innie Mark bolting from an elevator to find his outie's wife, we'd long known that his final act would be to turn his back on her, prioritizing his own life and love over that of his 'real' self. It had to be both triumphant and agonizing and communicate the complexity of the journey he, Helly, and Gemma have been on. I wrote a bunch of versions with a lot of dialogue, but in the end, we realized that the whole story could be told on the faces of these incredible actors. I've never been so proud to have written a scene that mostly just consists of people saying 'Mark.'"

The first two seasons of "Severance" are streaming on Apple TV+ now, including "Cold Harbor" — which was originally named "Innie Sandwich."