Spoilers below.
The deeper we go into Severance season 2, the more I’m convinced that the so-called “Cold Harbor” file is Lumon’s final frontier. And after a heart-wrenching but enlightening episode 7, it’s all the clearer that our protagonists are hurtling toward that frontier’s edge.
The writers of Severance have deigned not to identify the true objective of Lumon’s Macrodata Refinement squad, nor that of any department on the mega-corporation’s severed floor. We know the MDR crew spend their working hours sorting numbers into five distinct boxes, which bear the markers “WO,” “DR,” “FC,” and “MA.” (Those markers correspond with the Four Tempers of every human soul, as proposed by Lumon’s founder, Kier Eagan: Woe, Dread, Frolic, and Malice.) The five boxes into which those Tempers are sorted comprise one file, each of which bear a place name: Dranesville, Allentown, Wellington, Cairns, Tumwater, Siena, Kingsport, Lexington, Astoria, Cold Harbor, so on and so forth.
Of these files, Cold Harbor bears the most significance to Lumon’s executive overlords. As Lumon lackey Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) tells severed-floor overseer Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) in season 2, episode 5, the “completion of Cold Harbor will be remembered as one of the greatest moments in the history of this planet.”
So, what is Cold Harbor?
Well, first and foremost, it’s the file Lumon enlists Mark S. (Adam Scott) to complete after he’s rewarded for finishing Allentown in season 1 and, later, Dranesville. As Severance creator Dan Erickson told Variety in 2022, Mark came into MDR and was “inexplicably better at refining the files than others were—at least for that first file that he worked on, which was called Allentown.” Why might he have been so “inexplicably” good at refining Allentown? Perhaps because it has something to do with his thought-to-be-deceased wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman).
In season 2, episode 7, we learn that every one of these MDR files has a corresponding room on Lumon’s Testing Floor, one level beneath the severed floor. On that Testing Floor, a very-much-alive Gemma is being kept against her will. Each day, she wakes up, reads 50 pages of a book, does a calisthenics workout, and has her weight and vitals measured. She then visits a predetermined number of rooms, for which she wears a predetermined number of strange costumes. In each room, she becomes a different Innie. Each Innie has only ever experienced their respective room, and in all of the rooms, they are subjected to some form of discomfort. Allentown is a Christmas scene, in which one of Gemma’s Innies must endlessly write thank-you notes for holiday gifts. Wellington is a dentist’s office, where Gemma’s Innie must undergo two hours of painful treatment. The only room she has yet to visit bears the name Cold Harbor.
When Gemma asks Doctor Mauer (Robby Benson) what will happen once she’s visited every room, he tells her, “You will see the world again, and the world will see you.”
“So, I’ll see Mark?” she asks.
“Mark will benefit from the world you’re siring,” he says. “Kier will take away all his pain, just as Kier has taken away yours.”
That sounds…cult-y and terrifying. Just like everything else Lumon does! But the only thing we know for certain is this: Cold Harbor is inside one of those Testing Floor rooms.
What is Cold Harbor’s purpose?
The foremost theory amongst many Severance fans is that Lumon is using Gemma to test the severance chip’s ability to erase unpleasant life experiences. Every time an Outie wants to avoid discomfort—such as might be caused in a dentist’s office or during plane turbulence—they can phase to an Innie, who must undergo the experience in their stead. By hopping from room to room and Innie to Innie, then checking to ensure she remembers nothing of the experience, Gemma is testing the severance chip’s limitations to perfect it for eventual commercial use.
So, what do Mark and his team have to do with this effort? In episode 7, we watch a group of Lumon employees spying on MDR’s activities from afar, watching the refiners through their computer screens. We also see these employees looking at Gemma through a similar screen, one which bears the same “WO,” “DR,” “FC,” and “MA” markers as Mark’s Cold Harbor file. (See the image below for reference.)
Might Mark and his co-workers be calibrating Gemma’s Testing Floor room experiences to achieve the correct balance between her Four Tempers? By sorting data gathered from her Innies, are they calibrating her? Or her severance chip? Is that why some of the numbers they encounter on their screens feel, as Helly puts it in season 1, “scary”? Of course, we don’t know yet. But it sure sounds increasingly possible.
If sparing their customers unpleasant experiences through severance is indeed Lumon’s goal, then there’s only one achievement that would make sense as “one of the greatest moments in the history of this planet,” right? Conquering death.
If Lumon can create a tool that allows humans to forego the discomfort and pain of death, then might they be able to live forever? I haven’t the slightest idea how that would work, especially because Innies and Outies do share a body—and if the body dies, we can assume so do all the various forms of consciousness inside it. Still, given Lumon’s pseudo-religious bent and Gemma’s associated fertility journey, the cycle of death and rebirth seems a likely culprit for Cold Harbor’s true purpose.
What will Gemma encounter in the Cold Harbor room?
If Cold Harbor is indeed meant to simulate a death (or near-death) experience, then Gemma could encounter any number of horrors inside. But as one Reddit user pointed out, in episode 7, Gemma’s nurse asks her if she’d be more afraid of suffocating or drowning in a mudslide. Upon responding “drowning,” Gemma’s “WO” intensity marker bumped up to 12,000. (See the image below for reference.)
Perhaps drowning is her greatest fear. And if that’s her greatest fear, then Lumon will want her to conquer it in pursuit of a stronger severance chip. Perhaps what’s inside Cold Harbor is a body of water. Like blood, water is yet another recurring motif throughout Severance, and it features prominently in one of my favorite fan theories. Maybe Cold Harbor is where that water finally slots into place within Lumon’s great puzzle.
For now, we only have theories. But Severance is getting ever-closer to its endgame.
This story will be updated.