Estimated read time: 4 minutes

Severance | Season 2 finale

Innie Mark’s journey in Severance is a raw and gripping metaphor for many things—choosing love in the present moment, discovering someone else’s true agenda, questioning the motives of those in power, and, ultimately, asking:
Who is in charge of your life?

Innie Mark, barely two years old, is thrust into a battle for his own survival. He fights not just against Lumon but against Outie Mark — the very person who created him. Outie Mark, desperate to reclaim what he lost, sees Innie Mark as nothing more than a tool to bring back his wife, Gemma.

But Innie Mark refuses to be a pawn in someone else’s game. He has his own desires, his own loves, and most importantly — his own right to exist.

Parallels to the annexation of a weaker power

It’s a striking parallel to real-world power struggles, where a stronger force tries to consume a weaker one for its own benefit. Imagine Canada—my home country—being told its identity doesn’t matter, that its resources and people exist only to serve someone else’s interests.

Whether it’s an individual or a nation, the fight to remain whole and autonomous is universal.

Like Innie Mark, we all face moments where we must decide:
Do we let someone else define our story, or do we fight for the right to be ourselves —fully and unequivocally?

Loving our broken selves

And this brings me to Dylan.

Outie Dylan was a man who had stopped fighting. He was complacent, resigned to the way his life had unraveled. His marriage was crumbling, and though he still loved Gretchen, he knew — whether he admitted it or not — that he had already lost a piece of her love by choosing to remain broken.

But then, something changed.

Instead of wallowing in guilt or resentment over Innie Dylan’s affair with his wife, Outie Dylan did something radical: he gave Innie Dylan the right to choose. He didn’t try to control him. He didn’t let anger dictate his actions.

That was the moment Outie Dylan became a different man.

Because the truth is, you don’t have to like every part of yourself to grow. You don’t need to be perfect to become better.

You just have to choose.
To fight.
To rise.

The red bench and it’s shadow

A red bench sits atop an uneven grey cobblestone, casting a long, dark shadow. Out in the bright sunshine, it stands solid, structured, familiar — like Outie Mark, tethered to what he lost, desperate to regain control.

Red for Canada.
Red for pain and longing.
Red for the part of us that clings to the past because it’s all we know.

Black for the void of forgotten memories.
Black for the self that waits in the dark, yearning to step into the light.

Like Innie and Outie Mark, like Dylan, like all of us — we are more than just one side of ourselves. We are the sum of our pain and our growth, our past and our future, our longing and our will to fight.

The question is:
Will we embrace the struggle to become whole?

Becoming whole

Severance isn’t just a sci-fi thriller — it’s a story about what it truly means to become whole. Innie Mark’s struggle mirrors our own internal battles: the tension between who we are, who we were, and who we could become.

Dylan’s story takes this even further. He proves that even when we don’t like parts of ourselves, we are not doomed to stay the same. He could have remained broken, resigned to his fate. Instead, he chose growth. He chose to be better — not because it was easy, but because it mattered. Because he mattered.

And so do you.

We all have moments where we feel divided, stuck between past choices and future possibilities. But Severance reminds us that transformation is always within reach.

Reflective prompt

Take a moment to reflect. What part of yourself have you been avoiding? What aspect of your life is calling for change? You don’t have to be perfect to take a step forward.

You just have to start.