September 4, 2025
This post contains spoilers for Apple TV’s Severance, Season 2.
Mark S finally gets to meet his outie, but the experience leaves him with even more questions; the most important of them all: how is he supposed to get his ass to Mars?
It’s the final episode of Severance‘s season 2, “Cold Harbor“, directed by Ben Stiller. I am watching as we reach the pivotal moment when Adam Scott‘s Mark S is holding a vintage Sony Handycam and is about to see and talk to his outie, Mark Scout, for the first time ever. He hits play and as the video starts, the only thing I can think of is the phrase “you are not you, you are me” (-“no shit”). For I am immediately transported to the absolute 90s Paul Verhoeven classic Total Recall, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid, a blue collar worker who finds out he is actually secret agent Carl Hauser, fighting for the liberation of Mars.
As soon as I finished the season, I fired-up Premiere Pro and After Effects.
To seamlessly integrate the scenes I basically had to recreate the cabin’s minimal soundscape, while Theodore Shapiro‘s score made all the magic work.
