This story contains major spoilers for the Severance Season Two finale, “Cold Harbor.”

Severance’s sophomore season finale is a barn-burner. 2025’s most-anticipated returning show ends its second run of episodes with an extended finale that answers many of our biggest questions about the Apple TV+ series while launching the show into a bold new space for season three. While the streamer hasn’t officially announced a renewal, creator Dan Erickson and his team are already at work on Severance season three, as Erickson mentioned in a recent chat with GQ. Given the show’s extreme popularity, a third season is all but a foregone conclusion; Apple is seemingly just waiting for the right time to announce it.

As if rescuing Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and discovering the true nature of the data that MDR’s been refining all this time weren’t big enough reveals, audiences saw the first meeting between both sides of Mark S. (Adam Scott) and another splashy musical number. We even got a definitive answer about those goats.

GQ chatted with Erickson for some additional context regarding how these three moments and reveals in “Cold Harbor” came together, including Erickson’s original plan for the goats (which is still on the table), what it was like putting together the sequence between the Marks, and the possible direction the show plans to take in season three.

Goat Talk

The finale spends so much time tidying up loose ends that it almost feels as if the whole show is drawing to a close. That includes the much-discussed plot thread involving the goats, who first appeared in Season One before getting a bit more fleshed out when Mark and Helena visited the Mammalians Nurturable department and met Lorne (Gwendolyn Christie). In the Season Two finale, Lorne returns, goat in tow, as part of a ritualistic sacrifice performed by Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) prior to Gemma finishing Cold Harbor. In this ceremony, the goat takes on a larger, more religious role as a spirit guide, almost akin to how the ancient Egyptians viewed cats.

In a previous interview, Erickson mentioned, “My current explanation for the goats is not wholly different, but slightly different, from what it originally was.” When GQ asked about that original intention—well, mum’s the word. “I can’t really get into it because it may…”—and that’s all he told us before trailing off. “Some of it has changed a little,” Erickson said, “but a lot of it is still in place. So I can’t really say anything without giving away the whole thing.” So is there more to come with the goats—or was the original idea so good Erickson simply shuttled it off to another story beat to reveal further down the road?

Mark Scout and Mark S. Meet Face to Face

In an episode chock-full of splashy sequences, the two halves of Mark’s psyche finally coming face-to-face is an immediate standout. Erickson told us that the conversation—a chat “rich with possibility”—between the pair changed and evolved quite a bit throughout from page to screen. “We weren’t always sure it was going to be in that location, in the birthing cabin, and doing it the way that we did with the camcorder,” he states. “There were different things that we discussed.”