The completion of Cold Harbor is hyped up so much throughout this series. Jame Eagan tells Helly AND Helena about it excitedly, Drummond describes it as “Lumon’s greatest day”, and Lumon fired three good workers in favor of three known dissidents because they knew Mark wouldn’t complete Cold Harbor without it.
So when Gemma walks into a room and disassembles a crib, many viewers were either perplexed or in disagreement. How could this be the crowning moment? How could it be so banal?
Theories on the purpose of cold harbor fall into two camps:
It’s testing compliance
ColdHarbour Gemma is different from every innie we’ve seen on the show. In mark’s first moments, he threatened to find and kill Petey. Helly assaulted mark and tried to run away. Even Gemma’s other innies show reservations, like when she’s distressed on the plane or reluctant at the dentist or hateful in the Christmas card room.
CH Gemma is different. She’s given the same onboarding question and standard memory wipe as Mark & Helly, but instead of acting out, she complies instantly with the task she’s given.
Kier sought to tame the four tempers to create maximum efficiency, and in CH Gemma, that’s worked perfectly: she has no objections to any prompting whatsoever. Cold Harbor could be about trying to create the perfect employee.
It’s testing severance bounds
We know Cobel was obsessed with reintegration and putting iMark & Mrs. Casey together. She loots Mark’s house for his wife’s things to prod iMark during the wellness sessions, and watches closely as iMark sculpts a tree in front of Mrs. Casey.
We know at least some of the rooms were personalized to Gemma’s anxieties and dislikes; Allentown forces her to write thank-you cards repeatedly because she hates doing that. In the same way, Cold Harbour is personalized to her greatest pain: losing the baby with Mark.
Cold Harbor could be about pushing the bounds of severance; Dr. Mauer says so himself. There is no emotion bleeding through here; CH Gemma tackles one of the lowest moments of her life completely docile and oblivious.
(As an aside, if this was the intention, mark “passed” this test when Gemma did not. iMark abandons his outie’s wife after his outie experienced the most resplendent joy in years, proving love can’t transcend severance.)
What do you think of Cold Harbor? What was it trying to achieve? Was it the best way to achieve either purpose?
I think there is something key here that Jame Eagan only truly realized during his "Oh Fuck" moment. Jame Eagan & Lumon are wrong.
Sure Gemma had a dentist innie, but that innie, while compliant, knew that pain was coming and wanted to resist. An innie that only exists for an hour every six weeks might not rebel, yet.
But Gemma also had a greeting card innie. Again, compliant, but she isn't actually performing her task. Maybe it's because her hand hurt, but she isn't actually fully compliant. She is rebelling, even if it's limited.
Then we have Cold Harbor. Keep in mind that Lumon is so confident in Cold Harbor, that Drummond is comfortable killing Mark before we even know the test results. Drummond makes no attempt to spare Mark. Mark is a cog, he may be a special cog, but still a cog. Gemma is a cog, a special cog, but still a cog. Jame & Lumon believe they have development a methodology that can be handed to cogs and develop a form of Severance that tames the four tempers.
But what happens? Gemma almost immediately rebels. It takes a moment and it may be because of Mark and her have a special relationship, but she does. Cold Harbor is a failure. Unbeknownst to Jame, the previous tests were also failures. The cult that is Kier wants to believe it works, but wanting something to work and something actually working are two different things.
But why did it fail? Because Jame & Lumon don't actually understand Severance. Cobel does, but she was sidelined. Not just sidelined during the series like we saw. Cobel was clearly sidelined years ago. I think the wellness sessions are created by Cobel trying but ultimately failing to continue her work. I think the success leads to Jame taking special interest and ultimately overriding Cobel. I think Cobel was actually successful at her job, but Jame just took it and twisted it further. He could have had what he wanted, if he had just left it alone.
I suspect part of Season 3 will focus on the Jame Eagan and Cobel backstory. I suspect Reghabi also worked closely with Cobel, but got out or possibly was kicked out. Maybe a loyal Cobel ratted on her.
But Jame Eagan and his "Oh Fuck" is that everything he's worked on was wrong.