Throughout the whole show, shame has been used as a punitive tool: From the unsevered staff to the innies (the break room), from the outies to the innies (Mark’s gateway to reintegration being the shame he felt at carelessly letting his dog and Gemma leave, meaning it was at the root of his severance), from the outies to themselves (Seth Milchick subjecting himself to torturous correction through the paperclips, through his own speech of penance to himself in the mirror). Shame at all the ways we could’ve acted differently to be in a better place than we are now.

It’s interesting how, when asked for the key to Charlotte’s room, Sissy refuses to give it because all Harmony will find there is pain. “Charlotte’s room stays shut until all who remember her sit with Kier” because the only way to be useful is to build yourself a cage of shame, because if you remember, if you grieve, you will stop being as easily manipulated into compliance. Cold Harbor stays shut until all who remember Gemma sit with Kier. Shame is a cage. Shame leads to denial, memory leads to grief.

Harmony still looks for the key because she wants to feel that pain, because she wants to grieve a mother she wasn’t even allowed to see off when she died because she was serving the Eagans at school. Grief is a key out of this prison of repression. I’ve talked before about the way vegetation, sunlight and darkness are used in Severance to denote grief and the healing that comes through processing it, so I would like to point out that the wallpaper all over the house is flower-patterned, if slightly damaged, and the key Harmony finds in Sissy’s altar is hidden away behind an arrangement of dried (or possibly artificial) flowers. The only item that was left in Harmony’s childhood bedroom is a worn plushie, well loved, perhaps a gift from a mother to a very small child. And in Charlotte’s room, in turn, a picture of her daughter, wearing the same braids she does at home even now, in the house where she keeps dolls in her bed and sings to newborn children that aren’t hers. One of the rare shots of warm sunlight in this show happens this episode as Harmony Cobel enters her mother’s bedroom, and a bright warmth cuts the empty deathbed in two. Harmony presses her her hands to the mattress, like Mark to the tree, like Irving to the paintings, and sucks on an endotracheal tube like a child feeds on breast milk. She sleeps peacefully in the darkening room. The scene transition is an aerial shot of ice floaters slowly turning into a shot of turbulent water, the split shards melted into wholeness, wild and dangerous though it may be.

Pain, grief, letting yourself feel it, is the only true way to reintegrate. You can’t artificially do it through chip manipulation, but the possibility that one could turn off the severing block at will would mean that the person could have access to all their memories and would get the chance to truly grieve. Cobel watched outie Mark for signs of acceptance and innie Mark for signs of recognition, she wanted to believe in post-severance reintegration that didn’t end in death, a procedure her own ideas made possible in the first place. She was happy that Mark felt like he didn’t need to be severed anymore, at Ricken’s party, and encouraged him to leave Lumon. Mark surviving chip reintegration means he could grieve freely, after all. That her grief-fuelled creation won’t necessarily make the world into a cage of shame. Harmony says the Eagans’ mercy is murder, like how Sissy thinks it was an act of mercy to remove Charlotte’s respirator. Harmony had assumed her mother’s death was on her aunt, but Sissy admits with disgust that it was Charlotte who took out her own lifeline. It was her choice to die, and even to Sissy’s eyes, she looked grateful. Even when Sissy says her rage would’ve been less agonizing if she had faith, that doesn’t take from the gratitude. Because yes, she was angry, she had lost her faith and autonomy, she had lost her daughter, they took everything from her and death was merciful.

Keeping people alive against their will to extract profit is cruelty, not mercy. Gemma doesn’t get a choice. Hampton gives the people in the town choice: They can numb the pain with the drug, or just coffee, or just a warm place to be in, or they can die, but whatever choice they make is as free from Lumon’s control as he’s able to make it. It was kind, not merciful, to make a choice to end her own life (like Helly’s suicide attempt in the elevator, like Irving B.’s willing execution, going to their deaths fully aware of what they were doing, freeing themselves from grief and exploitation.)