Gwendoline Christie Broke A Personal Rule For Severance's Season 2 Finale

A surprise standout in the season 2 finale of "Severance" was Gwendoline Christie's Lorne. Introduced as a mysterious woman in charge of Lumon's oddly-placed goat farm (which sparked plenty of fan theories), Lorne turned into an unexpected ally for Mark S. (Adam Scott) here. Her standout scene is when she points a gun at the terrifying Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), rescuing Mark S. from certain death in the process. Yes, Mr. Drummond manages to disarm her, but she still gets to beat him up shortly afterward. 

The fight is raw and brutal, not unlike a certain famous fight scene Gwendoline Christie got to perform on "Game of Thrones." There, her character Brienne of Tarth finds herself in a fight to the death with Sandor "The Hound" Clegane, and Brienne just barely manages to pull out a win. Just as Lorne loses her gun and has to fight with her hands, Brienne loses her sword and has to finish the fight using rocks and fists. 

The parallel wasn't lost on Gwendoline Christie, who said in a recent TV Insider interview that she had to be persuaded into returning to a role with big, brutal fight scenes involved. "I hadn't done any combat since 'Game of Thrones,'" she explained. "That had been a conscious decision that it wasn't something I wanted to do anymore." 

It's an understandable attitude, given the sheer amount of training that went into her "Game of Thrones" role. "I trained for six weeks beforehand — three, four days a week — and then I was with my trainer the rest of the time," she explained in a 2014 interview, shortly after the Hound v. Brienne fight aired. "I was just knackered. I didn't know how any of my friends put up with me because I was no fun."

Ultimately, what changed Christie's mind were the specifics of the scene, which were simply too interesting for her to pass up. "When Ben Stiller says there's a fight scene in 'Severance,' and it is as outlandish, bizarre, and a strange psychic explosion as this one was, I found it irresistible," she said. "I was delighted to go back into a more serious form of training that would enable me to carry out the fight."

She offered her take on Lorne's descent into violence in the finale: "This is an ultimate emotional explosion and this is a transformation of self, and a real change from one state as a company player under duress [who] is carrying out acts that they increasingly don't believe in, to becoming a primitive, angry, and violent force," she said. And sure enough, Christie does a great job conveying (with very few lines over the season) that this is a woman who cares deeply for those mysterious goats, and who would 100% carry a lot of resentment towards the man who keeps asking her to "sacrifice" them for no good reason. 

Will we see Lorne again in season 3? Almost certainly. She might not be feeling great the next time we see her (she did sort of commit assisted murder), but it would be a total bummer if she never returned. Perhaps in season 3, she'll be leading the innie revolution alongside Helly, Dylan, and Mark S; there'll probably still be some fighting involved, but for Christie's sake let's hope it's Dylan leading the charge again.