After taking us to Lumon’s nightmare Testing Floor in the last episode, this week Severance brought viewers to a desolate seaside city. What did Harmony Cobel’s emotional return trip home teach us about her past and possible future? And what new horrors did we learn about the company she dedicated her life to? Here are the biggest revelations and questions from Severance season two’s chilly eighth episode, “Sweet Vitriol.”
Revelations From Severance Season 2, Episode 8, “Sweet Vitriol”
Harmony Cobel Invented Severance
Harmony Cobel—not Lumon CEO Jame Eagan—invented severance. The company’s most industrious, most talented student came up with both the concept and the designs for Lumon’s most valuable technology.
That revelation explains so much about the former severed floor manager’s previous actions. She was obsessed with finding out if Mark S. would recognize his “dead” Outie’s wife because she was testing her own designs. She wanted to get Petey’s reintegrated chip out of his brain to learn how her tech was hacked. It also explains why she wanted to return to her old job and thought Lumon truly needed her back. She’s protective of that world-changing technology because it’s hers.
She doesn’t get credit for it, though. As she told Sissy, Lumon said all knowledge belongs to Kier. Harmony also said, “If I sought credit I would be banished.” It wasn’t enough for Lumon to benefit from Cobel’s brilliance. The Eagan family had to make sure everyone believed they’d come up with severance to protect their image and stature as modern day pharaohs. To make sure they did, they threatened their best student, whom they’d brainwashed since childhood, with exile. They emotionally manipulated Harmony to make sure she would willingly go along with the theft of her greatest accomplishment.
Somehow that wasn’t the worst thing we learned about Lumon in this episode.
Lumon Uses Child Labor and Gives Kids Drugs
Lumon uses child labor. Hampton said he and Harmony used to work ten-hour shifts manning vats at the ether factory as kids. How can eight-year-olds handle that kind of work? By getting high on an ether that elevates their spirits. The few remaining citizens of Salt’s Neck suffer from an addiction to a product Lumon used to make and give out. When Sissy complained about Hampton being a “huffer,” Harmony told her, “You gave him his thirst for it.”
Harmony also used it as a child, as it was another tool of control Lumon employed against vulnerable workers. That’s why she thinks “it’s so shameful” Hampton sells it. That ether, like the abandoned factory in a nearly abandoned town, represents the evil of Lumon.
Lumon Has Intense Rules About Dead People
Sissy didn’t want Harmony to enter their mother’s bedroom because “that room stays shut until all who remember her sit with Kier.”
That’s…intense. Think about how long entire rooms in Lumon households can remain shuttered because of that practice. If an old person dies and their young grandchild lives until they’re 90 that’s almost eight decades of leaving a part of the house locked up. And all because everyone who ever knew someone must also “sit” with Kier, an annoying guy who wasn’t actually a religious figure. He ran a balm company and became a hack writer.
Sissy Still “Lives by the Nine” and That Makes Her a “Pariah”
“The Nine” is not a place where Sissy lives. It refers to Kier Eagan’s nine Core Principles he believed would lead to someone becoming a better worker and person. (In the episode, you can briefly see some of them at Sissy’s shrine for Kier.) Sissy is still entirely faithful and loyal to the Eagan family and its Founder. But she’s the only person in Salt’s Neck who feels that way.
Everyone else hates Lumon after “the market readjustment from a few years ago and the fluctuating interests rates” caused “a retrenchment from some of the core infrastructure investments.” Which is a fancy way of saying Lumon abandoned the town and then so did every other company. That left behind nothing but a mass ether addiction for its struggling denizens.
Even when confronted by her sister with a blatant fabrication, Sissy’s reaction was to protect Lumon. Moments before she said she could not lie. Yet she wanted to toss Harmony’s notebook in the fireplace lest the truth come out. Fittingly, hypocrisy is a trait Sissy shares with the Eagans.
Devon and Mark Still Reached out to Cobel for Help
Despite Dr. Reghabi’s warnings, Devon and Mark still called Harmony Cobel for help. Cobel knew Reghabi was involved as soon as she heard about Mark’s reintegration. She knows how dangerous the process really is. “She hasn’t killed him yet?” she asked.
When Mark got on the phone she said, “Tell me everything.” Since he called for help, we have to assume he will.
Cobel might be the most qualified person to keep Mark alive. She also has answers about Gemma. But that doesn’t mean anyone can trust her. Not when the question of her “fealty” to Lumon is the biggest raised by the episode.
New Questions From Severance Season 2, Episode 8, “Sweet t Vitriol”
Is Harmony Cobel Ready to Turn Against Lumon for Good?
There have long been signs of Harmony Cobel’s disillusionment with Lumon. She hid important information from the Board, pursued her own goals in secret, broke company policy, and succumbed to the Four Tempers/violated the Nine in private. (Remember her foul-mouthed rant in the car during season one?) Now she fears Lumon, which she fled the last time we saw her before this episode. And we know why she has reason to personally resent the Eagans. She’s clearly furious about not getting credit for her work and that anger has simmered for decades.
So is she no longer Lumon “through and through” like Reghabi said about her? Or will a lifetime of control and manipulation keep this “soldier” in line? Will her previous faith in Kier bring her back into subservience to the Eagan family which indoctrinated her since childhood?
Mark’s life, Gemma’s freedom, and the future of severance itself might depend on whether or not Harmony Cobel can finally accept the truth she knows in her soul about the company she has always placed her faith in.
Who Was Harmony’s Mother and Why Did She Hate Lumon?
There’s one good reason to think Harmony Cobel might truly be done with Lumon. She adored her mother and still has unresolved, painful issues over her death.
And her mother hated Lumon even more than Hampton.
But why exactly? Why did Harmony’s mother hate Lumon? Who was she? Did she have a connection to the company and/or the Eagans? Is that why she let her daughters go to Lumon schools and work for them? Is that why she let them grow up worshipping Kier?
We know nothing about Mama Cobel except that at some point she went from trusting Lumon with her kids’ lives to hating Lumon and everything it represented. Why? And, even more importantly now, is the answer to that question enough to make sure Harmony Cobel’s eyes remain open to what Lumon really is?
The future of both severance and Severance might depend on the answer.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He hears you can get amazing deals on Salt’s Neck real estate right now. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.