The world of Severance is full of context and backstory we know nothing about. In Severance Season 2 Episode 8, “Sweet Vitriol,” we learn about the origin of the severance procedure, rooted deep in Lumon’s past and masked by a lifetime of lies. The key to it all is a character who has burst out of her frame, disillusioned by the organization that raised her.
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The strange and enigmatic Harmony Cobel/Mrs. Selvig (Patricia Arquette) has been M.I.A. since Severance Season 2 Episode 3, “Who is Alive?” When we last saw her, she walked away from Helena Eagan (Britt Lower), who undoubtedly planned to do nefarious things to the troublesome former manager of the severed floor. To move forward, Cobel must return to her past.
Severance, “Sweet Vitriol”
Cobel drives a winding road along a bleak and frozen seaside landscape. She passes a sign for someplace called Salt’s Neck. The town is full of rundown wooden buildings and seagulls. In the distance, there is an industrial-type building.
Parking her car, she gets out and brushes her teeth, standing in the open door. Hearing someone cough, she turns and sees a huddled person sitting in the rusted hull of a bus, getting high on something they poured onto a cotton ball and placed in a paper bag to breathe in.
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Her phone buzzes, and the call display shows Devon’s (Jen Tullock) name. She ignores it, gets back in the car, and drives to a diner, The Drippy Pot Cafe. Inside, a waiter (James Le Gros) pours coffee for a few aged and infirm customers. He serves glass bottles of something alongside coffee — freebies for his regulars. When Cobel walks in, he recognizes her.
Without breaking eye contact, she takes a seat. He walks over to offer her coffee. After exchanging some awkward pleasantries, she asks him for a favor. Telling him to meet her at the factory, she leaves without touching her coffee. Telling the other server, Dot (Emma Troake), to close up, he follows.
The Ether Mill
Driving past buildings with faded Lumon logos, he meets Cobel at the ruins of a Lumon factory. For a long minute, they sit staring at each other from their respective vehicles. Cobel gets out first, waiting for him midway between her hatchback and his truck. When he steps out and approaches her, she tells him she needs him to drive her to Sissy’s (Jane Alexander). He declines.
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She explains that if the house is being watched, they’ll recognize her car. He asks how much trouble she’s in and reminds her that Sissy lives out by the nine and is a pariah in this town. Cobel reassures him he can stay in the truck when he takes her there. She says she just needs to get something. He’s still reluctant, questioning why he’d help her with anything. She reminds him that they were close once, chums or colleagues even. He scoffs at the idea, redefining their relationship as child labor.
Cobel looks at the factory building, pointing out that Kier met his wife Imogene at the Ether mill. The man wonders if Imogene was dying at the time. Cobel tells him she can smell the ether on his breath and gives him the choice to help her or not. However, she won’t let him blame all his troubles on her.
Sissy’s Place
He drives her out to Sissy’s in the truck. She hides under a tarp in the truck bed. Devon tries calling again. Cobel ignores it.
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Arriving at Sissy’s, he helps Cobel out of the back and tells her to tell Sissy to drop dead for him. Sissy opens the door as Cobel approaches to say that she is not welcome. Cobel ignores her and pushes past her. She heads up the stairs and opens the door to her childhood room, only to find it stripped bare and empty.
As Sissy continues to berate her, Cobel walks to the next room, past a plaque on the wall awarded to Youth Apprentice Matron Celestine “Sissy” Cobel for being the Quarterly Striver in the 4th Quarter of the Year of Vision. The door to the next room is locked.
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Running down the stairs, Cobel demands to know what Sissy did with her things. Sissy tells her they were sold to the poor. Cobel asks if anyone has visited, which Sissy denies. When Cobel asked if anyone has telephoned, Sissy admits a Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) called. Cobel demands the key to the locked room, Mother’s room. Sissy states that it will stay shut “until all who knew her sit with Kier.” Cobel repeats her demand. They accuse each other of making this house woeful. Cobel accuses Sissy of killing her mother, and Sissy slaps her. Sissy claims Harmony’s mother was grateful to be freed of suffering.
Regrets, They Have a Few
Because Harmony’s mother wasn’t a believer, Sissy feels she never found solace in the nine, something she regrets deeply. Cobel regrets that she was at school while her mother’s health declined. She never got to say goodbye. Sissy insists she needed to be at school. “Mr. Eagan saw Kier in you,” she says. She reminds Cobel that she earned the Wintertide Fellowship — the same fellowship Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock) is working towards with Milchick (Tramell Tillman) — and lauds how industrious she was at the factory. Then, Sissy expresses how disappointed she’s been in how Cobel turned out.
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Sissy advises Cobel to return to Lumon and plead forgiveness. Cobel replies that the Eagans’ mercy will be the same as Sissy’s for her mother. She asks Sissy again for the key. Sissy stays silent, holding and stroking a stone with Kier’s face drawn on it. Cobel looks at it and returns upstairs. She rummages through Sissy’s belongings and finds it in a box among a collection of Kier trinkets.
She unlocks her mother’s room and finds a medical bed in a drab and neglected space. The clothes in the closet are moth-eaten and rotten through. The wallpaper is peeling, and there is dust on every surface. Cobel spots a photograph of a young girl in uniform on a shelf. Stroking the blanket, she sighs deeply. She pulls a length of tubing out of a pocket and attaches it to the gas pump next to the bed. Lying down on the bed, she brings the tube end to her mouth and breathes in the gas, moaning quietly. She cries.
Shared History
Time passes, and in the darkness, she wakes up when the man bursts into the room after a heated argument with Sissy downstairs. He says it’s cold in the truck, and he needs to get back. Cobel asks for a minute to think of where the item she’s looking for could be. He shuts the door and gives her a minute. Looking around the room, he comments that he liked her mother because she hated Lumon more than he did.
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He sits down on the bed next to Cobel and asks if she wants to get high. He pulls out a bottle and uncorks it. Pouring some liquid on a cloth, he holds it to his face until he coughs and chokes. He starts to laugh and passes the bottle and cloth to Cobel. She partakes and moans. With a chuckle, she observes she hasn’t done it since she was eight.
She leans towards him and scolds him for selling the drug. After a minute, she kisses him. He sighs and tells her that he doesn’t think whatever it is she’s looking for is here. Cobel considers that for a moment and murmurs, “She wouldn’t throw it away.” Getting up, she heads outside to the root cellar next to the house. Inside, she finds a box of her things, including a yearbook, Annual Remembrances from the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls. She flips through and finds her picture as valedictorian and standing with Jame Eagan as the winner of the Wintertide Fellowship.
Kier’s Knowledge Is for All
Shutting the book, she looks around and finds another box of her belongings. She finds the trophy she was awarded with the fellowship in the Year of Wiles. She pries the bottom off the trophy and pulls out a notebook hidden inside. Coming out of the root cellar, she tells the man to get the truck ready. She hands him the trophy and heads into the house with the notebook in hand.
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She tells Sissy she’s leaving and warns her not to tell anyone she was here. Sissy swears she’d never lie to the Eagans. Cobel turns back and reminds Sissy that Lumon destroyed their town. Sissy retorts there was no town before Lumon built the factory. She adds that everything Cobel has accomplished is owed back to the Eagans as fealty. Cobel shakes the notebook in Sissy’s face, declaring that everything about the severance procedure was her design.
Sissy takes the book skeptically, reminding Cobel that Jame Eagan invented severance. Flipping through it, it’s clear that Cobel was the true inventor. Sissy asks why she never shared this. Cobel reveals that she was told “Kier’s knowledge is for all” and that if she sought credit, she would be banished.
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Sissy closes the notebook thoughtfully and then tries to shove it into her wood stove. Cobel fights her for it, and having secured it, she wishes Sissy as painful a death as her mother’s.
Go Tell It on the Mountain
As Cobel heads for the door, Sissy claims that her mother took out her own tube. Cobel refuses to believe it, but Sissy states that her mother was a coward and died of her own malice and resentment. The man in the truck honks the horn, shouting that someone is coming. Cobel rushes outside. The truck is running, and the man tells her to take it and run. Before she leaves, she addresses him as Hampton. He says he’ll see her around. She drives off.
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Hampton turns to face the oncoming headlights. Sissy peeks out the window, then closes her drapes. Hampton looks resolute. “Come tame these tempers, assholes,” he mutters.
In the truck, Devon calls again. Cobel picks up. Devon tells her that Mark (Adam Scott) has been reintegrating. Cobel realizes Asal (Karen Aldridge) is involved. Devon tells her that Mark isn’t dead yet, and they want to try something else. Cobel tells her to put Mark on the phone. When he gets on, she demands he tell her everything.
Severance streams on Apple TV+. New episodes drop every Friday until March 21.
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