Up until this point, Severance has been a relatively isolated show. We see the Lumon office, we see some places around the Lumon offices, and that’s really about it (“Woe’s Hollow” aside). That changed in a big, big way with this week’s eighth episode of season two, “Sweet Vitriol,” which focused entirely on Harmony Cobel, played by Patricia Arquette.
The season one mainstay has been mostly on the sidelines this year (for good reason, she created quite the stir at Lumon last season), but this episode not only brought her back to the forefront, it exposed the world outside of Lumon, severance, and Kier. A world that is undeniably bleak.
Things start with Cobel entering Salt’s Neck, a place we saw her driving towards a few episodes back. (She drives past the “Thanks for visiting” sign but it’s on the other side of the road. So it looks like she’s leaving but really she’s coming back.) The best way to describe Salt’s Neck in Severance terms is, well, it’s a cold harbor. Not “Cold Harbor,” the program Mark is working on at Lumon, or the mysterious room on the testing floor, but a harbor that is cold (maybe there’s a connection but we’ll have to see.) Also, this place is decrepit. Old cars, old buildings, old people. Almost everything on Severance is a little dated and retro but this place takes things to a whole new extreme.
Harmony is heading to a place called the Drippy Pot Cafe but, on the way, she gets a phone call. It’s Devon Scout, Mark’s sister, doing the exact thing Regabhi told her not to do last week. How much time has passed since that conversation—in other words, when is Devon calling? We don’t know, but Harmony doesn’t answer. Instead, she heads into the cafe which has a whopping two customers in it, both of whom look tired and sick.
The cafe’s sole employee (James Le Gros) is a man who doesn’t look quite as run down as his customers, both of whom he has a good banter with. He flirts with the woman and passes the man a bottle of what we’ll soon realize is ether. He and the others are not happy to see Harmony when she comes in the door. They all recognize her and it’s clear she was not expected to appear, nor is she welcome.
Harmony and the waiter, who remains nameless until the episode’s final scene when he’s called Hampton, have a very tense conversation about the degradation of the town—but despite his obvious distaste for her, when she tells him she needs a favor and to meet her at a nearby factory, he goes.
As Harmony drives across town, you’ll notice the word “Lumon” on at least one building. And, eventually, when she gets to the factory, it also says “Lumon Industries” on it. This whole town has Lumon roots but it’s now desolate and run down. A ghost town. At the factory, Harmony tells Hampton she needs him to drive her to Sissy’s. Sissy (Jane Alexander), we’ll later learn, is a relative of Harmony’s (an aunt? older sister? Could be either.) and Hampton hates her. He says she still “lives by the Nine” and is considered a pariah by everyone in town. Harmony is only worried that someone could be watching Sissy’s house and would recognize her car. She needs to get up there unnoticed and find something.
Even though Hampton is still very put off by Harmony, he goes. Why? Well, he loves that she’s in trouble with Lumon. We hear that the two grew up together and were once friends working for the company. She calls it “colleagues.” He calls it “child labor.” Over the course of the episode, we’ll get bits and pieces of this town’s history. Basically, the center of town is this ether mill, the same sort of factory where Kier Eagan is said to have met his wife, Imogene (we saw and heard about this last season in a painting). But, as Harmony and Hampton will tell us, Lumon’s mill employed children working long hours in poor conditions and many of them got addicted to sniffing ether.
So basically as a middle finger to Lumon, Hampton agrees to drive this old, fugitive friend of his hidden in the back of his truck. Along the way, Devon Scout calls again and Harmony ignores it again. She’s focused on Sissy, who is extremely agitated when Harmony arrives at the house. They haven’t seen each other in a long time but it’s revealed this is the house Harmony grew up in until at least age 12 and that Harmony’s mom died there in the years since.
Harmony storms around the house looking for something and lots of info is delivered kind of rapid fire. For example, Sissy calls Hampton a “huff peddler” to which Harmony says “You gave him his thirst for it.” What does that mean? The answer is found on a plaque on the wall of the house. It says that Celestine “Sissy” Cobel was awarded “Quarterly Striver” for her work as a “Youth Apprentice Matron” from Lumon. It sure sounds like she was one of the leaders at the ether mill that employed young kids.
There were more revelations too. As Harmony continues to search the house and yell at Sissy, we learn that Mr. Drummond from Lumon called to update Sissy on Harmony’s issues. We learn Harmony was a prized student in the community and was a recipient of the Wintertide Fellowship, the same one mentioned earlier this year in regard to Miss Huang. Most importantly though, we learn that Harmony’s mom was very sick, suffering, and died when Harmony assumes Sissy chose to pull the plug on her. Later in the episode, Sissy claims Mom did that to herself, so we aren’t sure. We just know that Harmony’s mom was not smitten with Lumon or its ideals.
Since whatever Harmony is looking for is not in her room, she tries to get into her mom’s room, which is locked. According to Sissy, it’s to remain that way until everyone she knows is with Kier, aka “is dead.” Harmony starts to rip through Sissy’s room looking for the key and it’s like an Easter egg factory for Severance fans. There’s a shrine with various tenants on it (are these “the Nine”?), a photo of Kier, a card with the phrase “You must be cut to heal,” and four little busts including a goat. Eventually, Harmony finds the key, gets into her mom’s room, and realizes she hasn’t emotionally dealt with this. She hooks up her mom’s oxygen machine, uses it a bit, cries, and falls asleep.
Hampton, who has been sitting outside in his truck the whole time, storms into the house—against the vocal wishes of Sissy —to wake up Harmony and get her out of there. They two share a tender moment over her mom’s hatred of Lumon and Hampton asks her if she wants to get high. The two sniff some ether which prompts two chilling responses. “I haven’t done that since I was eight,” Harmony says. Hampton replies, “You ready to man the vat for 10 hours?” They laugh but the subtext of what Lumon did to them is terrifying. The tension is eased when the two kiss, solidifying their reforged alliance.
Knowing Sissy wouldn’t have thrown out her belongings, Harmony heads outside to some kind of underground storage area. There she begins to find her things scattered about. A yearbook from the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls in which Harmony was both the valedictorian and Jame Eagan Wintertide Fellowship winner. Also a bust of Kier, her reward for the latter. Harmony pries open the bust to, finally, find what she was looking for: an old notebook.
Instead of just leaving, Harmony decides to go back into the house and rub the notebook in Sissy’s face. The notebook proves that it was not Jame Eagan who invented severance, it was Harmony Cobel herself, down to the overtime contingency and Glasglow block. Harmony was taught, though, that all knowledge should be shared and that if she tried to seek credit, she’d be banished. (Which, in retrospect, certainly shines a light on the seemingly fine line she was always walking at Lumon.) The revelation stuns Sissy to such an extent she tries to burn the notebook to keep the secret but, luckily, Harmony is able to stop that. The two leave things on a bitter note, especially when it’s clear Sissy called Lumon to rat her out because a car is coming up the road.
Hampton—referred to as such for the first time at this moment—lets Harmony take the truck and escape while he stays behind to deal with the fallout. As she leaves, Harmony’s phone rings again. This time, she picks up Devon’s call. Devon tells her about Mark’s reintegration and Harmony asks to speak to Mark. He gets on the phone, setting this sometime after the events of the previous episode, and Harmony asks him to tell her everything.
Entirely shot in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, “Sweet Vitriol” is a fascinating episode of Severance. Rarely do we get an episode so singularly focused, with such a unique feel and look, as we do here. Plus, the revelations revealed much deeper roots to Lumon’s evil, both in their treatment of children and destruction of a town, in addition to Harmony’s past with the company and crucial importance to it. With two episodes left, it seems clear that Harmony wants to get updated on Mark’s actions and maybe even help. But can she be trusted? And what the heck is going on with Helly, Irving, and Dylan, whom we haven’t seen in a few weeks? We can’t wait to find out.
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