Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Severance Season 2 Episode 8.
Last week, Severance gave us our deepest look yet at everything Gemma (Dichen Lachman) has been going through behind Lumon’s closed, stark white doors. In the process, we learn that she’s been undergoing a battery of tests and situations, with each one connected to a different project for the Macrodata Refinement team (though it’s still a mystery what it all means). We’ve also seen that Devon (Jen Tullock) seems dead set on involving Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) in their efforts to reintegrate Mark (Adam Scott). This is against the protestations of Dr. Reghabi (Karen Aldridge), who says that Cobel will turn them in. “She’s Lumon through and through,” Reghabi tells Devon. “She was raised by them, she’s a soldier!” As it turns out, we didn’t know the half of it.
As anyone who has been on a long road trip can attest, the one thing you need on the road is a little Harmony: once again, we follow Cobel on the road to Salt’s Neck. It’s a sleepy, snowy town with shores, hills, loads of rocks, and rundown buildings. She stops in town to brush her teeth while looking at a man trying to stay warm in a busted-out old vehicle, seemingly huffing from a bag. Cobel receives a call from Devon and doesn’t take it, reentering her car and driving to a tiny local coffee spot with a sign that advertises the Drippy Pot Café. The proprietor, a man we will eventually come to know as Hampton (James Le Gros), looks surprised, then unhappy to see her. There’s clear tension between them, but we don’t yet know why.
Cobel Won’t Be Anyone’s Punching Bag in ‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 8

Image via Apple TV+

As the Drippy Pot’s owner approaches Cobel’s table, intensely focused on her, she starts their conversation with, “Harmony Cobel. Well, flip my toboggan.” Their brief exchange is a tense power play before she comments that the town is older and trailer than she remembered, to which Hampton replies, “Well, with the market readjustment from a few years ago and the fluctuating interest rates, there was a retrenchment from some of the core infrastructure investments.” Cobel then reveals her true purpose for seeking him out: she needs a favor, and he should meet her at “the factory” as she leaves. Hampton exits immediately in a beaten-down truck, driving until the pair meet behind an old Lumon Industries factory. The pair get out of their cars for a brief staredown. “You know how f*cked it is to ask me to come here?” he asks. “I need you to drive me to Sissy’s,” she replies.
At first, Hampton declines, but then Cobel points out that “if they’re” — with the “they” presumably being Lumon — “watching the house, they’ll recognize my car.” Eerie! Hampton asks Cobel how much trouble she’s in. “Enough,” she says. “You know she still lives by the nine,” he replies, undoubtedly referencing Kier Eagan’s Nine Core Principles: Vision, Verve, Wit, Cheer, Humility, Benevolence, Nimbleness, Probity, and Wiles. Cobel replies that she assumed so, to which Hampton adds, “Then you know she’s a f*cking pariah here.” “You can stay in the truck,” she assures him. “I need to get something.” “Why would I help you with anything?” he asks. Cobel squares herself. “We were once chums,” she replies, “Old colleagues lift each other up.” “Colleagues?” he adds, “Child f*cking labor.” Cobel looks at the abandoned factory and repeats the Lumon lore that “Kier and Imogene met at the Ether mill, you know that?” She and Hampton exchange more unpleasantries, but she cuts the repartee short. “You can help me or not,” she says, “but I’ll not be the punching dummy for your resentments.”
No One Finds Solace in ‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 8

Cut to Hampton driving his truck across the bleak landscape of Salt’s Neck, with Cobel under a blanket in the back (still dodging calls from Devon). He parks and tells her the coast is clear before helping her out of the truck. “Tell her to drop dead for me,” Hampton says, as she approaches the home. The door is answered by an elderly woman wearing white: Harmony’s aunt, Celestine “Sissy” Cobel (Jane Alexander). “You are not welcome here,” Sissy says to Cobel, who barges in, ignoring Sissy’s protests before going straight to a room she was clearly raised in (based on various height markings for “Harmony” that we see on the doorframe, ending in age 12). It’s a bleak, unadorned room with a sheetless bed, an end table, and little else save for curtains. “I do not want that huff peddler on my property,” Sissy yells to Cobel about Hampton. “You gave him his thirst for it,” Cobel retorts down the stairs before attempting to open an adjacent room, which is currently locked.
When Cobel heads back downstairs and demands to know where her belongings are, Sissy simply confirms they were sold “to the poor.” The two women briefly argue, with Cobel asking if anyone has either been to the house or phoned. “A Mr. Drummond (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson),” Sissy says, before Harmony asks what he wanted. Declining to answer, Sissy only asks, “What have you done, little mouse?” Cobel angrily disconnects the phone from the wall, saying she wants “the key to Mother’s room,” and Sissy replies that the “room stays shut until all who remember her sit with Kier.” The pair argue about who brought “Woe” into the house. “What were her last words?” Cobel asks about her mother. They continue arguing, with Cobel referencing Sissy pulling her mother’s intubation tube out before she died. Sissy replies, “There was gratitude in her eyes to be freed from her suffering. If only she had been a believer, perhaps she would have found solace in the nine.”

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Harmony Cobel Was Raised By Lumon Before ‘Severance’ Season 2 Episode 8

Image via Apple TV+

Cobel and Sissy continue their conversation about the former’s mother. Cobel says she would have cared for her mother herself had she not been in school, and that she didn’t get to say goodbye. Sissy callously replies that the facility was “where you belonged,” because Cobel’s studies were more important. “Mr. Eagan saw Kier in you,” Sissy continues, “He really did. And the Wintertide Fellowship, even at the factory, no apprentice was more industrious than you… such a disappointment you’ve proven to be.” Cobel asks what Drummond told Sissy, and she replies that Cobel should “return and plead forgiveness, child. The Eagans will grant it,” but Cobel doubts their mercy and again demands the key to that locked room. “All you will find in there is pain,” Sissy says as Cobel ascends the stairs, rummaging through her aunt’s belongings until procuring the key.
Opening the door, Harmony sees her mother’s simple room — an elevated bed, few adornments, old clothes with holes in them, a picture of young Harmony Cobel in a school uniform. Cobel gets emotional and reveals the intubation tube she’s been holding on to, returning it to her mother’s ventilator before lying down and breathing from it, crying as she lies there until dark. Later that night, Hampton finally enters the house, and we overhear an argument between him and Sissy, who tells him, “You’ve no salvation here, you blighted snuff slave.” “Back off, or I’ll put you in the bay,” he threatens, before waking Cobel up. Blearily, Cobel declares that she needs to find something, and appears to be wracking her memory for whatever this something is. Hampton sits on the bed, and he and Cobel look at each other with real warmth for the first time. “You wanna get high?” he asks.
Hampton takes out a small green bottle of ether, puts some of it on a rag, and inhales, coughing, until he starts to laugh. Cobel tentatively inhales: no coughing, no laughing, even as she admits she hasn’t done something like this since she was eight. She tells Hampton that it’s shameful that he sells ether, but she leans in for a kiss after a beat. While Hampton points out that whatever Cobel’s looking for might not be in the house anymore, Cobel knows Sissy wouldn’t throw it away, and decides to look in the cellar. From a shelved box, Cobel pulls out a yearbook from her time at the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls. As she flips through the pages, we see that she was valedictorian (as well as Goat Husbandry Club President). She also finds an award, a small bust of Jame Eagan that declares her the winner of the Wintertide Fellowship for the Year of Wiles. Hidden in its base is an old journal of some kind, and once she has her hands on it, Cobel returns to the house to tell Sissy not to report her visit to Lumon.
Season 2 Episode 8 Drops a Major Reveal About Cobel’s History With Severance

Image via Apple TV+

Through Cobel and Sissy’s ensuing argument, we learn even more about the role Lumon played in the former’s past — and the role she played in one of the company’s biggest developments. Cobel reveals that Lumon destroyed the town of Salt’s Neck, presumably by closing down the factory, and as a consequence, Sissy owes them no loyalty, but Sissy points out that there wasn’t a town before Lumon built a factory in it, adding that “everything that you have, you owe back to the Eagans as fealty.” Cobel directly questions the notion of fealty where Lumon is concerned before shaking the old journal in Sissy’s face. “Mine! My designs! Circuit blueprint, base code, overtime contingency, Glasgow Block, all of it!” Yet Sissy puts on her ‘I’m about to say something cultish and stupid’ glasses and replies, “Jame Eagan was the inventor.” In the pages of the journal, we see diagrams for pre-severed brainwaves, various formulas, and a diode-shaped chip like the one implanted in severed employees. “Extraordinary,” Sissy remarks. “Why have you never spoken of this?” “I was told Kier’s knowledge is for all,” Cobel replies, as well as the fact that “if [she] ever sought credit, [she’d] be banished.”
Sissy tries to burn the journal, but Cobel saves it, wishing Sissy a painful death. After painting Cobel’s mother as being full of “malice and resentment,” Sissy claims she pulled the intubation tube out of her own throat. Sissy also insists she tried to help Cobel grow and flourish, “but now I see you are a weed, just as she was.” Outside, Hampton honks to warn Cobel that someone else is driving up to the house, and the pair prepare to leave. He allows her to take his truck to make a quick getaway before turning to face the incoming Lumon convoy, muttering, “Come and tame these tempers, ***holes.” As Cobel drives away, she finally takes a call from Devon and is shocked that Mark’s been reintegrating. “Tell me everything,” she says, before driving off into the night.
This episode reveals a hell of a lot about “Cobelvig.” Dr. Reghabi was right: Lumon really did raise her while her mother was ill and dying, and she was a Wintertide Fellow like Miss Huang (Sarah Bock). More importantly, Cobel was also a phenom, and while we don’t know the full scope of it yet, she clearly designed many of the key technologies used in the severance process. Rather than being just a mere floor manager, Cobel will prove a far more powerful foe to Lumon than we initially realized now that she feels betrayed by them, and it seems like Devon’s instinct to call her might have been the best move. She was gathering her mock-ups of Lumon tech before Devon’s call, but we have yet to see what she had planned, how she might help Mark, or what shape the resistance will ultimately take. It’s also notable that, in addition to being a longstanding cult, Lumon’s guilty of a host of child labor law violations, so that’s fun. It looks like Mark and co. just gained a powerful new ally in their fight against Lumon.
New episodes of Severance Season 2 are available to stream every Friday on Apple TV+.

Severance

Severance Season 2 Episode 8 brings back Cobelvig in a huge way, giving the MDR team an exciting new ally alongside an excellent performance from Patricia Arquette.

Release Date

February 18, 2022

Showrunner

Dan Erickson, Mark Friedman

Writers

Dan Erickson

Pros & Cons

It’s a short but packed episode, giving surprising background on how central Harmony Cobel was to the severance process before her ousting from Lumon.
Patricia Arquette gets some of the best material she’s had in the series, giving an engaging and sometimes heartbreaking performance.
It’s a gorgeously shot episode, making full use of the cold, bleak sparseness of Salt’s Neck.