Full spoilers follow for Severance season 2 episode 8.
The layers of Severance season 2’s biggest mysteries are really being peeled back now. After the Gemma-focused seventh episode that aired last week (February 28), the increasingly popular Apple show’s latest entry is all about Harmony Cobel. And, while it’s the series’ shortest episode so far, it’s no less revelatory than the others.
So, what does season 2 episode 8, titled ‘Sweet Vitriol’, tell us about Lumon’s former Severed Floor manager? And what do we learn about the clandestine biotech company and its mysterious Cold Harbor project? I’ll answer (or, at least, try to answer) those questions and more here.
This is your final warning: full spoilers immediately follow for Severance‘s latest installment. Turn back now if you haven’t watched it yet.
1. Harmony Cobel has at least one living relative – and they don’t get along
Reuniting us with Harmony Cobel for the first time since Severance season 2 episode 3, ‘Sweet Vitriol’ sees her return to Salt’s Neck, aka the remote town she used to call home. Until this episode aired, we didn’t know where she was going – indeed, our last dealings with Harmony came in Severance season 2 episode 2. Back then, she had walked away from a showdown meeting with Helena Eagan and Lumon’s board, and the only time we’d seen her since was the aforementioned brief appearance in episode 3.
Anyway, Harmony tracks down Hampton, a childhood friend who worked alongside Harmony at Salt’s Neck’s Lumon Ether factory when they were kids. Long story short: she persuades a hesitant Hampton to drive her to visit someone called Sissy. Harmony thinks Lumon is following her and, if she turns up at Sissy’s home in her company car, Lumon will recognize it, track Harmony down, and force her to return to Lumon to beg forgiveness for her indiscretions.
As it turns out, Sissy isn’t just a random individual – she’s Harmony’s aunt. It’s implied that Sissy – full name Celestine ‘Sissy’ Cobel – used to work for Lumon, too, as evidenced by the plaque that’s hung on one of the Cobel family home’s walls (see above).
But this is no happy family reunion. Based on the arguments they have throughout ‘Sweet Vitriol’, there’s clear animosity between the pair. They know how to push each other’s buttons as well, with Harmony goading Sissy over the death of Harmony’s mom (more on this later), and even insinuating that Sissy was responsible for her sister’s demise. Indeed, Harmony suggests that Sissy was the one who ended her mother’s suffering by removing the medical apparatus she needed in order to breathe.
2. The breathing tube in Harmony’s possession belonged to her mom
As I said above, ‘Sweet Vitriol’ reveals that the breathing tube in Harmony’s possession belonged to her mother. That’s a mystery that’s lingered since the Apple TV+ show’s first season aired, so it’s about time we learned its true origins.
Given what we learn in this episode, it seems the Cobel family’s matriarch had some form of lung disease or breathing difficulties (was she an Ether addict like everyone else in Salt’s Neck? Possibly). Eventually, Harmony’s mom needed a ventilator to help her breathe, which left her bedridden and in need of constant care from Sissy. Harmony wasn’t able to help due to her school studies – even worse, she didn’t even get to say goodbye to her mom before Sissy supposedly ended her suffering.
Clearly, Harmony has held onto her mom’s breathing tube as a keepsake to remind her of the fact that she couldn’t see her mother before she passed.
It’s a moment made all the more tear-jerking when Harmony finds the key to unlock the door to her mom’s room, attaches the breathing tube to the ventilator, lies on her mother’s bed, and uses the breathing apparatus to mask her sobbing as her repressed childhood trauma finally rises to the surface.
3. Harmony is a Wintertide Fellowship graduate
As part of Harmony’s homecoming, we also learn that she’s a Wintertide Fellowship graduate. Sissy reveals as much during in episode 7’s second act, and it’s later reconfirmed when Harmony finds her Annual Reminiscences book from her time at Myrtle Eagen School for Girls.
For those who may have forgotten: the Wintertide Fellowship program is the same one that Ms Huang is currently ‘studying’ for as the Severed Floor’s deputy manager. We know this to be true since it was first mentioned by current Severed Floor manager Seth Milchick in Severance season 2 episode 5.
I predicted that Ms Huang was being prepped to become a future Severed Floor manager in my Severance season 2 episode 6 theories piece and, on this Cobel-based evidence, it seems I could be right. It’s unclear, though, how much more studying a Wintertide Fellow has to do once they graduate before they’re offered a job at Lumon.
4. Harmony Cobel invented the severance procedure, not Jame Eagan
Well, if this isn’t a turn-up for the books. It was Harmony, not current Lumon CEO Jame Eagan, who invented the severance procedure.
Until now, we’d been led to believe that Jame devised the revolutionary medical technique. However, ‘Sweet Vitriol’ confirms that this isn’t the case.
After getting high on Ether with Hampton, Harmony realizes that her mother wouldn’t have discarded the item that Harmony has desperately tried to find throughout this episode. In a moment of enlightenment, she heads to an outdoor store that’s dug into the fields around her family home.
There, she finds her Wintertide Fellowship award, which contains a secret compartment. Unlocking it, Harmony rediscovers an old notepad that – shock horror – is full of her original designs for the severance procedure. That includes many of its supporting concepts and mechanisms, too, including the base code for the severance chip, and the Overtime Contingency and Glasgow Block programs.
All of Harmony’s hard work is almost for nought, however. After she confronts Sissy and shows her that it was she who invented the severance technique, Sissy attempts to burn the evidence in her wood fire, but Harmony stops her. Now that she’s armed with this proof of concept, it’ll be fascinating to see how Harmony uses it to potentially overthrow the Eagan family and/or destroy Lumon once and for all (NB: For what it’s worth, I think the former is more likely than the latter – why would Harmony burn down the company that her genius ideas helped to build?).
5. Cold Harbor’s origins are tied to Harmony Cobel’s home town
Project Cold Harbor was first mentioned in Severance season 2 episode 1. Since then, the show’s fanbase has fallen over itself trying to work out what it is. I gave my opinion in my Severance season 2 episode 1 theories piece and, while I was right that it has something to do with Gemma/Ms Casey, its true purpose is still an unknown quantity after last week’s chapter.
That said, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Harmony not only dreamt up the severance procedure, but also hails from a icy, coastal region of the world. Cold Harbor could simply be the codename attached to one of the test rooms we first saw in episode 7, but I think there’s more to it than that. After all, if Harmony created the severance operation, she probably had a hand in the development of the test rooms that Gemma is used as a guinea pig for.
Harmony, then, may hold the key to helping Mark rescue Gemma – and, with Harmony on her way to meet Mark and Devon after that phone call in episode 8’s final scene, maybe Harmony has officially turned her back on Lumon and will look to punish them for *ahem* freezing her out of the company.
6. The Nine are the core pillars or values that Lumon’s cult-like followers worship
There are plenty of mysteries that need to be solved before one of the best Apple TV+ shows ends, but ‘Sweet Vitriol’ just gave use another one to unravel: who or what is The Nine?
Initially, it appears that The Nine is just a passing reference to the location of the Cobel household. Indeed, Hampton suggests as much when chatting to Harmony outside of Salt’s Neck’s decaying Lumon factory. However, Sissy later tells Harmony that their mom might have found solace in The Nine if she’d been a Kier devotee. So, it seems The Nine are another aspect of the Kier doctrine that his acolytes follow.
That appears to be the case, too. As Harmony searches for the key to her mom’s bedroom, we see some cards laid out in an orderly fashion on a table (see the image above). Each one bears an unusual word, too, such as Probity, Wiles, Verve, Benevolence, and Vision (alright, the last one isn’t weird, but work with me here!).
Where have we seen and/or heard uncommon, ‘Ye Olde’ words before? Okay, yes, whenever Milchick speaks – but, no, I’m talking about the Four Tempers (Woe, Malice, Frolic, and Dread) that Kier tamed and which are part of the Kier philosophy. I predict, then, that The Nine are the opposite of the Tempers – i.e., they’re core pillars or values that Kier’s followers, erm, follow in order to live a happy life.
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