Apple TV
There are only two episodes left in Season 2 of Apple TV’s hit series Severance after S02E08 ‘Sweet Vitriol’ aired on Thursday night and immediately began trending worldwide. If you haven’t watched the episode yet there are some potential spoilers ahead so come back after you have!
This marked the second time this Severance season that an episode took place primarily away from the Lumon offices, with the other episode being S02E04 ‘Woe’s Hollow’ where the Macrodata Refinement team spent time together in the wilderness, albeit with a mole within their ranks.
Unlike that episode, S02E08 ‘Sweet Vitriol’ doesn’t focus on Mark Scout and the core Macrodata Refinement team members and instead is an episode primarily devoted to Ms. (Harmony) Cobel who returns to her hometown to see some old faces and dig up some secrets.
Following the episode, actress Patricia Arquette who plays the recently unemployed Ms. Cobel spoke with People magazine about the drastic shifts her character’s role has seen this season. Going back to season 1, Ms. Cobel was the ultimate company gal. She embodied everything we knew about Lumon. She had a menacing demeanor.
Flash forward to now and we learned about where she came from, a factory where Kier Eagan apparently met his wife, and a huge reveal at the end of the episode that I won’t spell out because some of you may not have watched the episode… Anyway, here is what Patricia Arquette hd to say about her character’s changes:
“I think there’s a dawning that comes upon Cobel about the dangerousness of this company and how to them, Cobel is really inconsequential. [They have] that kind of entitled personality that these guys have and the way they view everyone, no matter how committed you’ve been to them. So there’s a part of her that’s starting to listen to an instinct, which I don’t know that she’s always done. That kind of throws her off.”
Patricia Arquette added some more context. She believes she can relate to some of the changes her character is going through, saying:
“Also, suddenly seeing somebody in a whole different light, all of those things all at once, and seeing, ‘Oh, this might actually be a dangerous situation and maybe this isn’t what I want, even though I’m advocating for myself. What is this all about?'” I’ve definitely been in that situation before and I wouldn’t want to be in that situation again. But I do think that’s part of maturation. You hit that wall and then you have to decide in that moment if you’re going to believe in yourself and take good care of yourself, or if you’re going to keep in this pattern, it doesn’t work.”
Do Patricia Arquette’s quotes tell us a ton? Not necessarily, but kind of.
I will say, S02E04 ‘Woe’s Hollow’ felt similar in nature to the previous week where the show runners injected a ton of context in a short amount of time. We learned about Ms. Cobel’s unique upbringing and the role Lumon played in her childhood and molding the person she is.
We see that her being fired by Lumon isn’t merely someone losing a job, it’s someone losing their identity and everything they know… Why exactly Mark Scout’s (Adam Scott) sister Devon is so trusting of Patricia Arquette’s character remains to be seen but I have a feeling the penultimate episode, S02E09 ‘The After Hours’, will be dropping revelation after revelation on us.
Here’s an ‘inside the episode’ for those that might’ve missed some details: