Severance Season 2 Doesn’t Know What To Do With This Main Character

This article contains major spoilers for “Severance” season 2 episode 8, “Sweet Vitriol.”

So, Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) got her own “Chikhai Bardo” — and yet, it did nothing. In fact, it could be argued that “Sweet Vitriol” does Cobel a dire disfavor, especially since her episode airs immediately after “Severance” season 2’s most disturbing episode that was equally character-centric with its focus on Gemma (Dichen Lachman), and packed so full of revelations that it may have revealed Lumon’s bizarre endgame in its entirety.

Cobel’s “stern leader with increasingly cultist undertones and creepy real-world behavior” schtick works very well until her downfall at the tail end of “Severance” season 1. With the all the trippy mind-benders of “Severance” season 2however, she’s truly fallen by the wayside, so it made sense that the show attempts to define her place in the grander story. Unfortunately, “Sweet Vitriol” fails in this task. The big revelation at the end of Cobel’s trip to Salt’s Neck is that she was the original engineer of Lumon’s various severance procedures, and seems to be willing to join forces with Mark and the others to get back at Lumon. The thing is, this does little to revitalize the character.

Why should the audience care who did the heavy lifting with the assorted aspects of Lumon’s corporate hellscape? After all, “Severance” has made emphatically clear that the question at the center of the show is “Why does Lumon do all of this?” and not “How did Lumon create the tools for doing this?” However, that’s just one part of the character’s issues after “Sweet Vitriol” — in fact, the episode may have inadvertently revealed that “Severance” has made this formerly key character nigh redundant.

Where “Sweet Vitriol” does excel is its depiction of Lumon as a malevolent real-life business entity that imposes its Kier cult unto laborers … while happily stealing credit for their work and turning its back on them once profit margins drop and factories close. This adds welcome tangibility to the secretive megacorporation, which the show so often depicts with strange corridor mazes and mysterious practices. Unfortunately, the episode makes clear that none of the pieces of the narrative puzzle are Cobel-shaped anymore.

Cobel has been a Severed Floor authority figure, but Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) has been far more compelling in this role even before he took over her director job. As for her activities as an ominous figure who operates among the innies and outies alike, “Woe’s Hollow” handed that role to Helly’s outie Helena Eagan (Britt Lower) on a silver platter, with characters like Ólafur Darri Ólafsson’s Mr. Drummond increasingly in that mix as well. As for Cobel’s apparent new role as a rogue severance/reintegration expert, Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) is already wearing those shoes and wearing them well.

Of course, this is still “Severance,” so it’s entirely possible that the show will eventually roll out a completely new role for Cobel that puts her front and center of all things in an unprecedented fashion. However, you’d expect to have seen hints of this in an episode that features her as its sole focal point, but after “Sweet Vitriol” it’s very hard to see where Cobel could go from here or how she can be salvaged. As it stands, continuing to force this character upon us without a clear idea of where she fits in the narrative seems like an uncharacteristic misstep by a show that’s famous for making every scene count.