Severance Catches Up With Ms. Cobel — and Drops A Huge Reveal
After last week's Gemma showcase, Severance is turning the spotlight on Harmony Cobel this week — and throwing a big twist at us, too.
Last we saw Ms. Cobel, she was driving away from the Lumon offices to parts unknown, and in Friday's episode, we learn she's headed to the bleak rural outpost of Salt's Neck. She parks next to a seaside shack to brush her teeth, watching as a person in a rusted-out RV huffs something and then passes out. She stops at a local diner, where she encounters a man from her past played by Justified alum James Le Gros. "I need a favor," she tells him, "but not here."
They later meet up at an abandoned factory, where she tells him, "I need you to drive me to Sissy's." He reminds her that Sissy is "a f–king pariah here," but she needs to get something there, and she can't be spotted. (Is Lumon looking for her, maybe?) She tries to warm up to him, saying they were "once chums," but he refers to it as "child f–king labor." So how did they know each other, exactly? Were they child acolytes of Lumon, like Ms. Huang is now? And has this whole rusted-out town been abandoned by Lumon?
Cobel ignores a call from Mark's sister Devon as she hides in the back of the diner guy's truck while he drives her to Sissy's. "Tell her to drop dead for me," he tells Cobel as she approaches the house, and a woman emerges to yell at her: "You are not welcome here!" Cobel marches right past her, though, and upstairs to a room where her own heights as a child are marked on the wall — so this is her childhood home. Cobel tries to open a door, but it's locked, and the woman at the door tells her all of her things have been "sold, to the poor." Plus, Mr. Drummond has been calling the house looking for her, she says: "What have you done, little mouse?" (We're guessing this woman is Sissy, aka Cobel's sister or aunt, maybe?)
Cobel demands the key to her mother's room, but Sissy says it'll stay locked until they are all with Kier: "Why do you bring nothing but woe to this house?" Cobel accuses her of pulling the plug on her mother — and gets a slap across the face in response. Sissy says Mom was grateful "to be freed from her suffering," but alas, she was not a believer. Cobel was away at school when her mother was ill, and she was a promising student ("Mr. Eagan saw Kier in you"), but "such a disappointment you turned out to be," Sissy declares. So it seems Cobel was groomed by Lumon from a young age, and Sissy is a devout follower of Kier's teachings to this day.
Cobel finds the key to her mother's room, but Sissy warns her: "All you will find in there is pain." Cobel unlocks the door, finding an empty bed with medical equipment around it. (She also sees a photo of a young girl in a school uniform, which could be a young Cobel.) She lies down on her mother's bed, breathing through her ventilator tube in between sobs. The man from the diner arrives to pick her up, but she's not leaving yet: "I have to find it." He offers her a huff off of his rag, and she takes him up on it, taking a long huff and then laughing: "I haven't done that since I was eight." She pulls him for a kiss, too! He hopes she finds what she's looking for, but she's not worried: "She wouldn't throw it away."
Cobel walks outside to an outdoor shelter filled with shelves and boxes, finding an old yearbook, a bust of Lumon CEO Jame Eagan... and some old papers. She packs it all up and tells the diner guy to start up the truck, stopping inside the house to order Sissy not to tell anyone she was here: "Lumon destroyed this town. You owe them no loyalty." When Sissy tries to say that Cobel owes the Eagans everything, Cobel shoves the papers in her face: "Mine! My designs!" So wait: Cobel invented the severance procedure?! "I was told Kier's knowledge is for all," she recalls, and Jame took all the credit. Sissy tries to throw the papers into the fire, but Cobel yanks them away. Sissy bitterly says her mother removed her own breathing tube, saying she was "more sick in the soul than in the body," and regards Cobel coldly: "You are a weed, just as she was."
When the diner guy warns her that someone's coming — and indeed, we can see headlights approaching — Cobel piles into his truck, papers in hand, and speeds off. She gets another call from Devon, and this time, she answers. Devon tells her Mark is trying to reintegrate with Reghabi, and Cobel scoffs: "She hasn't killed him yet?" Devon wants to try something else, and Cobel tells her to put Mark on the phone, saying to him: "Tell me... everything."
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