Severance episode 8’s ending is largely about Harmony Cobel revealing a shocking truth about Lumon’s whole severance program. [Spoiler Alert] The entire research is based on her ideas, not Jame Eagan’s. After the Overtime Contingency debacle, Cobel was approached by Helena Eagan with the offer to head the Severance Advisory Council. Cobel wanted to return as floor manager of MDR, but that was apparently out of the question, especially since the position had already been given to Seth Milchick. Cobel didn’t give a straight answer and began driving towards Salt’s Neck. But then she returned to Kier Town and demanded Helena arrange a conversation with the Board because she thought she, at the very least, deserved to be head of MDR again. When Helena did agree to take her to the meeting with the Board, she ran away from Kier Town once again. Now, I assumed that she was over-exaggerating her contribution to the prosperity of Lumon, as she was incredibly desperate to get her old job back. Well, it turns out that without Cobel, Lumon wouldn’t have become what it is today. Why? Let’s find out.
Harmony Created the Severance Program
In the 8th episode of Severance Season 2, we saw Cobel returning to her fictional coastal hometown, Salt’s Neck. Apparently, the place was like an industrial township of Lumon’s. Yes, Imogene and Kier Eagan met at an ether factory, but I’m not sure if Salt’s Neck’s economy was centered around an ether factory as well. But given how the drug addicts in the town were huffing some kind of solution, and ether was used for a long time as an anesthetic, we can assume that’s what was being made over there too. When Lumon moved on to greener pastures, ether became a source of escapism, not income. Talking about moving to greener pastures, apparently the only reason Lumon became so big was because of Harmony Cobel. Much like Miss Huang, Harmony was part of the Wintertide Fellowship program. It’s unclear what this fellowship at the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls exactly entails. At this point, we can only speculate that it involves child labor and educational classes, which parents gladly allow their kids to partake in in the hopes that their offspring will turn out to be a genius and taken under the Eagans’ wing.
Maybe these kids are forced to undergo a series of exams and made to come up with something that’ll enrich Lumon in the future. During Harmony’s time at the program, she evidently invented the severance procedure. There were detailed graphs and sketches of implanting a chip and using it to create two identities. I don’t know why a child would come up with such a thing. Maybe the kids were being taught about dissociation and multiple identities, and they were asked to come up with something that would allow a person to switch between their inner and outer selves on command. And Harmony crafted something that later went on to become the basis for the severance program. She even got an award for it from Jame Eagan. However, the tragedy (if you can even call it that) of it all was that Harmony was given a desk job in the Macrodata Refinement department, while Jame presented himself as the creator of the severance procedure.
Sissy Doesn’t Side With Harmony
Harmony didn’t get any credit for formulating the circuit blueprint, base code, Overtime Contingency, the Glasgow block, and more. Why? Because it was important for the Eagans to maintain this image that they are the be-all and end-all of Lumon. Admitting that their most successful endeavor was the brainchild of a student from their fellowship program would have caused their investors to not trust the family-owned business. Somebody could’ve poached people like Harmony and used their intellect to print billions of dollars. Hence, the Eagans created a cult-like following so that the people who were economically inferior to them saw them as gods. If the working class couldn’t even consider “betraying” the Eagans, then they wouldn’t ever have to worry about stuff like intellectual property and copyright. If that didn’t work, the people depending on Lumon were taught to live in fear.
Harmony said that when the Eagans stole her idea, they told her that if she even dreamt of getting credit, she’d be banished. Just imagine what a threat like that would do to a young girl. It took Harmony decades to muster up the courage to speak about the fact that she still had the original copies of the foundations of the severance program. Sissy, Harmony’s aunt, who was much older than her, still refused to acknowledge Harmony’s genius. Why? Because Mr. Drummond had told her that if Harmony apologized to Lumon, they’d forgive her. To Sissy, destroying her niece’s work and making her beg in front of Lumon was a better option than standing beside her own flesh and blood and fighting against the corporate overlords who had devastated her family and town.
Harmony Probably Won’t Rebel Against Lumon
Now, truth be told, I don’t think Harmony is going to actually reunite with a reintegrated Mark Scout (who has apparently been abandoned by Reghabi but, as per Devon, is doing fine) and lead some kind of rebellion against Lumon by exposing the fact that it was her, not Jame Eagan, who had come up with the severance procedure. There are 2 reasons for that. Firstly, there’s a good chance that by telling the world that she is the mind behind one of the most controversial pieces of technology out there, she’d become the subject of intense scrutiny while Lumon and the Eagans would go scot-free. On paper, Lumon could show that they were shutting down the severance procedure, leaving Harmony to face the ire of the public and the law enforcement authorities, and secretly continue the program once Harmony is imprisoned. Therefore, even though Harmony is the rightful inventor of the severance program, she has to play this game very smartly.
Secondly, I have a feeling that Harmony actually likes Lumon, or at least what it was initially supposed to represent. It is difficult to completely undo one’s conditioning in such a short period of time. Yes, Harmony couldn’t be by her mother’s side because she was working for Lumon. She never got credit for her contributions to the company. And Helena was about to put her on some advisory council to keep her mouth shut. All this is reason enough for Harmony to dismantle Lumon. That said, I think she is simply going to claim copyright fraud and become the CEO of the company, or at least get the Eagans to give up a significant portion of ownership to her. There’s also a distinct possibility that Lumon is simply going to kill Harmony. I know that they haven’t technically killed anyone, but if the Eagan legacy is threatened, and Helena isn’t allowed to sit on the proverbial throne after Jame’s departure, they’ll not hesitate before decommissioning Harmony. And the wheel will continue to turn. Either way, neither is Lumon going anywhere, nor is the severance procedure.
Some Theories and Film References
This whole episode pretty much destroyed the “Is the whole show taking place in a simulation?” theory. But I suppose we can still keep speculating about whether or not Harmony and Mark are part of the Eagan family tree. Given how Sissy sort of described Harmony and her mother, Charlotte, in the same way, I guess both Harmony and Charlotte had some kind of an affair with the Eagans. Maybe Charlotte had a lawfully wedded husband but she had Harmony via a fling with either Baird or Gerhart Eagan. And it’s possible that Harmony had an affair with Jame, and her son is Mark Scout. Yes, I’m predicting that the final twist at the end of this season is going to be that Helena and Mark are in an incestuous relationship and their child is going to be Jame’s successor. In addition to that, I’m making the wild guess that Helena is going to reveal to Harmony that she is an Eagan in order to prevent her from leaking information about her hand in the creation of the severance program.
Okay, crazy theories aside, the wintery setting, the cabin at the end of a town, and Harmony mentioning a toboggan made me think about Citizen Kane. Obviously, in the Orson Welles film, Charles Foster Kane got the inheritance money and became a billionaire, while in Severance, Harmony Cobel got next to nothing. The topic of stealing intellectual property without giving the inventor or co-inventor proper credit got me thinking about The Social Network, Big Fat Liar, Glass Onion, The Founder, and Paycheck. By the way, in Paycheck, which is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1953 short story of the same name, a freelance reverse engineer named Michael Jennings erases his memory every time he’s done working for a company in order to protect their intellectual property rights. The severance procedure is built on that foundation as well! I don’t know if Ben Stiller, or someone from the writing team, has cited Dick’s work as inspiration, but given how I like Paycheck, I think this particular similarity is cool. If the show ends up doing something with time travel or predicting the future, though, I won’t be surprised, and I mean that in a good way. Anyway, what are your thoughts on the ending of Severance Season 2 episode 8? Does the show still have you at the edge of your seat, or are you losing interest in it? Let me know in the comments below.
