Warning today's episode Today spoilers for episode two eight of Severance Sweet Vitriol. If you have not watched that, watch it come back here you warning. Hello, my name is Jason Concepcion and I'm rosday Night and welcome back to Excervader of the podcast where we dive deep in your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture coming from our podcast or we're bringing you three episodes week every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday on Saturday.
In today's episode, we are recapping and discussing the raw, the sad, and depressing new episode of Severance Sweet Vitriol, which.
Is currently on Apple TV Plus. We will be recapping the episode. Then we're gonna fall up on our theory corner and see where that's at. Maybe let's get to.
It, okay. Episode two eight Sweet Vitriol, directed by Benjamin Stiller, written oh by series creator Dan Erickson, Adam County, and Casey Perry. This is a Kobel bottle and a little bottle of ether for all you fans of Cobel out and also the shortest run time of the season, and I think almost of the series I need to go and look back, but just over thirty five minutes, Cobell is driving what I assume to be north.
It feels like somewhere north, especially.
In the North Ish, to a desolate coastal town called salts Neck. It will turn out that this is her hometown. On the way, Devin is like blowing up her phone, but Cobel is just gonna.
Leave her on read.
She pulls up to the town and is brushing her teeth and she's just looking around. And we get our first look at this husk of a town where as we will see, everyone who lives there is somehow attached to the illicit ether trade. They are either huff in the stuff out of a rag or as with Cobel's former coworker Hampton, selling it. So she pulls up to
this diner, the Drippy Pot Cafe. Incredibly, the manager Hampton is her old colleague aka former child laborer, alongside Harmony Cobell at the Lumen Plant, which is on the outskirts of town back.
In the day.
There is clearly something happened between them. Because clearly there's something between them I seen as something like almost anger,
but just under the surface. Yes, Cobell says, wow, the town looks like shit doesn't look anything like I remember remembered it and Hampton, and one of my favorite parts of this episode is this little spiel that Hampton gives, which is he basically goes into the corporate jargony reasons that the town now looks like absolute fucking shit, and it's clear that he's like regurgitating this corporate pr speaks story that was given to the inhabitants of the town
when Luman pulled out, She's like, can we go to the factory to go discuss some things? So they go there out by the factory, Cold Harbor question mark, Yeah, the entire town mark Cold Harbor.
They definitely want us to think that because it's literally icy cold, coupled by the ocean, webs can come and go.
So yes, they have an annoyingly cryptic conversation out here. And I will say this was the one. This is the This is not a bad episode, although I've seen it as semi divisive, and.
I think it's a little divisive. I think it widened well, we'll talk about mobile. I think it widens the wild of severance that is very different to what the peak of the show has been. So I'm I'm not surprised that it got people.
Yes, but this is very This is an episode is very dependent on those kind of maybe like the lowest value cryptic conversations that Severance is known for, where two characters or more characters are having a conversation with the important information kind of lifted out that they know and we don't. And this is one of those episodes where I'm like noticing that.
They're just having a scryptic conversation.
Anyway, They're talking about Sissy, who it will turn out, is Kobel's maternal aunt and a full on cure cultist who took in Harmony when Harmony's mom was was ill with ether related lung disease. Coobel admits that listen, I've got some lumin heat on me. They're mad at me, and so they're after me for whatever reason, and I need to go talk to Sissy, but also I can't be seen in case anybody's watching the house. So Cobel
is like, can you take me up there? So Cobel then drops some cure lore about the factory, saying, you know Kiri, which we've seen, We've seen the painting right where yeah.
There's a g I will say if you are not somebody who watches the recaps, this is a great episode because I have to say, if there is an editing award for a recap and a previously on that actually tells you every single thing you need to know, this episode has an unbelievable recap where you get some really
great quotes and kind of context from Helena. There's this great moment where she and me and Joel were kind of going mad about this one where she shows her saying to Harmony in a previous episode like you overestimate your brilliance and underestimate your blessings. And you can start to see the bitterness and kind of why the vegans
might not like Harmony in this episode. And then yeah, we get the Imagiant and Kia paintings and kind of the the we it's such a good raycap, Like give that head some money, because I was really like, whoa they they drool the threads together for me? But yes, so we've seen the paintings. We kind of know a bit more. But now we're getting the real law.
Right, So apparently according to the Egan lower kir Met.
His partner imagen imaging imaging.
Yeah, I'm a giant imagine they say it and strange. They say it in a stranger basically imagen at the.
Ether factory, and Hampton is like, oh was her Like were her lungs ravaged as well? And then Cobel is like, take me up to Sissy. So they go up there, and Cobel rides in the in the bed of Hampton's pickup just in case the Luogoons are watching. Hampton is clearly not a fan of Sissy at all. Cobel knocks on the door, barges in, and Cissy's like, what the fuck are you doing here? She just goes in and
starts looking around, and we see that there. You know that clearly Harmony and Hampton grew up here because we see their growth markers on the door, like any house that has children in it. And Cobel is looking for desperately looking around for her stuff. There's something in her stuff that was that she needs. There's a plaque on the wall announcing that Sissy real name Celestine. Cobel was like the lumin version of employee of the Month, but it's like employee.
Of the Quarter, like the striver of the quarter.
You're like a cult follower of yes.
Like so, Harmony's like, where's my stuff, Where's my childhood stuff? Where's my stuff from when I was a kid, when I was a student, when I was in the Fellow Tide Wintertide Fellowship.
I need all that stuff. Cecy's like, well, I sold it to the.
Poor everyone has bo babe, why did you sell it to?
Yeah?
Why did you do that?
And Harmony's like, well, has anybody from Lumen come.
By or called?
And He's like, yeah, mister Drummond called. And it's clear that Sissy knows that Harmony is in some kind of trouble. Harmony immediately runs over, disconnects the phone, rips the fucking cordla phone, and then is like, give me the key to my mom's room. And here's an interesting exchange. She then asks Cissy, what were my mother's last last words? And it basically accuses Cissy of like against.
Her mother's will, pulling her mother.
Off of life support, and Cissy is basically implies that her mother wanted her to take her off life support and then says of Harmony's mom quote, if only she was a believer, perhaps she would have found solace in the Nine. The nine, you know, the command.
Potentially, which is also of cure. Yeah, okay, So if I'm dying of lung disease from either recycle, I'm going to be I'm like, I'm gonna be thinking about vision of witch, realty, benevolence, nimbleness, wild, how you.
Will be lifted away. But I found the the last word it felt very weighted, to the point where I was like, it almost made me wonder if Sissy.
Truly knew her reasons for.
In a severance kind of way, truly understood what happened when she took Mom off life support, was that her doing that was There's some because clearly, you know, Ether was one and early product of Women, which we now understand is a pharma tech kind of company makes a lot of products, but forman tech seem to be the mainstays, and that Ether was an early attempt at like wiping people's minds so that they would not experience and the rigor of the work they were doing.
They were like, oh, you can basically just use ether as essentially an anesthetic, but a walking anesthetic, because ether is an anesthetic. But they were like, can you get people to be on it so they don't notice how bad their lives are, which is honestly very real. Like up north in England in places where there was a lot of minds, there was big like pain huffing culture and like different kind of substance abuse because of how bad it was to work in the minds and to
be a child laborer and stuff. So this is actually like very depressingly real. But it's interesting to see how they're now going to take that and as we learn later in this episode, kind of how it became severance as we know it now.
We get a lot of information from this back and forth argument between Harmony and her aunt, including that Harmony's mom really started to serious declined when Harmony was at school and Cissy kept this from her. She said, I
would have come back to take care of her. But Sissy is like, no, it was so important that you were in the Wintertide Fellow and like you're a Wintertide fellow and Keer saw you with his own eye, Jamee, and you know it was like you are you're such an incredible striver, like you were hand hicked by the Egans. He saw Kier and you yes, say James saw here in you. All that kind of stuff Harmony is like, well,
what a drummond want when he called? And Sissy doesn't say, but basically is like, just go back, ask forgiveness from the Egans and they will agree to forgive you. And Harmony looks down in Cissy's hands as she's playing with some kind of like jame Egan dollhead, which will become clear what this reminds her of later, but that sparks
something in her. She remembers something about the things she's looking for, runs up to Sissy's room and then basically like cop tosses it, looks through everything, finds the key to mom's room, and then goes to open the door. And we're gonna take a quick break to.
Listen to a word from our sponsors.
Then we're going to talk about what is inside there, and we're back.
First of all, I would have just kicked the door open, because this house looks like it hasn't been updated built like one. Yeah, just like bad boy in worry about the Pompy.
Is strong compared to everyone else here, who's like fucked up on etha like she.
Anyway, she gets the key, she goes inside and there's her mother's room just as it must have appeared when she was ill and when she passed away. You know, the the bed is raised at at like a forty five degree angle, so that which is easier for people with bathing issues. It's easier to breathe when you're resting.
When you're sitting up slightly.
We see the breathing machine, We see her moth eaten, her mother's moth eaten clothes in the closet. We see a picture what I assume to be Harmony when she was a child. And then Harmony lays on the bed. And it's interesting because I perceive this as she puts the breathing tube to her mouth and begins breathing through it. And I perceive this as she's trying to get in touch with her mother's last week's, last.
Months exactly like what did it feel like. It's a really unsettling and kind of depressing image because there's also the duality of like she's like laying there like breathing into her breathing in and out, and it's very similar to kind of the ether huffing kind of breathing that you would do. There's a lot of layers here, and I have to say which I'm way you feel about
the episode. Patricia Ucat is absolutely killing it, like this is a powerhouse episode and I wouldn't be surprised with that trying to put forward for some awarned contention here.
So she Harmony cries herself sleep, and then we see this image that I originally thought was like something under a microscope, like crystals and her microscope, but which our discord chief Heidi tells me is like a satellite shot of ice that they then superimposed over the waters in the bay, kind of sloshing around against the testing. And then time passes and Harmony is awakened to the sound of Hampton and Sissy arguing as he comes in to basically look for and he's he's just like, you.
Know, it's been a long time, and I'm freezing like what.
He outside of a truck? Why are you having a nap? Like, please, it's very cold out there.
Harmony is like, I can't find it, whatever it is, and they talk about her mom. Hampton liked her. When Harmony says, well you barely knew her, he says she hated lumin more than I did. That's all I needed to know. So interesting interesting details.
Yeah, it also feels like adds to the idea that Sissy probably took her off life support or you know, killed her, because potentially, I don't know, maybe she was an early hater of Lumen in a way that could impact the rest of what we see going on in the rest of the seas.
Hampton then asks like, do you want to get huh, pulls out an ether rag and gets into it. You know, Harmony huffs a little, rag gets into that rag, and she's like, I haven't done that since I was eight, And it was clear this was part of the work day, because Hampton is like, you're ready to man the that for ten hours, which is just dire.
Yeah.
She then tells.
Hampton that it's shameful that you sell this, and they kiss, and then suddenly Harmony's like, oh, now I'm getting another piece of where that stuff might be. And we're realizing that whether it's ether or her long life, Harmony's memory is spotty as like, not as spotty as obviously someone has been severed, but like she's trying to claw back that year in a way that many characters.
There's still stuff she can't remember.
So she gets the idea and she's like, Sissy would not have thrown my stuff away or given it to the poor.
I don't believe that.
She goes outside to like a kind of underground pantry, a cold room, and she finds her stuff, including like a lumin yearbook and with her like Wintertide fellow right up in there, and some stuff animals, and then she finds her Wintertide like Fellowship award bust of James Egan. And that is the thing that sparked when she looked in Cissy's hands and saw her holding like a Jame Egan doll head. This is what sparked in her because
inside of the bust, she unscrews the base. Inside there is a rolled up leather bound notebook, and then she goes. She immediately runs into Sissy, and she's brandishing the rolled up notebook and she's like, I'm leaving now. Don't tell the lumins that I was here. And Sissy's like, I would never lie to an Egan.
Oh, come on.
Sissy is like, listen, you owe the Egans. You're fealty because of what they lifted you up from nothing and the fellowship, and look at your great success and all the things you've done in your life. It's all because of them, so you can never go against them. Harmony then says, oh, I owe them, and she opens the notebook and she's screaming that like, basically, severance was her idea.
Quite to me.
It's the design, the.
Chip, the surgery, the brain waves, the glass go block, all the fucking shit that is involved in the process, the technology created by her and stolen essentially by Jame Egan and passed off as his own. She Harmony says, like, they told me if I sought credit for this, that I would be banished whatever that means from the e
I guess from the Egan cult. And Sissy then tries to burn the notebook, which come on, baby, why Harmony snatches it out of the fire and says basically that she hopes that she dies, and then Sissy's like, well, oh yeah, well your mom pulled the tube out herself. She clawed it out of her neck, and Harmony's like, oh well, I don't fucking believe you. Meanwhile, Hampton is
honking because someone's coming. Harmony gets into Hampton's car is like, I'm leaving, and Hampton is like, well, I'm gonna stay here, and face whatever this is, and then Harmony speeds off and you see these headlights approaching and Hampton says, come to take these tempers assholes. Meanwhile in the truck, Harmony finally answers her phone. It's Devin. Devin is like, oh
my god, thank God. Like Mark is integrating, but we want to we want to try something else, she says, and immediately Harmony understands that only Regabi could have done this, the reintegration process with Mark, and then she's like, put Mark on the phone, markets on the phone, and then we basically cut.
Yeah, She's like tell me everything.
Yeah to Oh, what's the name of that bed?
Oh everyone's favorite patent?
Oh yeah it was what was it? Firewoman? I think by the Cult.
Which pointed here's a little trivia, a little trivia for you. Yeah, very pointed, right. The Cult also a little trivia that I think the lead singer for the Cult was like in the Running for Play Jim Morrison in the Doors movie. Anyway, let's go to a quick ad and then come back and talk about this episode. And we're back, Rosie. We got a lot of interesting stuff in this episode. It is a little light of an episode in terms of connected to something to everything else.
But your thoughts on this episode.
I think that it broadens the world in a way I do find intriguing, but I give.
You some of the really important backstory.
It gives us some of the backstory. It also kind of hints at what is out there, because I've always thought one of the most interesting things about separance is we know what the Ennis are trying to escape, but we never really know what the our ties are kind of living through, Like is the Egan cult something that is in control of the world like we we it's there's They could do a broad kind of rug pull where they reveal and I think this does broaden it
a bit. I get why people were kind of shocked by the shift, but I do also think that there is something very interesting about Harmony's journey here and the you know, yeah, it is as I saw a lot of people talking about, it's very interesting to be like, oh, a woman made this and it was stolen, but also then she stayed within the company and used it to exploit many other people, And I think that it adds
a moral complexity. I also think that Regarbi and Harmony clearly have some kind of past together and I'm interested also to know. I believe what Sis she said when she said that Harmony's mom pulled out her own breathing tube. And I think the reason why is because Harmony's mom was told that her daughter had created this kind of even more extreme, horrible thing, and I think she was horrified. I thought this was a very hard episode to watch,
but not because it wasn't good. It's just incredibly depressing. Amply, it is a very very depressing episode something I mean Severance has had. I just think that they the genre concept and the mystery when You're in with the Innies has kind of had a lightness to it that this episode does not have.
You know, it's it's a very very bleak episode, down to the landscape being bleak and like it's almost lifeless, like a moonscape this episode. I agree with you in everything you're saying about, you know, the harmony of it all. I think that the way I perceived this, the complexity of her creating the Severance procedure, is that, like I
think it was an act of love. I think she saw her mom be damaged by the mines, she watched everyone around her be damaged by breathing in this ether, and she thought, okay.
Since.
I mean, like, it's crazy that the culture of working for Egan is like, we do such crazy, rigorous, dangerous work that you want to not remember you were there when you leave, Like, how can we make how can we make that part of it essentially like a kind of punch clock slavery situation, you know, where you're a slave when you punch in, but then you leave and
you're and you're fine, you're yourself. And clearly coming up with this procedure was an act of love, almost like the others would have saved my mom's life, her lungs would not have been ravage. Here's a way that you can separate yourself from the dangerous work that you do and still be able to like have a family and
have an enriching life outside of that. Not understanding the horrors of the thing that she had created clearly, and it's uncles to me now whether she really believes it, believes in the horrors of what she's mad having seen all the things that she's must have seen. So I thought that I really enjoyed that part of it. I thought it was so interesting. This is a good episode not a bad one. I think, on the scale of severance is so high quality that it's like there are no bad episodes.
But this was the one episode.
Where I became a little worried as I texted you about the Donnie Darko syndrome, which is that when the mystery is active and you don't know air quotes what the show is about, there's this propulsion to you know, there's this fascination, almost like a magical hold that the story has on you, where it's so intriguing, but as
soon as you know, it becomes dumb. And this only I was only worried about it because you barely notice watching this show and being a fan of it, that almost all the mystery would go away if only certain
characters would just have a conversation. For instance, if we would just like have a conversation or watch a conversation between like Cobell and Regabi, or like a full conversation between Mark and Regaby, almost everything that we were wondering about would be like lifted, like the veil would be lifted. The fact that we're not annoyed by that shows us what a great show this is.
And I think, mm hmm. I while I thought this was a good episode. I hope not too many more of these, because.
I'm interested to see where they go next.
A few more of these and people will start to be like, why can't we have that conversation with Gaby, Why can't we know more about what's going on in Yeah?
So I agree, no, no, no, no, I agree. I think I've definitely seen a lot of very divisive reactions online as well, like is this the first bad episode of Severance? Like I don't think, no, this is not a badly made episode of television. Now does it fit into your world of what you were hoping Severance would be? Now that's the question, because I do think something else that's really interesting that this episode raises is we've will be and like, you know, clones, goats, like what's going on?
But also I'm like, miss Wang, maybe it's just child labor, Like she's another child, just child labor, and they you do it. So I'm interested because I think that the moral complexity of where this show is at could get very very very intriguing and messy and real if they've got the chops. I do believe the show has the chops. I also want before we get into kind of where
this leaves us before the last two episodes. I want super producer Joelle to jump in because she is the queen of theories on this show, and I know she has a lot of thoughts about Severs episode eight from season two.
Hi, guys, Hi, there's really just one theory for me this week, and I text you guys about it, and it's a thing that's been talked about in sevent for a really long time. You have all these illusions to the Civil War. Cold Harbor is a big battle that the South one really decimated the North during the Civil War. People have been online being like, hey, we don't want this show, for very obvious reasons, to be about slavery.
But I'm just like, with the child labor infusion this week, I just have to think, like, is this show just about the impact of slavery on labor and throughout like American history, Like, there's a reason we keep going back to all of these different these and time periods. There's a reason. Like I really liked this episode. I was kind of surprised by the reaction, although maybe I shouldn't be.
Bottle episodes are notoriously Yeah, not a bottle episode but these all shoots of like one character far away from everybody are often controversial, but to me, I always feel like this is the writers being able to expand the story in such an interesting way and watching Harmony navigate her past, and especially like that whole breathing tube scene. So you guys mentioned, oh like it. It's sort of like the huffing. It's sort of her connected to her mother.
To me, I was like, is she suckling? Is this her like perverting to being a right?
Yeah, in a way, there's that too, for sure.
I was like this, this whole episode to me, really cemented a lot, to the point where I was like, are there mysteries left in this show?
Like hop like this is a series.
About it's just just about the impact of slavery, labor and throughout history. And I was so compelled by that as like a thought experiment, And I was curious if that works for you guys, or if that idea of that it's off putting for you. I know a lot of people are like, please don't touch this, Oh messy, it's so difficult.
Well, I think that obviously in America, first of all, slavery as a practice is like sadly an age old and global industry or was, and it has a very specific and I think different kind of connotation here in America, which I'm not super eager to is like the basis of a show, but I don't think that that's necessarily what this show is about. I think what this show is about is like the gray line between work and exploitation.
And like one thing I was thinking about with this show, you have this factory in this town, and then it closes down and you see the devastation that it leaves behind. But when it was active, it was actively devastating the community, getting kids looked on ether and then it's pulled out and you get this very cynical, cutting mini speech from Hampton in which he spouts the kind of corporate capitalist jargon about the reasons that they pulled the heart out
of the town. The heart of the town was this terrible factory that was killing everybody. But now that it's gone, nobody's happy about that either. And I think that's what this show is about. It's about the fact that we've created this exploit tative system that nurtures and sustains and exploits us all and the only thing worse than this terrible exploitive system is if it goes away, And I think, because there's nothing else, there's only chaos afterwards.
And to me, that's what this show is about.
It's about quote air quotes late stage capitalism, which is late stage capitalism to me means we don't have any other ideas except this horrible thing that we are actively.
Doing that's getting more horrible.
Yeah, So that to me is what this show is about, not necessarily not slavery.
It's about exploitation.
It's like, yeah, we're trying to like recreate or something like that, which I've seen some theory.
Oh yeah, you see that theory.
That's the case. But I do think if when you look at labor structure through it's consistently like our laws are constantly Oh, let me, it's the reason we have, like was like two thirty minimm wage for waiters and things like that. I think like that thread is being constantly put to your point, this space now where people are like, hey, as awful as places, I would rather just be high so I can survive it because I don't seem like an outside of it, And I think
that works really well. I'm excited to see Harmony re enter the picture. The thing that was also really interesting to me and Rosie and I Sideline talked about this a little bit, was like this the way people felt about Harmony after this episode. I thought it was really interesting because it's massively divided. Some people were like, hey, you were a part of the system, and then you created a device that a sort of allows you to survive being a part of that system, which I think is haunting.
Probably came from yeah, like she doesn't want about how was it used.
Yeah, because it's really interesting to think about, Like, Okay, so Harmony is both a victim and a supporter of the system, right and and potentially making the lives of folks within the sysem much worse. But she was trying to do that by alleviating the daily stress and impact of the ten hours you have to be on the grind. And I think that there are a lot of folks who are like, oh, she's a hero now because she sees the evil and she's marching back.
But we don't know, I mean, we don't know. I'm like, guys, I will say too ahead of the game. We don't know what she's I don't know. Also, I just want to say before Joel and Jason, I both think you're right. I think that this is a show and I do think that to talk about exploitation in America well around the world and the way labor works is to recognize that when slavers were stopped from owning people, they had
to find new ways to exploit people. And I do think that the show wants to reckon with how that impacts global economy and capitalism. And I also want to say, and I'm sorry if you don't want to hear me, make this about real life right now, how you can put your ear off song, because I know sometimes people
get tired of me. But like, guess what, Slavery still exists, and it's called the prison industrial system, and in its own way, severance is very much akin to that, because it is this idea of you go into somewhere and when you are in there, you are allowed to be a slave, even though in every other part of American culture allegedly slavery does not exist. But in the prison
system people are used as indentured servitude labor. They don't earn money, and giant corporations make millions and millions of dollars of the off of them, huge companies like Walmart, like you know, Victoria's Secret, Like, there are companies that do that. And I think that if this show has the chops and it is exploring that, I think there's
a lot of similarities there that could be explored. And obviously child labor is a part of that too, because that has long been a way that working class people and people without opportunities to move up the social lata in capitalism have been exploited. But yes, so I think that it's really interesting. I don't think we're getting any of those answers in the next two episodes. I think that's like a season three season full type.
You know, I've been thinking about this before we dive into a real theory corner, I think it's maybe useful to just kind of list off what we actually know for sure, and so let's start here Lumen. Lumen is a company with its roots in the mid nineteenth century.
We know that they started, you know, with topical salves and clearly ether this is kind of like early pharmaceutical industry, and are now a company that works in the kind of confluence of tech medicine and pharmaceuticals somewhere in there, right.
And they do.
They probably do other stuff as well, but it seems like medical supplies, technology and pharmaceuticals is where Lumen works because we remember, I remember there was like a piece of dialogue earlier in the show where they were talking about someone was sick because they had taken like non lumin medication. So we understand that there's Helene I had
taken non limit. We know that we know that Severance was created by a Harmony Cobell who was then the manager of the Severed Floor but lost her job in the Severance Uprising for reasons that are kind of still like a little.
Is it because they felt like she failed because the seven people were able to rebel? I'm interested in that also, how much I think it's.
Because I think it's because she was being too nice or what they perceived to be. It's very clear to me that they part of what they like about Miltchik is milk Chick. When they're like, you got to crack down, Meltchick's like fine, and Cobel was not willing, perhaps to crack down in the way that Miltchick is.
Cobell did what she wanted to do.
She did what she wanted to do.
At this point, like when they're like, hey, be less smart, he's like, all right, I'll grow up. I'll just yell at myself in a mirror until I conform to year they were. His harmony is like I'll pretend to be a milk helper and like teach this woman.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well I think like the introduction of miss Casey into the severed flass clearly her idea, and it went badly. We know that you can be severed multiple times, which was a big question mark, right. We know that specifically the board level people and probably management level people look at Innis with utter disdain. And we know that that this process was seen, at least in some leadership circles in Lumen as a kind of way to like rehabilitate people who were either criminals as we saw with Bert,
or maybe something else. Is that all we know?
But that's a lot, that's a lot. We That's the funny thing, like Joelle said where she was like she watched this episode and she was like, is there a mystery? Like is it just about this person who is like escape child labor by creating apparently a more humane way to create a labor force and is now living with it.
I think it really could be that simple. I'm interested to see if they do a big swing kind of genre hint moment at the end, because they have to have that hook in the last two episodes to make people want to watch season three.
Here's what the miss there's there's two mysteries to me. One is why is Jemma down there? Like why what does specifically her being down there accomplish for the company, Because clearly that's important, right and Mark's work with Cold Harbor is tied up in that. That's to me the central mystery. Why is Jemma down there? Why they kidnap her?
Why do they make her disappear? And why is she so important or whatever the project is, because what the project is, I think is kind of that the central mystery. And then the second overall missing piece, to me, that is kind of mystery, and we've gotten hints of it. What does the rest of the world know about Severance and what do they think about it?
Like we get these hints.
That like, oh, the story of your innies became very popular, like on the outside, it was all over the news like this. Uprising notes we get these hints right where they say stuff like that, but we don't really know what people almost.
It's like, is it just a company town.
We don't really know what people think about it. And I think that's an important part of this, because do we live in a world in which this is fine, right, or do we live in a world in which this is not?
Okay? That's kind of a big deal.
I got a hint of it when Dylan was interviewing at the Door Factory and it was all going well until the guys are like leaning into like, oh, you're severed and so definitely, and then a little bit when we go to Birt's place and when you're like, okay, so the church is okay with it. Is it like connected to Lumen in a larger way or is it that like there's something really about that where they're like, hey, no, these are like individuals who still have a chance of
getting saved at the end of their lives. I think it's probably split. I'm curious to see, like to what level, Yeah, like, are were people marching in the streets against it? Is this just a thing where like, hey, if you choose to do it like that's your business. I think that will be really interesting. I do hope we find out like I hope we get a world opener at the very end. I hope we see a different space or a different angle outside of the main building to sort
of fill that space. And I'm also hoping, yeah, I'm also hoping, like I really love when the penultimate episode has a big reveal and then the finale is questions. That's always really thrilling to me. I hope that's the direction we're going with season two.
Yeah, I do think. I I would love to see if it's going to be like a kind of, you know, a classic very divisive pull out where you kind of realize that the places that have severance are almost like company towns where no one else can go, and there's kind of like what Saltsneck was, but in an even
more broad way where there's I'm very interested. I think, as much as we know, they're doing a good job of keeping us intrigued with questions like this that could be completely relevant or absolutely irrelevant, and we never get the answers to them. So I'm interested for the next two episodes to see.
Why any theories any did this episode change or create any new theories for you, Joel.
No, I'm just more convinced than ever that Milchik is also part of this like fellowship program back in the day, I.
Know that miss as a wintertime.
Fellow harmony was like his like.
Teacher or like maybe she victim or something.
Yeah, And then I saw a really good theory that I liked, which is that Burt isn't severed and never has been.
He could sell it. I believe it. One of the ones that something you sent me, Joel that I thought was really interesting that I'd love to know more about.
Is the connection between Like what Natalie wears is essentially the same jumpsuit as we see Gemma when she is where, and I think there's some interesting stuff there, Like, is the reason that mil Chick and Natalie connect not because of some you know, they're looking at each other and being like, oh, maybe we're both being exploited in this system, or but actually because she is his Gemma? Like is that something do they make? They do they bring in people who are close and see to test how well
the severance is working. And do those women have to constantly be traumatized and tortured and in this case, two women of color that we've seen to keep proving that. I think that that I don't think anything is aesthetically an accident here. So I want to know the jumpsuit connection. I think that's so interesting and otherwise I just want to I would like to know, and I think this is doable in a way that doesn't explode the show out.
I want to know the connection between Harmony and mcgarby because I think that is going to be very very interesting.
I mean, that is sadly the one you know, it's like, that's the one conversation that if they are allowed to have a five minute conversation on screen, then we know everything about the show.
Maybe maybe the writing's good enough to get around it, but yeah.
My takeaway theory wise from this episode is, listen, we saw the previous episode that Devin was like really struggling, not really struggling with where to call Harmony was gonna call her, and where Gobbi walked out and was like, don't you dare call that woman. You're on your own understandably right, And then then you know, Mark woke up and we wondered what she would do, and clearly she made the call but then she puts Mark on the phone and says, we have a different idea.
I think a lot of it.
I do think that this call was significantly Mark's idea, because I think whatever he has come to discover through reintegration, he understands that.
He needs Cobel.
Now.
Yeah, I was wondering if he's trying to draw her back in and they're planning on taking Cabell as not necessarily like a hostage, but holding her and trying to get answers out of her. That was kind of the feeling I got.
I think he knows obviously knows a lot more now about the and has the full a fuller picture, and I think he knows that Cobell in her position would have much more of the picture, and maybe he sees her actions differently to that end.
You know, we had been earlier.
In the season, not now, I've been talking about like a milk Chick redemption arc. I do think it's that we get. I don't think that's happening, but I do think we get a Cobel redemption arc for the wrong reasons, Like I think that she will help Mark, but probably not for pure reasons, not fully pure reasons, but I think there we're gonna get something like a Cobel redemption arc.
Okay here this is my bleakest possible ending, but I do think it would hook people up. What if Cobell somehow convinces Mark to essentially like go back in and just like essentially take over her role as a manager, to be able to be close to Jemma to kind of and it's kind of about this systemic like what will you accept if it works for you, Like if you can get something you want out of this interesting what will you do to other people? I don't think they'll go there, but I do think it would be
an interesting hook. Obviously, then you know, sorry, right as Room, I know I'm not part of you season three? You do? Oh well, Mark's actually like a spy, a kind of reverse Helena, and he wants to help everyone out. But I think that could be a good hook on the end where it seems like to get Jemma back, he's willing to become part of the lumin system.
Do we think that Mark, in his reintegration, has discovered that there are more any any Marks than he was aware of, because there is that Yeah, there is that thing from the credits, the earlier version of the credits where Cobel is looking.
Down at all the little marks, and.
I would not be completely surprised if on reintegration Mark discovered all these other pieces of himself in there.
There's also somebody did a rewatch of the first episode for hints we may have missed, and there seems to be this feeling that Mark is missing time in between him going into the building and him appearing on the lower floor, Like when he walks in, his boots are dry. When he's taking them off before he goes down, they're like covered and water. It seems to me that they made such a big deal. What was that like episode two where like the time was suddenly completely messed up
after he got reintegrated. So you kind of wonder, like, oh, as he's getting further into his reintegration, will he discover additional ania.
And that's the one that also would would make sense because of how hard it was to reintegrate him and how he was kind of the reintegration was so dangerous because how do you reintegrate into like how do you reintegrate if there's like multiple versions of you that have been seven Yeah, where is the time. Okay, I think you guys here and I think that is a good likely. We were right theory for the last two episodes. I'm saying it now.
On tomorrow's episode of Extra Vision, we're getting back into the suit visiting our favorite Hell's Kitchen restaurant. In the third episode of daredel Board again, that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening, Thanks for joining us, Joelle.
Thank you, Joel, and goodbye from luman our sponsor.
X ray Vision is hosted by Jasoncepcion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcast.
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