This article contains spoilers for “Severance” Season 2 Episode 1, “Hello, Mrs. Cobel.”
Entering the mind-blowing season 2 of “Severance”, the first season of the series had already made it clear that Lumon Industries is up to no good. The surreal, dystopian office environment and personality separation process that locks away worker “innies” forever while their “outies” enjoy a toil-free life are just the beginning. Everything from Mr. Milchick’s (Tramell Tillman) oddly comforting smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes to the stick-and-carrot treatment of fired employees, where the payoffs range from completely underwhelming to horribly Waffle Party absurdity , indicates that there is much more going on than just highly confidential office work.
The season 2 premiere, titled “Hello, Mrs. Cobel,” reveals that Lumon has many more horrors in store. While Milchick now appears to be promoted to Ms. Cobel’s (Patricia Arquette) old position of managing the separate floor, Mark S. (Adam Scott), Helly R. (Britt Lower), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) and Irving B. (John Turturro) makes an unwelcome return to the Severance office – and discovers that their new supervisor, Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), seems far, far too young to be working on a top secret project.
Even though Bock herself was born in 2006, Huang is clearly meant to be much younger. Looking at the character’s coded school uniform outfit and Mark immediately noting that she is a child, it would appear that Lumon is now getting into child labor.
-Miss Huang’s presence has terrifying implications for separation
The revelation that a new authority figure on the separate floor is an oddly calm child leaves all the fired employees rightfully panicked, and it doesn’t really help that it seems Miss Huang – just like Mr Milchick – is not itself separate. During the introductory ball game, she reveals that it is her first day on the job and that her previous job was as a school crossing guard. This seems to imply that Lumon recruited her directly from a school environment.
So what’s an unsegregated kid doing in a prestigious supervisory position in what, for all intents and purposes, appears to be Lumon’s most important division? Also, is she alone, or are there other kids who also work for Lumon, since the episode also reveals that the company operates in over 200 locations? Presumably, “Severance” will answer these mysteries at some point, but for now, it seems like the kind of thing that would cause even more uproar than the separation process itself if the public found out.
In Season 1 of “Severance,” we discover that Lumon Industries aspires to take the tenure process to a large, potentially global scale, for unclear reasons. The revelation in “Hello, Mrs. Cobel” that the company is not only targeting the public, but is actually recruiting a child to oversee its key project, seems to trigger a horrifying revelation later. Combine that with everything you need to remember about “Severance” and Lumon before fully diving into Season 2, and it looks like the journey the series has in store for you will be wilder than ever.
