‘Severance’ Star Patricia Arquette Breaks Down Harmony’s Dreary Past & Motivation Moving Forward

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Severance Season 2 Episode 8, “Sweet Vitriol.”]

After Severance‘s deep-dive into Mark (Adam Scott) and Gemma’s (Dichen Lachman) shared history in last week’s installment, Season 2 turned its sights to Patricia Arquette‘s Harmony Cobel as she arrived in Salt’s Neck for, “Sweet Vitriol.”

Filmed amid the picturesque landscapes of Newfoundland, the coldness of Harmony’s bleak upbringing was palpable as she reacquainted herself with the area reminiscent of today’s rust towns. It turns out that Salt Neck was the site of one of Lumon’s largest ether factories, which left the lingering population devastated by resulting drug dependencies.

Observing one man as he huffed the ether huddling into the shelter of an abandoned vehicle, Harmony took in the disturbing situation while brushing her teeth after living in her car since her departure from the clutches of her former employer. Hitting up Salt Neck’s greasy spoon, Harmony sought help from the proprietor and former Lumon employee, a man named Hampton (James Le Gros).

Meeting by the abandoned factories, Harmony explained she needed to visit her Sissy (Jane Alexander), who has become a town pariah, but without Lumon knowing as she worried about being tracked. He reluctantly agreed to drive her to the secluded home, which she essentially burst into when Sissy opened the door.

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Harmony was looking for something, but Sissy claimed she threw out Harmony’s belongings. Eventually, frustration took over and Harmony found herself breaking into her late mother’s abandoned bedroom, where she sought comfort in laying atop the dusty hospital cot while breathing through her other’s saved breathing tube. Eventually, Hampton checked on her and she was moved enough to continue her search.

It was clear from an exchange of words between Sissy and Harmony that they never really saw eye-to-eye, especially when it came to Harmony and her mother, as Harmony directed her harshness towards the aging woman who supposedly oversaw Harmony and other child workers for Lumon.

Ultimately, Harmony found what she’d been looking for in a secret storage space underground, where she’d stashed notebooks detailed with blueprints of her design for the severance device as a former Wintertide Scholarship recipient (a.k.a. the equivalent of Ms. Huang’s current gig). Confronting Sissy once again, she told the indoctrinated woman that she was the one who designed the great devices that Jame and other Eagans have been credited with.

Sissy attempted to burn the documents, which Harmony held onto tightly. But what is Harmony’s next move now that she has some damning evidence that goes against Lumon’s public persona? We get a taste when she finally answered the call of Devon (Jen Tullock) who had been repeatedly ringing her over the phone over the course of the episode. Below, Arquette breaks down Harmony’s return to Salt Neck, her driving motivations, and what could be next after that cliffhanger ending.

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We follow Harmony to Salt’s Neck, her dilapidated hometown. How did it feel to dig deeper into her history there and the town itself while filming in Newfoundland, Canada?

Patricia Arquette: Yeah, we’ve been talking about that with the writers since the beginning, about the history that Harmony had with her mom and the ether factory, how her mom had become a drug addict, how many people Harmony had lost along the way, and how this town had been poisoned environmentally. It was really nice to be able to show that. I’d never been to Newfoundland before; it’s so far away and removed that it’s maintained a lot of its own authenticity. There’s still an Irish brogue there from when all of these fishermen had moved there at the turn of the century. There’s specific food that’s very old-fashioned. It’s very far out.

They’ll talk about how it’ll be snowy most of the year, but how strong women are. This one woman was giving birth. She went into labor and she had to drive her skidoo herself 45 minutes to the emergency room through the snowstorm. It’s like a frozen period of time, these factories that are closed down, and the industrial age. And I mean, it is a really interesting vortex unlike anything else. The people are so sweet.

Is Salt’s Neck representative of all towns touched by Lumon, or do you think it’s representative of a different era?

Well, I mean, I think if we took a page out of other corporations, there is a history of environmental poisoning during industrialization from different corporations, and then they’ll clean up their act and their PR and behave a certain way in one place, but then there’ll be another testing ground. How do they behave in Indonesia, China, or India? What are they experimenting with in Africa and all these different things? So it really begs the question, whatever choices these corporations are making, oftentimes it’s obviously economic, right? And who are they impacting and who do they consciously or subconsciously consider have more value or is more dangerous because of scrutiny.

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Where does Harmony’s resentment for her aunt come from? Is it more about the time she lost with her own mother or the indoctrination into the Kier lifestyle?

Well, I think her aunt is very puritanical in a way and has for a very long time been punishing Harmony’s mother. Even in her death, she’s still punishing her life. Harmony and her mother were never up to [par] as far as her aunt is concerned. And while I think two things have happened, one, Harmony does love Kier, but in the same way Sissy, her aunt has brought this other ugly element. It’s sort of like how some people love the story of Jesus or Jesus’ mission of love, but then they don’t like certain aspects of new kinds of Evangelical people or something. Harmony feels she has her own kind of a relationship with this Kier thing that’s different than what her aunt is trying to force upon her. Does that make sense?

Yes, it’s all about interpretation, and it seems like her aunt would be on the extremist spectrum.

Yeah. And I think as much as Harmony really disliked her aunt, it’s also a bonding thing that they both share, which is very strange. It’s also a way that Harmony is always trying to get the love she’ll never get from her family and the acceptance from her family through her commitment to Kier. But it doesn’t matter what Harmony does, it doesn’t matter if Harmony does something spectacular and incredible that changes everything for Lumon. She’ll never get that acceptance or love either from Lumon or from her aunt.

What is Harmony’s motivation for having retrieved those documents from the Kier bust?

Well, I think she has a lot of hostility towards this new guard, and I think she wants to prove her place. She’s very angry about being usurped completely by Milchick and cast out when she feels that this company really owes her and they’re just disrespecting her in this kind of way. So I think she wants to prove her position and use it as a bargaining chip to negotiate what she wants. Also, it’s dangerous for them. She can expose a lot.

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Devon is calling Harmony throughout the episode. What drives her to finally answer and what can you tease about that situation moving forward?

I think, despite her scientific mind and her commitment to this corporation, she does have a weak spot for Mark and Gemma and this kind of story. I think that there’s a subconscious shadow of it in her own self with her love of her mom and losing her mom. So she’s playing something out with Mark. But also I think as much as she is a devotee to Kier, she also is always thinking she knows best. So she’s parlaying this kind of information to continue doing the research she wants to do, which is a project on Mark.

Harmony’s hospital tubing is finally explained in this episode as she revisits her mother’s bedroom and hospital bed. Is that cathartic moment necessary for her to move forward now?

I think it’s funny how life will kick your ass to the very bottom of the barrel, and then you kind of have to look at the stuff that you’ve been running away from not wanting to look at, not making peace with. And it is an origin story for her. It is so important, it is so fundamental to everything that she does in this story that I think it was very important for her to go back there. And also in the moment where Lumon took everything away from her, it was like, well, can you go home? No, you can’t. Everything’s burnt to the ground. Everything sucks. Whenever you’re in that moment of a huge transformation, you might try to run back to something, but it’s gone.

What can you tell us about the nature of Harmony’s relationship with the man from her past (played by James Le Gros)? He’s initially resistant to helping her, but he eventually caves — why?

Well, I think they were first loves. And they both have this coldness inside them from their experience as kids. I think the way that they were raised was much harsher than Ms. Huang’s because I think that was ultimately a giant PR nightmare. But there’s coldness between them from their history and Harmony hurting and abandoning him. And then there’s also a coldness between them because they had to adopt that when they were kids. That was their style to get through this. Be tough, be cold, be hard. This is a harsh landscape inside. So I think he’s hostile because she hurt him and he’s hostile because he hates being up there, and there’s just a lot of anger simmering under the surface.

Severance, Season 2, Fridays, Apple TV+

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