Sweet Vitriol

"Sweet Vitriol" is the eighth episode of the second season of the American science fiction psychological thriller television series Severance. It is the 17th overall episode of the series and was written by co-executive producer Adam Countee and consulting producer K. C. Perry, and directed by executive producer Ben Stiller. It was released on Apple TV+ on March 6, 2025.
The series follows the employees of the fictional corporation Lumon Industries, a company that uses a "severance" program in which their non-work memories are separated from their work memories. The episode focuses on Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) as she visits her derelict hometown, revealing key details about her history with Lumon.
The episode received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised Arquette's performance and Cobel's character development, although some were polarized by the episode's placement in the season's narrative arc, as well as the script's character logic.
Harmony Cobel arrives in her hometown, Salt's Neck, which was once home to the now-defunct Lumon ether factory where Kier Eagan met his wife Imogene. As a result of Lumon abandoning the factory, the town is decaying and many local residents are addicted to ether. She approaches an old friend, Hampton, at the cafe where he works and asks for his help. They meet at the abandoned ether factory, where it is revealed the two knew each other as child laborers at Lumon.
Despite the tension between them, Hampton agrees to drive Cobel to see her aunt, Sissy, who is a pariah to the town and lives in an isolated area. Cobel believes that Lumon is surveilling Sissy and the town and would recognize her car, so she hides in the truck's flatbed. Along the way, Cobel receives a phone call from Devon but does not answer.
Sissy is upset by the arrival of Cobel and Hampton at her home. Sissy, a Lumon devotee who once worked for the company, mentions that she received a call from Mr. Drummond, but refuses to tell Cobel what transpired. Cobel, who grew up in the home, finds her mother Charlotte's old bedroom locked and that her own childhood belongings have been purged from the house. She argues with her aunt about her mother's illness and death, which occurred while Cobel was away at a Lumon-run boarding school, before finding the key to her mother's room. After lying on the bed and placing her mother's breathing tube in her mouth, she falls asleep crying.
Hours later, Hampton wakes Cobel. They each take a hit of ether and share a kiss. He urges Cobel to leave before Lumon catches up to her, but Cobel is determined to find something that she is certain Sissy would not have thrown out. She goes to the outdoor storeroom and finds her old yearbook and a trophy revealing that she had secured a prestigious Lumon fellowship known as Wintertide. Inside the trophy, she finds an old notebook of hers, which proves she invented the severance procedure and technology, despite Lumon's claims that it was created by the current CEO Jame Eagan. Sissy attempts to burn the notebook, but Cobel snatches it away. Hampton warns Cobel that a car is approaching the house, and she quickly leaves in his truck while Hampton stays behind to confront the approaching vehicle.
As Cobel leaves town, she receives another call from Devon and answers it. Devon tells her that Mark is reintegrating. She gives the phone to Mark and Cobel demands to know everything.
The episode was written by co-executive producer Adam Countee and consulting producer K. C. Perry, and directed by executive producer Ben Stiller. This marked Countee's first writing credit, Perry's first writing credit, and Stiller's tenth directing credit.
Patricia Arquette explained Lumon taking over Cobel's plans, "The way that this belief system works — like a lot of things, like the military or whatever — it's all for the glory of the organization. It's all for the glory of Kier. It's not about you, not about the individual. It's about the organization, what the organization needs. Here's this person who will never get the acknowledgement from the people that she wants it most from: her aunt and Lumon itself." She also added, "all of the bridges are burned. Cobel has nothing to lose here. She's going to try to use her wiles and come up with some strategy and try to manipulate this situation as best she can, but the dangerous thing is that she's got nothing to lose."
"Sweet Vitriol" received generally positive reviews from critics. Saloni Gajjar of The A.V. Club gave the episode a "B" and wrote, "Even a below-average episode of Severance can be an enjoyable time that expands the show's mythology. However, season two has been on such a tear that, pacing wise, 'Sweet Vitriol' feels like a setback. The return of Harmony Cobel, who has been absent since 'Who Is Alive?,' is most welcome. But the semi-deep dive into her upbringing comes at a pivotal juncture. There's already too much tension and only a couple more installments left. To abruptly halt the action for a Harmony backstory now is jarring and, frankly, a little boring."
Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone wrote, "For the second week in a row, Severance largely puts its various ongoing plots on hold in favor of providing more worldbuilding and backstory. But where last week's 'Chikhai Bardo' felt necessary, as well as often moving and/or horrifying, 'Sweet Vitriol' plays a bit more as a stall for Season Two's endgame than a story that needed to take up an entire episode." Ben Travers of IndieWire gave the episode an "A—" and wrote, "'Sweet Vitriol' instills Harmony with a tragic backstory. She, too, is a Lumon employee who’s been used and abused by the company — left for dead after serving her purpose. But she's not dead, nor is she purely sympathetic. A villain with unfortunate origins is still a villain. The question now becomes whether she's on the road to redemption, or bringing death to more hometowns."
Erin Qualey of Vulture gave the episode a 4 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "As Severance is a show about work-life balance, and as this episode doesn't really showcase either of those things, it's sure to be divisive. It's certainly a risk to give Cobel her own standalone installment — especially following another installment featuring a limited cast — but as the narrative reveals much about how Lumon operates, and it also delivers a huge bombshell twist at the end, I think it mostly works. However, I adore Patricia Arquette and everything she's doing on this show, so your mileage may vary." Sean T. Collins of Decider wrote, "a show this fixated on precisely calibrating people's behavior really can't shoulder-shrug away behavior that's inconsistent or inexplicable based on either the show's own rules or our own experience of reality. Unless and until we're given a good reason Devon and Mark trust Cobel — or until we find out they don't, and they're running some kind of ploy — it's a hard to trust we'll find what we're looking for when we reach our destination."
Brady Langman of Esquire wrote, "Writing about an uneventful Severance episode is not a privilege reserved for this Innie. Because episode 8, 'Sweet Vitriol,' drops another bomb: Harmony Cobel invented the severance procedure. Once again, a reveal of this nature is nuclear enough for one single episode of television." Erik Kain of Forbes wrote, "Now Cobel is an entirely different character with a much more vital, fundamental part in the story of the severance procedure and its implications. This alone is a lot to swallow, but there's a part of me that keeps thinking this was a change made after Season 1 was already out. This was something not in the story from day-one, but tacked on as a twist for Season 2. It just doesn't quite fit as organically in the story as everything else, and it worries me. It worries me because even though I know there's always an element of 'making it up as you go' when it comes to TV shows, I don't want this one to go off the rails like so many others before it, and this moment feels a little off the rails to me."
Jeff Ewing of Collider wrote, "Rather than being just a mere floor manager, Cobel will prove a far more powerful foe to Lumon than we initially realized now that she feels betrayed by them, and it seems like Devon's instinct to call her might have been the best move." Breeze Riley of Telltale TV gave the episode a 3.5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "Although style-wise this episode hews much more closely to the usual Severance visuals than ... 'Chikhai Bardo,' it's still a risk. Spending an entire episode on the villain of the show requires the audience to care about her."