“Do you know something about Gemma?”
Mrs. Selvig knows the truth about Mark’s “dead” wife. Gemma is the strange severed Lumon employee Ms. Casey. The bigger question raised by Severance season two’s second episode is what “Cold Harbor” has to do with Harmony Cobel and her own plans, because what we’ve learned about that file might explain Cobel’s unusual obsession with Mark.
No one can trust anything a Lumon official tells them, but that’s especially true of “Cobelvig.” (Thank you for that helpful nomenclature, Ricken!) During Severance‘s first season, Harmony Cobel kept vital information from her superiors and Lumon’s mysterious Board. At the same time, she also ingratiated herself into Mark Scout’s Outie life as his kindly neighbor, Mrs. Selvig. That unsanctioned behavior was egregious enough the Board fired an employee it had trusted with a significant position. Considering her devotion to Lumon and its Founder, Cobel’s actions were incredibly risky. The fact they were clearly important enough for her to risk her job makes something she said as Mrs. Selvig possibly explain what she really wants.
In season one’s second episode, Mrs. Selvig tried to console a grieving Mark by talking about her own loss. “My late husband was a carpenter, and before he passed, he said he would start building us a house in the hereafter,” she said. “And there would be a small guest apartment in the back, in case I found a new man before I got there.” While that seemed like a lie meant to emotionally manipulate Mark in the moment, in episode seven she again mentioned her deceased husband while speaking to Devon. That interaction was even more revealing. “When my husband passed, I thought I saw him everywhere. It was just so hard,” said Selvig. She then asked, “Does Mark ever think he sees (Gemma)?”
That last question seemed strange to Devon, but it set alarm bells off for viewers who knew what Cobel had been doing at Lumon. She had recently sent Mark S. to Ms. Casey for an additional Wellness Check, a session Mr. Milchick didn’t think Mark needed. There, Ms. Casey used a candle Cobelvig had stolen from Mark’s house. It was a new test to see if Mark’s Innie would recognize his “dead” wife sitting in front of him. She hoped the familiar aroma would arouse something deep in Mark’s splintered mind. It didn’t work, which Cobel saw firsthand as she watched the entire interaction personally.
Harmony Cobel attended the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls as a child. She has a literal shrine to the Founder, Kier Eagan, in her home. She came to Lumon’s rescue even after the company fired her. Why would someone so loyal and so faithful to Lumon risk her job and the company itself by constantly trying to make Mark’s Innie recognize his dead wife? It all makes sense if her late husband she keeps mentioning is “dead,” same as Gemma.
At various moments throughout season one—while totally alone and therefore not performing for anyone—Mrs. Selvig showed real sympathy for Mark. She also seemed relieved to hear he was quitting Lumon. Just as she was disgusted after learning he’s going back in after the Innie uprising. It’s as though she sees something of her own plight in Mark. But we wouldn’t expect someone who knows the pain of losing a spouse to keep the truth about Gemma from Mark. That is unless she’s in the same boat and is trying to wake her own husband up.
If a severed Gemma can be alive (or rather “alive,” since we still don’t know if she ever died), the same can be true of Cobel’s late husband. “Cold Harbor” has confirmed the “important and mysterious” work of macrodata refinement is literal human beings, the very job Cobel was in charge of and desperately wanted to return to. Everything she has done makes sense if her husband is in the same state as Gemma.
And if that’s true, it makes her shrine and dedication to Kier himself that much more intriguing. Lumon is keeping people alive, maybe even people who died, as digital files. Kier Eagan’s first job was also working for a furniture maker, the type of place that employs a lot of carpenters, which is what Selvig called her husband. Kier’s wife Imogen was also a Swab Girl, the job Mrs. Selvig pretended to have at Lumon’s Swab Girl Bathhouse and Soapery store in town.
Is her dead husband really Kier, a man who passed away before Cobel was even born? (A man all of Lumon might be working to bring back?) Or is it maybe someone else we’ve already met or seen on the show? Someone unknowingly in a Gemma-like state Cobel hopes will recognize her with the right clue? Is that why she wanted to learn everything she could about reintegration from Petey’s severance chip she took back herself?
Or did she not even have a husband and we fell for one of her many lies?
Harmony Cobel wouldn’t tell Mark what she knows about Gemma. We don’t know everything about either woman, yet, either. We just know Cobelvig’s obsession with Mark and the importance of “Cold Harbor” to Lumon have made one Severance‘s most fascinating and mysterious characters even more important.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who isn’t sure what his Outie does. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.