[Warning: The below and video above contain MAJOR spoilers for Severance Season 2 Episode 3, “Who Is Alive?”]
Severance continues to raise more questions with each passing week as the latest installment dug deeper into the mysteries behind Lumon and its employees in “Who Is Alive?”
The episode saw Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) hit the road as she drove away from her Lumon life, but as she sits in her car on the side of a mostly vacant highway, she decided to turn back. Accompanying Harmony for the ride is that set of tubing and the hospital bracelet that was present in her at-home shrine of sorts in Season 1.
Ultimately, she wants her job on the severed floor back, confronting Helena (Britt Lower) and pushing her to fire Milchick (Tramell Tillman), but Helena pushes for Harmony to speak with the secretive board. The response isn’t what Harmony wants, and while she initially begins to follow Helena into the Lumon building, she makes a run for it back to her car driving away once more.
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Inside, Milchick is experiencing the perks of his new position as fellow employee Natalie (Sydney Cole Alexander) gifts him with some truly bizarre paintings from the board. The imagery depicts Milchick in Kier Eagan’s likeness, which is rather conflicting acknowledging the fact that Kier was a white man and Milchick is Black.
Meanwhile, Mark (Adam Scott) seeks Helly’s (Lower) assistance in trying to find Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), Irving (John Turturro) takes a trip to O&D, and Dylan (Zach Cherry) meets his outie’s wife Gretchen (Merritt Wever). At the same time, outie Mark decides to explore reintegration, reconnecting with Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) who reveals that Gemma was alive the last time she saw her, presumably when she worked at Lumon.
In other words, this episode was filled with startling moments and revelations, but for our latest installment of iLUMONations: A Severance Aftershow, Arquette and Tillman are digging into their episode moments, from an explanation for Cobel’s hospital gear to Milchick’s bizarre paintings.
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Regarding Cobel’s runaway from Helena, the board, and a potential promotion, Arquette says, “It’s really a trap. It’s like a little honey trap or something, you know, that they’re luring her into. She really would lose her autonomy and she’s always had a part of her that’s always been going rogue and been working on something that she wants to say, ‘I told you so.’ And she won’t be able to do that and also, there’s something about Jame and Helena that’s very different than her concept of Kier,” Arquette continues. “She just doesn’t trust them.”
As for the tubing and hospital bracelet, she teases, “As the seasons unfold, a lot of things start to get answered. It’s like a snowball that just starts getting faster and faster, and certain things that I’ve been asking since the first season come out towards the end of this season,” she adds.
Meanwhile, Milchick is facing a slew of emotions surrounding those paintings as Tillman offers, “I would be remiss if I did not celebrate and honor Ben [Stiller] and Dan [Erickson] for bringing this topic to me. They had conversations about how or whether or not this topic will be appropriate and whether or not I would be comfortable,” Tillman says about the show’s approach to addressing race and racism in the workplace.
When it came to the topic, Tillman says Milchick’s reaction was top of mind for him, adding that it was important to handle that carefully. “There’s a myriad of ways that he could respond to these paintings and if we don’t do this appropriately — not right, because in theater or art, you don’t get it right — but if we don’t do it sensitively and appropriately, we can alienate our audiences, and it will be less than satisfying.”
Tillman reveals, “I’m excited to hear the conversations that will blossom out from this topic and, so many more thoughts and ideas around race in this world of Kier.” See Arquette and Tillman’s full interview in the aftershow, above, and stay tuned for more as Severance Season 2 continues on Apple TV+.
Severance, Season 2, New Episodes, Fridays, Apple TV+
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