This article contains spoilers for “Severance” season 2 episode 8, “Sweet Vitriol.”

“Severance” season 2 episode 8, “Sweet Vitriol,” continues the previous episode’s theme of focusing on a single character’s story. This time, the eyes are on Patricia Arquette’s Harmony Cobel, who takes a trip to the town she left behind to acquire some important papers that reveal that she, not Jame Eagan (Michael Siberry), was the inventor of the severance procedures. It’s a nice little revelation but ultimately doesn’t add a lot to Cobel, whose narrative continues to be adrift after Lumon cut her loose.

This is a problem especially since the underwhelming episode follows the excellent “Lost-“influenced “Severance” season 2 episode 7, “Chikhai Bardo.” That episode focuses on Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and elevates her from a damsel in distress figure to a very real, very complex person whose particular predicament is integral to the entire show’s central secrets. What’s more, the episode reveals secrets that upend everything viewers have known of the show’s central tenets. “Sweet Vitriol,” on the other hand, doesn’t really benefit either the grand scheme of things or the character it focuses on, and is arguably the least compelling “Severance” episode yet. 

It’s disappointing to see the show waste a character-specific episode so soon after developing this approach into an art form. “Severance” is full of interesting characters who would actually benefit from an origin story episode, and who “Sweet Vitriol” could (and should) have focused on instead. Here are some of them.

Out of all the managers and assistant managers of the Severed Floor, Harmony Cobel is the least interesting right now. If the Lumon schools that “Sweet Vitriol” mentions are still around, the hitherto mysterious Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) may simply be a kid who attends one and is interning on the Severed Floor, so that may ruin some of her mystery, too. Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), however, is another matter entirely. 

Seth Milchick dances between the lines that divide a preppy middle manager, a stern enforcer, and a man whose patience is steadily eroded by the constant pressures from his superiors, underlings, and the twisted corporate culture he has to oversee. That’s all we know of him, and while it does paint a picture, his cracking corporate veneer occasionally shows glimpses of personality, suggesting that what we’ve seen is far from the picture.

At this point, it seems only natural to expect a Milchick episode since “Severance” is handing out focus episodes at liberally as it is. Milchick comes across as a guy who’s managed to climb the ranks thanks to his tenacity and dedication, but his occasional discomfort suggests that he lacks Cobel’s indoctrinated true believer aspects. As such, a Milchick-centric origin story episode would likely see him struggle with work-life balance while having to orchestrate the sort of events we’ve seen on the show so far. Imagine 50 full minutes of Milchick’s backstory interspersed with him painstakingly choreographing Waffle Parties, commissioning stop-motion employee training videos at impossible turnaround times, and carving a large melon in Irving’s (John Turturro) likeness, and tell me that doesn’t have the makings of a “Severance” all-timer.

Ah, yes, the lovable, rarely-glimpsed weirdos of the Mammalians Nurturable department. These guys would desperately need a focus episode, because … well, what is their deal, exactly? Are they and their animals connected to the ram-headed Malice of the Four Tempers, or something else entirely? 

I’ve already posited a theory that “Severance” season 2 revealed Lumon’s endgame in “Chikhai Bardo.” According to it, the mysterious Cold Harbor file is the final stage of the company’s attempt to refine the necessary macrodata to clone Kier Eagan, with Gemma serving as the mother figure. This would fit right in with Mammalians Nurturable and their many goats that “aren’t ready yet.” After all, what better animal to study the cloning process than the goat? Members of the Caprinae family have a longstanding connection to cloning studies, to the point that the first real-life clone of an adult mammal was a sheep called Dolly.

However, the thing that really interests me from a human standpoint is this department’s day-to-day. For this, the show needs to devote an episode to Lorne (Gwendoline Christie), who oversees the department and as such, is the best person to focus on in order to get the full picture. What kind of workplace culture does she champion in this unique team? Did she also believe that Macrodata Refinement workers have pouches in their bellies before Mark (Adam Scott) and Helly (Britt Lower) proved otherwise? What’s her innie-outie divide like? Does she have to dress up like that before she arrives to work, or does her outie just routinely wake up in the elevator reeking of goats and wearing weird office-rural chic without any idea what’s going on? Only an origin story episode could tell.

Since “Severance” likes taking big swings, why not add something truly unexpected in the plot pot with flashback episodes about posthumous characters? This would allow the show to explore Lumon’s mysteries without tying any main characters into the events too much. 

As tense as it is, the show has a fairly small body count, so that does limit this option somewhat — but fortunately, the options that do exist are excellent. My immediate choice for an origin story-slash-focus episode is Petey K. (Yul Vasquez), the Macrodata Refinement Team’s former lead who disappears and later appears to Mark’s outie as a reintegrated man. Unfortunately, his reintegration is faulty and ultimately kills him, so we don’t get to know him too well. Despite this, he has a long and robust history with the rest of the team, and a look at how he started growing uncomfortable with Lumon and got in touch with Reghabi (Karen Aldridge) would be an excellent way to use the character for whatever exposition the show wishes to deliver. Former Severed Floor security chief Doug Graner (Michael Cumpsty) was also a captivating but severely underused character who seemed to contain multitudes but died well before season 1 ended. If a Milchick episode isn’t on the cards any time soon, focusing on him would be a nice way to glimpse at Lumon’s middle management and its hidden routines. 

Oh, and if the show wants to go all out with exposition, what better way to do it than to take things to Lumon’s early days and devote an entire episode to Kier Eagan … that is, the real one, not the mythological savior figure Lumon likes to peddle. Now there’s a “Severance” origin story fans would be invested in.