Severance Season 2 Makes Lumon Even More Horrifying With One Cast Addition

This article contains spoilers for "Severance" season 2 episode 1, "Hello, Ms. Cobel."

Going into the mind-bending "Severance" season 2, the show's first season had already driven home that Lumon Industries is up to no good. The surreal, dystopian office environment and the personality severance process that essentially traps the "innie" workers there forever while their "outies" get to enjoy a toil-free life are just the beginning. Everything from Mr. Milchick's (Tramell Tillman) eerily comforting smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes to the stick-and-carrot treatment of the severed employees, where rewards range from utterly underwhelming to the horrifying absurdity of the Waffle Party, indicates that there's far more going on than simple high-confidentiality office work.

The season 2 premiere, titled "Hello, Ms. Cobel," reveals that Lumon has plenty more horrors in store. With Milchick now seemingly promoted to Ms. Cobel's (Patricia Arquette) old position of managing the severed floor, Mark S. (Adam Scott), Helly R. (Britt Lower), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), and Irving B. (John Turturro) make an unwelcome return to the "Severance" office – and discover that their new supervisor, Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), seems far, far too young to be working in a top secret project.

While Bock herself was born in 2006, Huang is clearly meant to be far younger. Going by the character's school uniform-coded outfit and Mark immediately noting that she's a child, it would appear that Lumon is now dabbling in child labor.

The revelation that a new authority figure on the severed floor is an eerily calm child leaves every severed employee appropriately freaked out, and it doesn't exactly help that it appears Miss Huang — just like Mr. Milchick — isn't severed herself. During the introductory ball game, she reveals that it's her first day on the job, and that her previous gig was as a crossing guard. This seems to imply that Lumon recruited her directly from a school environment.

So, what does an unsevered child do in a prestigious supervisor position at what, for all intents and purposes, seems to be Lumon's single most important division? What's more, is she alone, or are there other children working for Lumon as well, since the episode also reveals that the company operates in over 200 locations? Presumably, "Severance" will answer these mysteries at some point, but for now, this seems like the kind of thing that would cause even more outcry than the severance process itself should the public find out.

In "Severance" season 1, we discover that Lumon Industries has aspirations for bringing the titular process to a wide, potentially global scale, for unclear reasons. The revelation in "Hello, Ms. Cobel" that the company doesn't only target the public, but actually enlists a child to supervise its key project seems to be setting up a horrifying revelation later down the line. Combine this with everything else you need to remember about "Severance" and Lumon before fully diving into season 2, and it seems that the ride the show has in store will be wilder than ever.