After Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) was fired from Lumon at the end of the first season of Severance, Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) got promoted to head of the Severed Floor. Because of that, the company had to find someone to occupy the deputy manager role. To everyone’s surprise, in Season 2, the position now belongs to Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), a teenage girl too young to work. Since Miss Huang’s first appearance, fans have wondered why Lumon would allow a child to be in charge of rebellious severed workers and how the company could avoid the ethical backlash of employing child labor. There was also the question of whether Miss Huang severed herself or maybe the result of one of the secret experiments running on Lumon. Severance’s latest episode addresses these plot points by mentioning Wintertide, supposedly an educational institution.
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WARNING: Spoilers below for Severance Season 2, Episode 6
Last week, Mr. Milchick had to undergo a painfully humiliating monthly performance review in which he was severely criticized for the ORTBO catastrophe. However, the performance review also addressed other supposed flaws, like Milchick’s habit of using “long words” and his lack of attention to which side of paper clips he uses in documents. These hilariously meaningless things were the fruit of “anonymous” complaints, which cannot be that anonymous considering Mr. Milchick only works with a single person on the Severed Floor: Miss Huang.
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In Episode 6, Mr. Milchick ascertains his authority by reminding Miss Huang he is in charge of her future. To be more precise, Milchick tells the girl she cannot “graduate from this fellowship” until he has deemed her “Wintertide material.” This sentence indicates that Miss Huang is part of some weird school that trains people to handle severed works and that her graduation can only be attained once she has interned long enough in one of Lumon’s severed floors, obtaining the blessing of the head manager to progress her career. While brief, this interaction underlines how far Lumon can reach with its tentacular influence. It also indicates that Lumon’s unethical practices extend to brainwashing children so they become the perfect managers when they grow up.
Is Lumon Brainwashing Children Like Miss Huang in Severance?
The presence of Wintertide as some kind of educational fellowship program shouldn’t come as a surprise. We already know Lumon has a long history of using educational institutions to mold young minds, as evidenced by the Myrtle Eagan School For Girls, where Harmony Cobel received her education. That school, founded in 1952 and named after Lumon’s first female CEO, clearly succeeded in creating the kind of devoted employee Lumon desires. After all, Harmony’s fanatical adherence to Kier’s teachings and unwavering loyalty to Lumon’s mission exemplifies how early indoctrination can shape someone’s worldview.
Wintertide appears to be a more specialized version of this educational approach, focusing specifically on training future managers for severed floors. This makes strategic sense for Lumon, as managing innies requires a particular mindset that might be difficult to cultivate in adults who weren’t raised with the company’s ideology. Regular people might question the ethics of treating severed workers like disposable resources or feel uncomfortable with the dehumanizing aspects of the job. However, by starting with children and gradually normalizing these practices, Lumon can ensure their future managers never develop such moral qualms.
Miss Huang’s behavior and attitudes provide striking evidence of Wintertide’s effectiveness. When she tells Mr. Milchick in Episode 5 that innies are “not human,” she’s not just repeating company rhetoric – she’s expressing a deeply internalized belief that appears to be fundamental to Wintertide’s curriculum. This dehumanization of severed workers, combined with Miss Huang’s cold efficiency in managing them, suggests that Wintertide specifically targets and reshapes students’ natural capacity for empathy from an early age.
The revelation of Wintertide’s existence, alongside what we know about the Myrtle Eagan School For Girls, points to a much larger and more disturbing system of influence. Lumon appears to be operating a network of specialized educational institutions, each designed to produce different types of employees needed for its various operations. As the company continues to expand its severance program, these educational pipelines ensure they’ll have a steady supply of managers who have been conditioned since childhood to never question the ethics of their work. It’s a chilling indication that Lumon’s plans for the future extend far beyond the walls. It’s no wonder reintegration threatens Lumon, as it could crumble its methodically planned corporate empire.
New episodes of Severance premiere Thursdays on Apple TV+.
Did you like EPisode 6 of Severance? Do you think we’ll learn more about Wintertide this season? Join the discussion in the comments!
