Severance's Season 2 premiere introduced viewers to one of the show's strangest new characters: Miss Huang (Sarah Bock), the Severed Floor's new, teenaged deputy manager.
Seeing a character this young at the heart of Lumon Industries immediately set off alarm bells in Severance fans' heads, especially when Miss Huang proved to be as coldly managerial — and frankly, uncanny — as Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) himself. After all, what could a child possibly be doing at Lumon? And how is she already so bought into the company's ethos?
Theories about Miss Huang's true identity cropped up all over social media. One fan theory suggests that Miss Huang is a child who died in a car crash — perhaps during her prior stint as a crossing guard? — and was then resurrected by Lumon. Bock revealed in an interview with ELLE that a stranger DMed her about Miss Huang being a robot.
However, Lumon Industries' LinkedIn page — which has existed since Season 1 — may have just revealed Miss Huang's whole deal. And while it's not as far-fetched as, say, resurrection, it still has devastating implications for Severance's worldbuilding.
On Jan. 20, Lumon Industries celebrated Miss Huang's hiring with a post saying, "Felicitations are in order for this quarter's Wintertide Fellow: Ms. Huang. Her green outlook is precisely what Lumon aims to cultivate as an organization. She will be invaluable on our severed floor."
Besides the skin-crawling corporate language, two words stick out here: Wintertide Fellow, which sounds like Lumon-speak for "winter quarter intern." The term "fellow" also pops up in a Lumon Management Program video released on the LinkedIn page on Jan. 21, in which Mr. Milchick also refers to Miss Huang as a "fellow in training."
So maybe Miss Huang isn't a Lumon experiment. Maybe she's simply a teenager with an internship. No robots, no resurrection, just (likely unpaid) child labor. Frankly, that's sinister enough in itself, especially considering what it might mean for Severance's wider world.
Back in Season 1, Severance revealed that Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette) had a shrine to Kier Eagan. On it was a photo from her time at the Myrtle Eagan School for Girls, an experience which likely indoctrinated her into the cult of Kier and set her up for a life serving the Eagans at Lumon. Perhaps Miss Huang comes from a similar school or background, and she is also being primed for a life as a corporate Lumon cog.
With that in mind, Miss Huang's presence in Severance Season 2 is less a mystery for the audience to crack and more a disheartening reminder of Lumon's insidious mechanisms of control. Severance is one such mechanism, but so is the Eagan school-to-Lumon job pipeline we've seen with Cobel and likely Miss Huang. Now, with Miss Huang, we could be looking at a future Cobel or Milchick type — and that's a frightening thought.
Severance Season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV+, with a new episode every Friday.
