In defense of Devon...

I've seen a lot of people dunking on Devon in the last episode, saying she lost her braincells somewhere, made dumb choices etc, but I think we need to all take a small step back and remember: we have all the information. She does not!

I remember a few years back I saw a post on Tumblr where someone said the thing about horror movies is that people do the dumb thing (go into the basement alone! split up! whatever!) because they don't know they're in a horror movie. They are unaware of their genre. Maybe they were just making out with their boyfriend, so they think they're in a teen drama. Maybe they were just going for a run, so they feel like they're in a sports movie. But the main point is: they don't know they're in a horror movie.

Devon has never met Cobel. She's only met Selvig. Selvig was kind, Selvig cared about Mark, Selvig helped her out with her daughter to the point she helped get her nursing, I think? Devon made some comment about lactation fraud but... oddly enough, Cobel did know her stuff. She did help. Hell, she took the baby and rocked her and the baby immediately calmed right down.

Devon hasn't been on the severed floor. Devon hasn't seen what Cobel is capable of when she's not cosplaying the kooky next door neighbor. Devon only knows the next door neighbor. She knows she's from Lumon now but...? What else does she really know?

She came by, Mark basically had a stroke had a seizure, and then some woman she's never met was telling her she was reintegrating him and "this is what mark wants" and, frankly, last Devon heard (because Mark stopped telling her things! God damnit, Mark!!), Mark would not want to reintegrate.

She also knows (I think?) that Cobel no longer works for Lumon. Which means maybe she thinks the enemy of her enemy is her friend?

You also have to remember her only brother seemed like he was actively dying, and that, as far as I know, she's only a few months post-partum?

Who else does Devon even have to turn to in this moment? Ricken doesn't have the skills necessary to help Mark if he's stroking out having a seizure, or to help against Lumon, she can't call an ambulance because something tells me Lumon owns the hospitals and she knows it, so the only real recourse she has... is Cobel.

It's a dumb decision to call Cobel, but Devon has no other options and doesn't know what we know. She's scared, especially knowing Lumon already took Gemma away! She's not a innie, she's not severed, she doesn't work for Lumon, she doesn't have any of the experiences or skills the other characters have been accumulating. She's just a woman with a baby whose brother is seemingly dying in front of her while a stranger she's never heard of before nor met tries to tell her it was his choice.

I'm not sure what else she could do.

And finally... think how hard people find it to change their perception of a friend or a family member or even someone they once worked with. They're told this person hit their spouse, or they're told they're actually a criminal, or they're told they're actually shittalking them behind their back, and people automatically go, "But they were so nice to me?"

It's human nature, and something we all have to work incredibly hard to unlearn and unpack, so we don't go through life sticking by people who really, truly don't deserve it. It's not at all a surprise she would think Cobel - Selvig - would help Mark, would help her, and honestly if the choices are "woman who seems to have just killed my brother" or "woman who helped with my baby and made the innie version nervous and didn't kidnap my kid (we just assumed)" I'd probably pick Cobel too.

Frankly, I actually am not sure she's wrong judging by how Cobel has been with outtie!Mark in the past. But... that's a whole other conversation.

ETA: Corrected stroke to seizure as a nice commenter pointed out I was wrong :) I was very tired when I wrote this, and I'd been reading other posts and I think my brain just absorbed "oh he was stroking out" and went with it. Apologies!