‘Severance’ Creator Has ‘Whole Vision Mapped Out’ for Series, Which Could Include a Third Season
“Severance” is likely already looking to Season 3 and beyond, even before its highly-anticipated second season has debuted. The critically acclaimed Apple TV+ series premiered in 2022, and picked up 14 Emmy nominations and two wins. It was renewed for a second season mere days before its Season 1 finale aired. While Season 2 is set for a January 17, 2025 release, a third season has not officially been greenlit.
However, series writer and Season 2 co-executive producer Mohamad El Masri recently told IndieWire while promoting his acclaimed Youtube short film “Other Other“ that series creator Dan Erickson and executive producer and director Ben Stiller have already “mapped out” the full arc of the sci-fi workplace drama. (As of this publication, Apple has not responded to requests for comment.)
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“There was always a thinking ahead to future seasons,” El Masri of building out the world of “Severance.” “Even in Season 2, we were talking about, what is the end game and how does this show end? A lot of work was talking about that. I think there’s a natural overlap that happens, especially with the second season of a show, that you’ve got to keep [the momentum] going. People are interested, people are watching, and now with Season 2, you really have to sort of think about, not just what is Season 2 going to deliver in a satisfying way, but how does this set up Season 3 and beyond?”
El Masri teased that Season 2 will “point us in the direction we want to go” in for how to wrap up the series as a whole. “I know there was work being done on Season 3 while they were still shooting Season 2,” El Masri confirmed.
So, will a possible third season take another three years to make, like the gap between Seasons 1 and 2?
“That’s something I can’t ultimately talk about,” El Masri said. “I will say, will it take another 3.5 years for the show to come out with Season 3? I mean, I hope not, just as a fan. I hope we don’t have to keep ourselves waiting for that long. But, you know, it’s Hollywood.”
He added, “What I would say is that Ben and Dan and the entire team, they’re perfectionists and they want it to be great. And if that takes, you know, a year, two years, three years or whatever it’s going to be, they’re just going take the time they need to make it the show that they want, and clearly that’s paid off and in a remarkable first season. I feel like Ben and Dan and everyone, they’re not going to put something out that they don’t feel is amazing.”
But El Masri admitted that such large spaces between seasons is “nuts” to an extent. “By the time the show comes out in January with the second season, it’ll have been almost 3.5 years since we started writing, which is just nuts,” he said. “I even have to go back and watch the first season and remind myself of how it all ties together. I’m excited for the audience to also have to sort of go back and re-watch and, you know, re-familiarize themselves with the journey of Season 1.”
El Masri also teased the possibility of a narrative time jump in “Severance” to accommodate the longer creative process of writing the show. “I’m excited to see what that time jump will be,” he said. “Or if there is a time jump. I think at the end of the day I don’t know what the narrative ties up between Season 3 is going to be.”
What El Masri could share, though, was that Season 2 will dive deeper into the lore of Lumon.
“[Series creator] Dan had all these ideas about where this was going,” El Masri said of starting writing Season 2 while Season 1 was still in production. El Masri was also given a 50-page “really massive series Bible” from Erickson, who had spent five years developing the world of “Severance” before EP Stiller brought the show to the screen.
“We spent the first two months in the writer’s room [when] they were still filming the first season, so we were sort of still tying the tether of the end of the first season with the second season,” El Masri said. “Dan very much was about really articulating what this world is doing, like really figuring that out. So we did have to do that. Every single thing you find has to have a purpose and we have to articulate that to the audience.”
According to El Masri, showrunner Erickson has this “whole vision mapped out” of the series and the series writers are tasked with providing “answers” to the mysteries of the show like what M.D. is, what the Lumon workers are actually doing for a job, and what else is housed in the massive Lumon headquarters.
The screenwriter explained that “Severance” has a “video-game quality” in presenting “undiscovered parts of the map” to audiences. “Lumon, it seems to me, it’s a massive complex. We’re only seeing a couple of floors. Where is everybody? It seems kind of empty,” El Masri said as he hinted at Season 2 storylines. “A lot of our work in Season 2 was like, what else is in this place? Where else can we go? What else can we discover?What does this company want? How did this company come to this town? What does this family want? That’s stuff you have to answer.”
Unlike other shows with sci-fi elements such as “Lost,” “Severance” is not “figuring out as we go.” “Dan is not that guy,” El Masri said of Erickson. “He is very meticulous and very detailed about the world that he’s created. So we have to work within those relative parameters. It’s his vision, it’s all in his head and, you know, you sort of have to draw it out. You have to really understand it from him. But at the same time, it’s a living thing and you have to sort of adapt and change. We have to go back and revisit, pivot, rewrite, and make sure that not only does it make sense from a science-fiction place, but that emotional journeys are all tracking and connecting to the cool stuff in a way that makes organic sense.”
“Severance” Season 2 will premiere January 17, 2025 on Apple TV+.
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