Severance Season 2: All We Know
Severance season 2 is currently in production at Apple TV+ but does not have an official release date.
The Apple TV+ science fiction thriller series Severance was one of the surprise hits of 2022, quickly achieving a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes and a devoted following. Severance Season 2 has a lot to live up to, but we have a lot of faith in the team of series creator/writer Dan Erickson, producer/director Ben Stiller, and the extraordinarily talented cast.
Severance Season 2 will bring Macrodata Refinement division workers Mark S. (Adam Scott), Helly R. (Britt Lower), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), and Irving B. (John Turturro) back to the eerie white hallways of the mysterious Lumon Industries.
In the world of the show (which may or may not be the near future or an alternate present), a controversial medical procedure allows Lumon to separate the consciousness of their workers so they exist as two distinct people: an “Outie” who lives in the world outside of the Lumon Building and an “Innie” who exists only there.
Season 1 of the series was filled with corporate conspiracies, bizarre pseudo-religious ceremonies, and an unexpected love story, and we’re here to tell you what we know of Severance Season 2.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR SEVERANCE SEASON 1 TO FOLLOW
PATRICIA ARQUETTE SAYS AUDIENCES SHOULD BE SCARED OF SEVERANCE SEASON 2
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Severance star Patricia Arquette said that audiences should “Be scared, very scared” by Season 2, which is both promising and a little unnerving.
It seems likely that the Academy Award-winning actress was making a little joke about what will happen in the next set of episodes, but it says something about the chilling aspect of Severance that it is difficult to really be sure.
Patricia Arquette stars in Severance as Harmony Corbel, the brittle, intense supervisor of the central quartet of severed workers. It also seems that Ms. Corbel has a (so far) unexplained fixation on Mark S., going so far as to go undercover as his next-door neighbor Mrs. Selvig in the outside world.
THE NEW SEASON WILL ADD A NUMBER OF NEW CHARACTERS
Severance Season 2 will introduce a number of new characters to the show, though we still do not know whether they will be more severed employees, Lumon higher-ups, or people in the outside world.
More likely than not, at least some of the new characters will be directly related to the central quartet of characters. Severance creator Dan Erickson told Esquire that Season 2 will involve “some expansion of the world” of the show, which likely means that we will see some of the people in the lives of the Outies other than Mark S.
Near the end of Season 1, Dylan G. managed to activate an “Overtime Contingency Protocol” and found himself in his Outie’s life, discovering for the first time that he had a young son. We also saw brief glimpses of the lives of the others, and it seems probable that some of the incoming actors might be family members of the main characters or possibly more employees of Lumon.
Severance Season 2 will bring in Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development), Bob Balaban (The Politician), Robby Benson (Beauty and the Beast), Stefano Carannante, Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones), John Noble (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga), and Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie).
SEVERANCE CREATOR WANTS BARACK OBAMA FOR SEASON 2
Dan Erickson recently revealed that one of his dream castings for Severance Season 2 (or possibly a later season) is former United States President Barack Obama. Although Obama is not particularly known as an actor (though several movies about his life have already been made), he currently has a massive overall deal with Netflix and has begun producing documentaries.
In fact, Barack Obama recently won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator for the Netflix documentary Our Great National Parks, so there is definitely a chance he could be persuaded to appear in some capacity. Erickson specifically said that “I think he’d be really good, he’d bring some gravitas,” which is very fair to say.
SEVERANCE SEASON 2 WILL PICK UP AFTER THE DISCOVERY THAT GEMMA IS STILL ALIVE
The final moments of the season finale of Severance led to the shocking revelation that Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman), the Lumon wellness counselor for the central quartet, was actually Gemma Scout, the deceased wife of Mark S.
Over the course of the first season of Severance, it was gradually revealed that Mark S. began working for Lumon after the death of his wife Gemma in a car accident, seeing his lack of consciousness during the workday as a respite from his grief.
It now appears that Lumon somehow either faked her death or managed to revive her, but as an employee of the company who is only conscious for brief, 30-minute counseling sessions.
Undoubtedly, an enormous part of Severance Season 2 will be Mark and the gang trying to figure out what to do with this information.
THE SHOW WILL REVEAL MORE OF WHAT IS INSIDE THE LUMON BUILDING
The showrunners have also stated that Severance Season 2 will explore the enormous, futuristic-looking Lumon Building. Thus far, we have only seen a few areas of the vast complex, including the office center where the Macrodata Refinement team works, Harmony Corbel’s office, the art department, some kind of discipline/torture room, and a creepy museum dedicated to Kier Eagan, the mysterious, (probably) deceased founder of Lumon.
In real life, the Lumon Building is the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, a research facility in New Jersey dubbed “the Biggest Mirror Ever” for its unique mirror-based exterior.
SEVERANCE SEASON 2 WILL SHOOT FOR SEVEN MONTHS
According to Ben Stiller, Severance Season 2 began shooting in October 2022 and is expected to continue shooting through this May. The show’s impressively detailed production (primarily from designer Jeremy Hindle) must understandably be very involved, hence the long window of time.
SEVERANCE SEASON 2 DOES NOT HAVE AN OFFICIAL PREMIERE DATE
Unfortunately, there is not yet an announced release date for Severance Season 2. Most likely, the show will air sometime near the end of 2023 at the earliest.
