SEVERANCE Producer Says the Creators Are Planning Future Seasons and Teases Season 2 Will Dive Into Lumon Lore
Season 2 of the highly anticipated Apple series Severance is finally returning this January, and if all goes to plan, we will see the show continue for a few more seasons as the story fully plays out.
According to the show’s producer, Mohamed El Masri, series creator Dan Erickson and executive producer and director Ben Stiller have already “mapped out” the full arc of the sci-fi workplace drama.
In a recent interview with Indie Wire, El Masri talked about building out the world of Severance, saying: “There was always a thinking ahead to future seasons. 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 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.”
El Masri went on to share 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.
“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.”
I am stoked to go rewatch season 1 and get reacquainted with the story before Season 2 is released! It sounds like the creators have a great story to tell, and we are in for a wild ride. Severance Season 2 will premiere January 17, 2025 on Apple TV+.