The first season of Apple TV+’s extremely good, deliciously unpredictable, and technologically creepy workplace drama Severance comes to an end this Friday—but (praise Keir!) it’s not the end of the series. Apple announced today that the show will get a second season.
In a press release, director/executive producer Ben Stiller said, “It has always been a multi-season story, and I’m really happy we get to continue it.”
Severance is the best thing on TV that almost no one I know seems to be watching. Apple doesn’t release viewership numbers, but clearly enough people are watching Dan Erickson’s unnerving SF take on work/life balance; the streamer calls it a “global hit.” The premise is as deceptively simple as the blank white hallways and spare offices of Lumon. Here’s the synopsis:
In Severance, Mark Scout (Adam Scott) leads a team at Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a severance procedure, which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. This daring experiment in “work-life balance” is called into question as Mark finds himself at the center of an unraveling mystery that will force him to confront the true nature of his work… and of himself.
People have compared Severance to Lost in terms of how it’s clearly packed with mysteries and there’s a ton about the setting that we don’t know. But where Lost got very focused on those mysteries, Severance stays close to its characters—every one of them brilliantly cast (Christopher Walken will break your heart, no joke). It’s a mystery, but one that inspires more empathizing than theorizing. It’s a show about a lot of things—control, power, grief, the meaning of work, capitalism, what work/life balance actually means. Who are you when you’re at work? Who are you when you’re at home? Why should those people be different—and what does it do to us to split ourselves that way?
If you’re a marathon show-watcher, start Severance now and you’ll be caught up for the finale on Friday. And then you can join the rest of us in the agonizing wait for season two.
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