The first season of Severance, a twisty sci-fi drama on Apple TV+, aired back in 2022. Fans have been waiting a long time to see what happens next. What will happen to Mark and other severed employees at Lumen now that they've journeyed into the "real" world? What exactly are they "refining" down in the depths of the mysterious company? What's the deal with those goats? Mysteries runneth over on Severance, but according to season 2 writer Mohamad El Masri, showrunner Dan Erickson is keeping everything straight in his head.
"He's not like the 'let's make this up as we go' guy," El Masri told us during an interview about his short film Other Other. "There is a method to the madness of everything you see on Severance, and he's thinking about it day and night. He's mapped it out in his head and he's going to tell you about it and you're gonna sort of work with it and figure it out. He's that sort of creator, he's that sort of writer."
"And I said to him, 'gosh, you know, this is almost like a video game. It's like a map that you're uncovering; this building, this town, this world...You're just uncovering levels and characters and tools and doors and hallways and bosses.' That's how I sort of was able to make sense of it creatively. Let's think of it that way. That's not to say that we we didn't hit walls in the room; believe me, we did. And you're sort of banging your head against the wall trying to like, make sure like the Rubik's cube sort of fits. So that's all really round about beat around the bush way of answering your question. Dan's the answer man. Trust in him, for sure."
Obviously, El Masri couldn't tell us exactly what goes down in the second season of Severance, which is set to air on Apple TV+ early next year. But it's good to know that Erickson has a plan. Sometimes on these mystery box type of shows, the writers make it up as they go along, and at the end you realize the puzzle wasn't as clever as it first appeared to be. I'm glad to hear there's a grander design to Severance.
On a show like Severance, "everything has to connect"
Severance is about a group of employees who voluntarily "sever" their consciousness, making it so they don't remember anything about their lives outside the office when they're at work, and vice versa. It's a really interesting idea that El Masri thinks came along at the right time. "The pandemic was starting to open up," he recalled. "I think the world was opening up and people were having a conversation about their relationship between work, the office, remote work. There was this sort of discourse that was happening, and there was a tension, there was an anxiety about going back into the world. And so it came out right when that was on people's minds. It was just a great serendipity of timing, and sometimes that's what you need: the culture and your art need to be in sync. It was just incredible."
El Masri came on board the show as a writer for season 2 when they were still filming the end of season 1, so nobody knew at that point that the show would catch on the way it did. Even at that point, El Masri got "a 50-page Bible" about the ins and outs of the show, more evidence that there is indeed some master plan at work.
"Having said that, regardless of what's available to you, you still have to sort of figure it out, because it's a moving, living, breathing sort of piece," El Masri told us. "And so we did spend the first couple of months going, 'Let's redeclare intentions here. What is Lumen? What do they want? Why is Mark special, what's going on with Mrs. Casey?' You really do have to sort of go back and go: 'All right, wait a minute, what are the order of operations here?'"
"And Severance is unlike Other Other in the sense [that it is] hard science fiction. And it has a mythology and has a magic to it, but you do have to present the audience with the whys and the hows and the whos. You do have to do that on this type of show. Like the goats. What are the goats? Why are they there? What's the man doing? Everything has to connect. What are they refining? What are these numbers that they're sort of seeing? What's that all connected to? What is this family? Now that we've revealed that Helly is a big part of this company, what does that mean for this family? What do they want? What are they doing? What's the history? We had to sit and sort of wade through all that before you can just sit and write a season of television."
All that's left is to see how it all links up! The second season of Severance premieres on Friday, January 17, and El Masri sounds just as excited as we are. "I can't wait for everybody to just see it," he said. "I think we've all been waiting such a long time that I feel like the world is gonna be watching and waiting. It's exciting, I'm excited for everybody involved, and the fans."