The second season finale of Severance has dropped on Apple TV+, and without spoiling anything, the story does not seem over. Will the show return?
Well, Apple hasn't made an official announcement, but every sign points to "yes." To start, season 2 ended in a way that left tons of room for more story to be told. It would be crazy not to continue, especially given that the show is a big success; Severance has surpassed Ted Lasso to become the most popular show on Apple TV+. If it doesn't come back for season 3, Apple is leaving money on the table and big corporations don't like to do that.
Also, the producers have talked in a way that suggests they have more things planned. When star Adam Scott was asked how he hoped fans would react after the end of season 2, he said this: "I hope they'll say the exact same thing, 'Holy F, I need Season 3.'" Meanwhile, creator and showrunner Dan Erickson talked about how he and his team have an ending in mind. Although he wouldn't divulge exactly how many seasons he thinks the show will last, it sounds like it's more than two:
"I have a sense of what the final scene will be and, in terms of a number of seasons, kind of where I see it all landing on a character level. We've certainly talked about what we see as the ideal run of the show."
Finally, director Ben Stiller discussed how he's hoping that the third season comes out sooner than the second one did: "I, like other people, get frustrated when things take a long time. I want to have the next season sooner. So I understand that feeling of the expectation.” Fans had to wait three years between seasons 1 and 2, and I think we all agree that we don't want to wait that long again.
But how long will the wait be exactly? In February, right after the second season had premiered, Ben Stiller said they were assembling a writers room. Since then, Nexus Point News has looked into records from the Writers Guild of America West and figured out who will be joining Stiller and Erickson in the season 3 writers room:
- Mary Laws (Succession)
- Eli E. Jorne (The Walking Dead)
- Ezra Claytan Daniels (Doom Patrol)
- Sean Clements (Kevin Can F*** Himself)
- Lauren Bello (The Sandman)
- Aiyana Kim White
Mary Laws and Eli E. Jorne will be joining Erickson as new showrunners. If history repeats itself, Stiller will probably direct a bunch of the new episodes.
Finally, Still just went on the New Heights podcast and confirmed that he has no intention of making fans wait another three years for new episodes, the way they had to do between seasons 1 and 2 of the show. “No, the plan is not, and hopefully, we’ll be announcing what the plan is very soon. That will not be that," he said.
Looking at all this, I think we can safely say that Severance season 3 will happen, even if we don't know the details quite yet.
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h/t Deadline