Severance

It’s hard to refute the greatness of Severance, which leads the Emmys race with 27 nominations, but few shows raise as many questions — or spark as many fan theories — as the retro-futuristic Apple TV+ series. THR posed many of ours to creator and showrunner Dan Erickson, who was game to answer (most of) them, including where the show’s deepest, darkest secrets are virtually buried.

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Congrats on an insane number of Emmy noms. I wrote a story in which I said season one deserved the more accolades of the two — but that’s more about how much I think season one was under-appreciated. What’s your reaction to all of that?

I think that however people perceive it is certainly fair. I also think that there is something about the first season of any show and coming in and discovering that world and having all of those intriguing questions raised. You know, there’s certainly nothing easy about making TV at any stage, but I do think it’s easier to raise those intriguing questions than to continue the story and answer those questions — or some of them in a way that is satisfying to people. And so for me as a fan, I often find myself feeling affection or nostalgia for that first season. But I think that the response we’ve got on the second (season) is really the best that I could have asked for. And I do think that people are becoming more familiar with the show and starting to really appreciate the work of a lot of the actors who weren’t nominated in the first season. I love so much that a lot of those people are now being recognized. There was a lot of stuff that sort of flew under the radar, I think, in that first run.

I don’t know how this got in my head at some point, but did you or Ben (Stiller) ever say Severance would be three seasons and done?

No. We still haven’t to this day said what exactly it’s going to be in terms of length. So, no.

Do you know how many seasons you’re gonna do?

We are pretty sure. We’re pretty sure, but we’re keeping that internal at the moment.

I asked this to Britt (Lower) as well, but do you 100 percent promise that was Helly R. in the season two finale and not Helena Egan? Like, you’re not screwing with us.

Yeah, we’ll screw with you on some things, but on this we’re being as open as possible. Yeah, that was Helly.

I recall you telling me you had a physical bible that contained all of the show’s mythology. Do you still have that?

Well, I think that that physical binder may have gone in the shredder at some point in the transition between seasons. But we’ve still got the document that contains sort of all of the lore and the history of the company and of the characters. So, yeah, it may not be physical, it may be digital at this point, but it still exists.

Who has access to it?

So yeah, I’m working with two EPs, and so they’ve got access to it. And Ben has access to it — basically all the executive producers. And then we share that stuff with Apple and others, sort of on a case-by-case basis.

It’s not like a leather-bound thing where we blow dust off of it. It’s on a hard drive somewhere.

Is it fair to assume that Mark S. leaves the Lumon building and becomes Mark Scout again at some point (in season three)?

I think at this point you kind of can’t assume anything. I think what we wanted to do was dramatically change the format of the show in a way so that we’re not seeing the same thing we’ve seen before. So I think at this point, anything could happen.

Did you write a version where Mark S. leaves (the severed floor) with Gemma (in the season two finale)?

I like to think there’s an alternate universe, but our plan was always— we basically had that ending for the season pretty well-established when we started conceiving it. That was one of the first things that we came up with. And the reason for that was just, I really love the idea that he starts— you know, the first thing you see (in the season three premiere) is [Mark S.] running to go find not Helly and Irving and Dylan, but Miss Casey, because at that starting point of the season, he feels very much like indebted to his Outtie, or like he’s sort of an appendage of his Outtie. And so at the end, it was like, “What if we get him all the way there and he gets her out, but then he doesn’t follow?”

Explain the mechanics of why a door to the stairwell on the MDR floor turns a severed employee into their Outtie, but the same person has to go down several flights in the elevator shaft for the same change?

So, yeah, this is actually also— this is a whole section (in the show bible) of how exactly that the severance threshold works. And basically the company can build it however they want. And the idea is that there sort of is just a section— if you were to dig through the wall of the severed floor, you would eventually reach a point where you’re beyond the threshold and you’re no longer within that space where your Innie is being activated. And so, they would have basically just designed it where that doorway is, where the cutoff point is.

I will go to my grave believing that major plot points in Lost were changed in response to fan theories on message boards. Do you read the Severance Reddit thread, and would you change something if it was “spoiled” by a fan theory?

Yeah, I really enjoy looking at the Reddit, but I’ve had to pull back from it a little bit because I get in my head at a certain point. There’s so many good ideas on there, and part of you wants to do all of them. I will say that…I think, inevitably, there are little pivots that you do. That’s the nature of TV — I think it’s always been, even before message boards. As you go multiple seasons, you listen to people’s responses, and you find out what people are loving and what they’re not. And so, yeah, I think there have been pivots, but I will say like the big plan has not changed — and I don’t think it would change, even if someone were to guess it exactly, which I haven’t seen thus far.

Even if that were to happen, I don’t think that that would be grounds to change it — unless it was like a consensus, like everybody called it — because I actually think that it’s OK when…Helena was pretending to be Helly, you know, for a number of episodes. People called that from the jump. And that actually didn’t bother me. I didn’t think that it detracted from the experience, because people like being right and they like sort of being part of the show and thinking through it. If nobody ever guessed anything, I think it would mean that we weren’t setting things up properly. So, yeah, all that is to say that I love people speculating, and I don’t find it to be a problem if people are guessing certain things, because I think that’s part of the fun.

Do you feel pressure for your next show to have as much lore and mythology as this one?

I mean, the truth is — and I’m not just saying this — but I don’t think about it that much just because of bandwidth, because Severance is very much the only thing in my field of vision right now. But when I do think about sort of a post-Severance landscape for myself, I would be really interested in doing something very different — doing a totally different genre. I got my start in comedy. I always thought I would be more of a comedy writer, and I would be interested to explore that space.

I think that everything you do is really a result of of the specific collaboration and the specific people that you’re working with.I think that Severance is something that sort of had to pass through both me and Ben before it could become what it is, and all of our department heads and designers and actors. And so I think whatever I do next — you know, assuming I’m lucky enough to work again — is probably going to feel really different. And so I think we lean into that.

What you’re saying is you’re doing Survivor with (The White Lotus) creator Mike White.

That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll be— yeah, I’ll be on Love Island.

I know you won’t tell us who, but can you tell us if any other major character that we’ve already met has or had been severed (and we don’t about it yet)?

I don’t know that I can confirm nor deny that.

That feels like the right way to end an interview about Severance.

Yeah.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.