Severance just aired its season 2 finale, and season 3 is officially on the way. In a new interview with Alan Sepinwall at Rolling Stone, the show’s creator Dan Erickson explains that big finale ending, teases plans for next season, talks about answering the show’s mysteries, and more. *Spoilers await* if you haven’t yet watched the Severance finale.
On the season 2 finale’s shock ending
Severance’s second season ends with a heart-wrenching moment.
Right after getting Gemma out into safety, innie Mark is faced with a dilemma: go with his outtie’s wife into freedom—and possible reintegration—or stay with Helly.
Mark chooses Helly, and the two run off through the severed floor together as Gemma is left alone, weeping.
Here’s Erickson’s explanation of what’s happening:
In that moment when he’s looking at Gemma and he’s looking at Helly, he’s not just deciding between two women, he’s deciding about existence or non-existence as an innie. He realizes that leaving with Gemma means that his life as he knows it is over. Over the course of the season, he’s reached this point where he is able to value his own existence as an individual independent of his outie. Even though getting Gemma out and helping his outie has been his main goal over the course of the season, when it gets to that moment, he chooses his own life. But I think in that moment, they don’t know what they’re running toward. They may be running toward five more minutes of life, or they may be trying for more. I don’t think they know.
Teases for season 3 and big future plans
Erickson is at one point asked about the show’s tendency to throw its characters into dangerous situations, yet still keep them coming back to work.
After the end of season 2, it seems wild that Severance could continue to offer a similar workplace setting in season 3. Here’s Erickson’s response:
We like to blow up the formula at the end of each season and see if we could bring it back. I don’t want to speak too much about what Season Three would look like. But I will say that we wanted to do something that blew up the world even more than in the first season. It’s a really valid question that people will be asking: “Can the show continue in the format that we’ve been seeing, or is it going to need to transform into something else?”
On a related note, he addressed the question of how long Severance is planned to go on.
We’ve talked about it, and we’re pretty sure that we know how long it’s going. We’re keeping that close to the chest still at this point, but we have a pretty good sense of it.
Will mysteries truly be solved?
Finally, Erickson is asked if he’s seen the show Lost, and is familiar with the series’ famously unanswered mysteries.
People come up to me and say, “Hey, you’re not going to leave us hanging the way Lost did, are you?” I try really hard not to point at mysteries that I know I’m not going to answer. There are things, of course, that are happening on the show that are there to build out and enrich the world, and we’re not going to go through and explain the genesis of all those things and take the fun out. But in terms of the mysteries that we are specifically pointing at, I like to think that people will be satisfied by the answers.
He’s apparently a fan of Lost and found the show’s ending more satisfying than some. That said, he seems very mindful of the importance of answering questions that Severance seems to indicate are important.
The full interview is well worth a read at Rolling Stone.
What are your takeaways from this new interview? Let us know in the comments.
Best Apple TV and Home accessories
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
