Return To Office Updates (Dec. 2024)

December 16, 2024 1

Over three years since Severance debuted on Apple TV+, the streaming service has launched multiple other sci-fi masterpieces. That includes two seasons of Silo, which has now been renewed for third and fourth seasons. And yet, still no Severance, but do not despair. Creator Dan Erickson and director Ben Stiller have been painstakingly crafting a second chapter of this mind-boggling exploration of when the “work-life balance” concept goes to extremes.

Now, Stiller and friends are nearly ready to show the next season to the world. Last time we saw the core four Innies, they were doing the unthinkable: three headed out into the Outie world to confront the reality of Severance with one Innie holding down the control room fort. Then Milchick’s tackle of Dylan left too many mysteries unanswered, but fortunately, new interviews and trailers have revealed clues on what’s to come next.

Trailer

Before diving into plot tidbits that have surfaced in interviews, we cannot ignore the trailers. The first showed Adam Scott’s Mark returning to Lumon and not recognizing his fellow office workers. A longer trailer (below) is a lot. Mark is shown reuniting with Helly, Irving, and Dylan. A newspaper article calls the group “whistleblowers” and “The Face of Severance Reform.” The group then goes on a snowy retreat, more goats surface, and Mark begins looking for his “dead” wife, Gemma/Ms. Casey. Ms. Cobel knows something, and Milchick declares, “I’m tightening the leash” before bidding Mark farewell. Yikes.

This could have been more ominous, say, if the dancing Milchick put Mark in an elevator, but it’s not looking good. Also, Mark’s kiss with Innie Helly surfaces in surveillance footage (not a great sign), and Apple TV+’s brief description is as follows: “Mark and his friends learn the dire consequences of trifling with the severance barrier, leading them further down a path of woe.”

Plot

In a Vanity Fair feature, Dan Erickson followed up on that “path of woe” by adding of “this little rebellion” that “the fallout is dire.” And what has happened to Ms. Casey? Stiller maintains that this is of grave importance to the story, especially since she “died” on the outside, and we don’t know what Lumon has done with her on the inside. Erickson stresses that the different meanings of death on the inside and outside will figure prominently:

“We saw people die-actually physically die-in the first season, but death does mean something different as an Innie, because there is always the specter of what happens if your Outie never comes back? If, for one reason or another, you don’t return to this office, that equates to death for these characters.”

And what of that snowy retreat shown in the trailer? Stiller offered this:

“Corporate retreats are interesting. You’re always having to think a few steps ahead in terms of how Lumon is trying to control their employees with their company ethos. There’s other team-building exercises and dynamics that I think ultimately have a different agenda. This started out as a weird workplace comedy that had this other absurdist feeling to it. Corporate ideology is very much inherent to the tone of the show.”

Stiller also divulged that Gwendoline Christie’s role is “doing some kind of work where she’s not in an office,” and she will be part of the show “trying to figure out how all these different departments connect with each other.”

As for whether a (possible) third season will take another three years to happen, Severance writer and co-executive producer Mohamad El Masri previously told Indiewire that Stiller and Erickson “mapped out” the full series and they have always been thinking, “[H]ow does this set up Season 3 and beyond?”

And if you were wondering how Dan Erickson came up with the Severance concept, he gamely explained, “because I hated my job, and I was finding myself wishing that I could disassociate from it … I was walking into work one day, and it was just, like, ‘I wish so much that it was five o’clock right now, and I could just jump ahead and have done the work, but not have to experience it.’ That led to thinking about how we are all different people at work.”

Cast

The core four, portrayed by Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, and John Turturro, are clearly back in the Innie world, and Tramell Tillman is back as Company Man Milchick to terrorize the group. Additionally, Patricia Arquette returns as Ms. Cobel, and we don’t know if Dichen Lachman will resurface in motion as Gemma/Ms. Casey, but we know that Mark is looking for her.

Newly seen Lumon employees will include Gwendoline Christie (whose role remains mysterious and threatening, and she doesn’t appear to be a refiner). Other workers will include Sarah Bock (whose young age seems unsettling in this setting), Alia Shawkat, Merritt Wever, Stefano Carannante, Robby Benson, John Noble, and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson.