Severance’s Creators Explain The Art Of A Great Cliffhanger

After a agelong wait, Severance is back. Season 2 premiered connected Apple TV Plus connected January 17th, overmuch than 2 years aft nan first play wrapped up. The clasp was peculiarly difficult because of really nan play 1 finale ended — a monolithic cliffhanger that would wholly upend nan lives of almost everyone successful this sci-fi thriller. Cliffhangers are a tricky business. They tin thief support viewers consenting successful immoderate comes next, but they tin too beryllium frustrating, seeming to withhold accusation purely for nan intent of keeping group hooked.

Severance has managed this balancing enactment bully truthful far, and I had nan chance to talk to immoderate of nan imaginative squad down nan show — creator Dan Erickson, caput Ben Stiller, and prima Adam Scott — astir really they’ve pulled it off. “Honestly it’s conscionable benignant of guessing successful your mind,” Stiller tells The Verge. “You effort to deliberation astir what nan stakes are that we’ve established, and hopefully you’ve earned it by nan end.”

One of nan trickiest parts for Severance, astatine slightest early on, was that nan squad wasn’t really judge really audiences would react. It’s a weird show that follows a group of agency workers who personification their brains surgically altered to abstracted their activity and location lives. This, successful essence, creates 2 selves: those who unrecorded successful nan extracurricular world (outies); and those who are confined to nan basement agency of Lumon Industries (innies). Things only get alien from there, involving everything from an agency goat pen to a terrifyingly ominous creation party. While nan show yet recovered an audience, that wasn’t a fixed during production.

“We made nan afloat play successful a bubble wherever cipher saw point until it was each done, and we didn’t cognize if anybody would moreover respond to nan show,” says Stiller. “I retrieve nan play 1, conception 8 ending was a cliffhanger. And I retrieve reasoning ‘that’s a really bully cliffhanger, I wonderment if group are going to consciousness nan conception 9 ending is simply a bully cliffhanger too.’ Will this each adhd up for people? Luckily it did.”

Scott, who plays Mark connected nan show and too serves arsenic a producer, echoes that by saying, “It’s a rotation of nan dice whether aliases not point is going to work.” The thought is to creation nan show truthful that it builds up to those ample moments, and past dream it connects nan measurement you planned. “There’s each of this architecture building up to that infinitesimal successful conception 9,” Scott explains. “I retrieve erstwhile we were shooting nan finale, and shooting nan conception wherever Mark walks past [Harmony Cobel, played by Patricia Arquette] and calls her by nan incorrect name, and talking to Ben and Patricia and conscionable saying ‘If they’re still pinch america astatine this point, this is going to beryllium truthful awesome.’”

Part of what made nan play 1 finale work, says Erickson, is that it managed to immoderate reply questions and coming caller ones. It gave viewers an intriguing cognition of restitution and mystery. For those who haven’t seen it — spoilers ahead! — nan ninth and past conception of play 1 has Mark and his coworkers doing point forbidden: entering nan extracurricular world arsenic their innie selves. There, they study each kinds of important accusation astir who they really are. Mark, successful particular, discovers that his wife, who he thought was dormant successful nan extracurricular world, is really surviving a severed life astatine Lumon nether nan caller punishment Ms. Casey. The conception ends correct connected that shocking revelation.

“With Mark, that past infinitesimal of ‘she’s alive,’ successful a measurement it answers 1 question; nan mobility was ever is he going to find retired astir Ms. Casey, and is he going to beryllium tin to nonstop a relationship to nan extracurricular world that she’s down there,” Erickson explains. “We get answers to those. But past it opens up this afloat caller mobility of what now? How is that going to alteration nan position quo connected nan incorrect and nan outside.?”

While nan clasp was long, play 2 of Severance picks up correct aft that moment, truthful you yet get immoderate answers — but of course, location are plentifulness overmuch successful store.