Apple TV's Severance has been a huge hit since it first premiered in 2022 and fans are desperate to know when it will be returning for a second season
Ellie Kemp and Ellie Kemp
13:49, 09 Jul 2024
Fans of Apple TV's Severance are eager to find out more about the show's next instalment.
The nine-part dystopian drama, starring Parks and Recreation's Adam Scott, first launched in 2022. It follows Scott as Mark Scout, a team leader at Lumon Industries whose employees' memories - as well as his own - have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives.
When a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it ignites a journey to discover the truth about their jobs. Zach Cherry, Britt Lower, Tramell Tillman and Jen Tullock also star.
The show, directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle, earned an impressive 97 per cent score from critics on review site Rotten Tomatoes. The website's consensus reads: "Audacious, mysterious, and bringing fresh insight into the perils of corporate drudgery, Severance is the complete package."
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The Times' Andrew Male described the show as having "gradually evolved from an unsettling mood-piece into a gripping sci-fi mystery that also worked as a parable for our paranoid post-Covid age." And Globe and Mail's John Doyle said: "It gains a thriller-like momentum as it moves along, and can be disturbing enough to be nightmarish, yet still maintains a modicum of mischievous wit."
The critically-acclaimed show was written by Dan Erickson, who produced the 2016 Netflix series Chambers, following a young woman who begins to develop different personalities after a heart transplant.
Erickson had worked in an office job before writing Severance, explaining his job was so mind-numbing that he wished he could "skip the eight hours of the workday, to disassociate and just get it over with." The show follows the staff of biotechnology corporation Lumon Industries which uses a medical procedure called 'severance' to separate the memories of their employees depending on whether or not they're at work.
Severed workers, dubbed 'Innies', cannot remember anything of their lives or the world outside. When outside work, they're known as 'Outies' and cannot remember their time at work.
Back in June, Apple TV teased a first-look photo of season two, much to fans' delight. Posting a photo of Mark, wearing a suit and holding a bunch of blue balloons, they wrote: "Your innie has already seen this image. A first look at Severance Season 2."
Fans were quick to hear more about the show's release date - which is still unconfirmed. @Noleee04 demanded: "I need it. This has seriously been the longest wait ever" as @YungDagger808 pleaded@ "Now give us a trailer and release date for this year".
Filming for Severance's second season began in 2022, but was interrupted by last year's writers' strike. However Stiller confirmed filming had started up again in January - and since promised the long-awaited second series would be out 'soon.'
He told basketball podcast Roommates Show: "It's coming soon and we don't have an actual date but I've been working on the second season of it for a long time, since we had a strike last year. So that cut us off for a while. We're going to be shooting until probably like the end of April and it will be coming out sometime after that soon."
That means fans can be hopeful for an autumn 2024 date at the earliest - and perhaps a trailer in the next few months.