Severance – the sinister, mind-bending hit now streaming on Apple TV+ – made a big splash in Ballroom 20 at SDCC with a Q&A panel hosted by comedian Patton Oswalt.
With series guests including creator/writer Dan Erickson, EP Ben Stiller, and stars Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Dichen Lachman, Jen Tullock, and Tramell Tillman the conversation eventually turned to fan theories and all the wild speculation going off online, on sites like Reddit.
Erickson, with the caveat, "I don't want to get into specifics of where things are going in Season 2," explained that he had to force himself off those sites because sometimes "sometimes they have ideas that are better than when I thought of."
"I was on it every day for a while," he said. "It's kind of addicting it's really. As we have gotten more into writing Season 2 it becomes that thing of infinite options, and you have to be committed to what you're doing. I had to cut off other ideas about where it could go because there's an infinite amount of paths we could take."
As far as the sci-fi element goes, Erickson said he favored the slightness of it. "Technologically, the only thing that's different is this [chip]. I've always loved sci-fi that gets into the social elements of something, movies like Contact where it's more about how it affects people."
Season 2, he added, will "continue building out the world a little bit more and being able to see, with this one slight tweak to reality, what the different ramifications of that would be."
"We didn't want for it to feel like sci-fi in the classic sense," he continued.
As for producer/director Ben Stiller's feelings on the matter… "I'm still trying to figure out how to get on Reddit," he said.
An Apple TV+ exclusive, Severance tells the story of Mark Scout, who has voluntarily undergone the titular process of severance, in which your working and personal lives are separated into two distinct personalities. Over the course of Season 1, both sides of Mark begin to suspect that his employer, Lumon, is more nefarious than it first appears.
We awarded the the show's premiere a 9/10 review, calling it a "disturbing examination of the abuses of office culture". The show was renewed for a second season ahead of its finale, which promises to "go deeper into this wholly unique world and unpack more layers of Lumon."
There's tons of news for all your favorite shows, films, games, and more coming out of San Diego Comic-Con 2022, and we've got the full schedule to guide you through the weekend of panels, announcements, trailers, and surprises.