Severance season 2: everything we know so far

Severance season 2 is set to continue the tale of Lumon Industries on Apple TV Plus soon. The sci-fi thriller series’ next entry will unravel more of the existential mysteries at play and the controversial medical procedure that renders employees unable to remember their life outside of the office walls. Unsurprisingly, given how great the first season was, we can’t wait to see what’s to come in its sophomore outing.

Season 2 is set to continue on from one of the best season 1 cliffhangers of recent memory. Severance is a show that masterfully ties together complex, conflicted characters in a bleak office satire. It’s a series that grew in scope and ambition with every creeping episode – like the endless corridors of the Lumon office, always longer, darker, and more unnerving than you expect.

Severance is possibly the best Apple TV show to date (though your feelings on that may depend on whether Ted Lasso already has your heart). It’s able to wring the laughter out of painfully corporate banalities, at the same time as pushing them to their most terrifying conclusions, as we see dehumanized and psychologically tortured workers offered up on the altar of CEO worship.

But there’s still plenty we don’t know – including exactly when Severance season 2 will land. Given that the second season was greenlit back in April 2022, though, and with filming already underway, we’re sure to hear more information soon. Here’s everything we know about Severance season 2 so far.

Severance season 2 release date

Severance season 2’s release date has yet to be finalized, but we can estimate a rough launch window. Filming began in October 2022 and is currently slated to end in May 2023.

It took around a year for the first season to complete production and drop on Apple TV Plus. Given that principal photography still has six months to go, and the fact the show will need a lengthy post-production phase, it’s likely that we’ll be waiting until late 2023 to see the next installment. Here’s hoping that’s the case.

Severance season 2 cast

Here’s the full cast for Severance season 2 so far:

• Adam Scott as Mark Scout
• Zach Cherry as Dylan George
• Britt Lower as Helena “Helly” Riggs
• John Tuturro as Irving Bailiff
• Patricia Arquette as Harmony Cobel
• Tramell Tillman as Seth Milchick
• Christopher Walken as Burt Goodman
• Dichen Lachman as Ms. Casey
• Jen Tullock as Devon Hale
• Michael Chernus as Ricken Hale

There were plenty of recurring and guest characters in Severance’s first season, so we might see some of those individuals return for its next outing. However, Apple is yet to confirm which of those might be back, or whether new actors have been hired to play new characters. 

There will be eight new faces, though, among the season 2 cast. Per The Hollywood Reporter (opens in new tab) (THR), this octet of big name stars have joined Severance’s roster in undisclosed roles:

• Gwendoline Christie (The Sandman, Game of Thrones)
• Bob Balaban (The French Dispatch)
• Robby Benson (Beauty and the Beast)
• Stefano Carannante (Miribilia)
• John Noble (Fringe)
• Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (The Tourist)
• Alia Shawkat (Search Party, The Old Man)
• Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie)

Speaking to THR (opens in new tab) for a season 1 finale post-mortem piece, director-producer Ben Stiller previously suggested he had many actors in mind for potential season 2 roles, saying: “For me there are a lot, people like Christopher Guest I kind of imagine ‘Wow that would be amazing if someday he might be a part of the show’. It’s fun when you have a show like this where it allows for people to maybe come in for an episode or two but also fit into the world of Severance.”

Creator Dan Erickson wants Severance’s cast to go full A-list celebrity, though, joking with THR that “If Barack Obama is [there at the 2022 Emmys], I’m going to see if he wants a role on this show. I think he’d be really good, he’d bring some gravitas.”

Severance season 2 plot

Major spoilers for Severance season 1 follow. 

So, what’s going on in Severance? The show is set at Lumon Industries, a shadowy corporate organization that has figured out a way to split a person’s psyche into two: an ‘innie’ that works on Lumon premises, and an ‘outie’ who never has to work a day in their life.

The downside, of course, is that the ‘innie’ doing all the work experiences a never-ending nine until five loop, where they never leave the office, and are doomed to complete obtuse and meaningless tasks on repeat for eternity. And it doesn’t take long for some employees to take issue with such a soul-destroying, Kafkaesque experiment.

Mark Scout initially joins Lumon to escape the crippling grief of losing his wife in a car accident, allowing himself to disassociate from his ‘outside’ psyche for most of the week. But he becomes more curious about the workings of the company after his friend and manager Petey stops showing up to work unexpectedly, while a new recruit seems determined to escape the office. Cue plenty of manipulation by their employer, unexplained baby goats, and a surprisingly violent disco.

Season 1 ended on a big cliffhanger, with four of these rebellious ‘innies’ having successfully activated their work psyches ‘remotely’, launching themselves into the lives of their ‘outies’, and spreading the word of their cruel working conditions and ruining Lumon’s reputation just before a key vote on whether to roll out the severance procedure more widely.

We expect to pick up the moment that season one ended, when this remote activation was interrupted by the employees’ supervisor. That leaves Irving knocking on the door of his office sweetheart, Dylan caught red-handed in the Lumon control room, “Helly” onstage at a Lumon gala after outing the company’s practices, and Mark in his sister’s home after releasing his wife was still alive and working as a Lumon employee. There’s a lot going on at once, and all these people’s ‘outies’ will suddenly find themselves back in the room after an hour of their innies taking control.

We expect season 2 will focus more on the world outside of Lumon Industries, with Helly’s gala outburst and Mark’s discoveries having leaked some company secrets to the public. But it wouldn’t be Severance without, well, severance, and we’re sure to see the cast flit between their ‘innies’ and ‘outies’ at times, especially if it’s to further investigate Lumon’s labyrinthine office corridors, which are sure to contain plenty of secrets we’re yet to unearth.

Speaking to Variety (opens in new tab) about what fans can expect from the next season, Stiller teased: “I think that the biggest thing is how to maintain all those things in terms of the feeling of the show, while at the same time expanding the world since the end of the last episode. We’ve brought Mark and Irving and Helly to the surface, and I think those are storylines that people are going to be interested in. So, it’s going to be figuring out that balance.”

During a Comic-Con 2022 panel (per Time magazine (opens in new tab)), Erickson added: “I’m excited, going into season 2, building out the world a little bit more and being able to see, with this one slight tweak to reality, what the different ramifications would be. We didn’t want it to feel sci-fi in the classical sense. We wanted it to be much more grounded.”

Oh, and expect there to be a reveal of sorts concerning those goats in season 1. Asked if there was any significance to their appearance at Comic-Con, Erickson simply replied: “Yeah.”

Severance season 2 trailer

There’s no official Severance season 2 trailer yet, but we did get a very brief teaser during Apple’s September 2022 iPhone 14 event. 

The footage only shows Helly disembarking from a subway train, either on her way home or to her Lumon office, so it doesn’t give anything away about the show’s second season. Still, it’s a fun little Easter egg-style clip, and shows how much Apple is leaning on another of its flagship shows (like Ted Lasso before it) to drive subscribers towards its streaming service.

Once an official trailer drops, we’ll update this section.

Will we get more seasons of Severance?

Are more entries coming after Severance season 2? It seems likely. Severance is one of the best TV shows to have landed on Apple’s streaming platform since its launch in 2019, and the company won’t want to sleep on a certified hit. It holds a 97% certified “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, has won multiple awards already, and is sure to be a big winner on the 2023 awards circuit, too.

Ted Lasso, Apple’s other megahit original series, is gearing up for a third season, and we expect Severance will get similar treatment. Reall, it all depends on how Severance’s second season goes, but the quality of the storytelling so far bodes well for later seasons, and the many unexplained mysteries of Lumon Industries should offer enough for a few dozen episodes before it all runs out of steam. Just don’t expect Severance season 3 until 2025 comes around at the very earliest.

For more Apple TV Plus-based coverage, check out the best Apple TV Plus movies, how much a subscription costs, or our review of Apple TV Plus as a streaming service.