‘Severance’ fans, be warned: Its stars and creator say they’ve seen your wildest fan theories online

Severance is a mysterious show. Waiting nearly three years for its second season to premiere has been difficult for fans, but decoding the show’s offbeat plot is a big part of the fun.

The Apple TV+ series follows the employees of Lumon Industries, who have the option to undergo a procedure to “sever” their work and personal personas. Their “innies” and “outies” have entirely different experiences in the world, keeping the truth about what’s going on at the company and in their lives a mystery for both the characters and the audience.

Combine the enigmatic premise with the long wait time between seasons — the show premiered in February 2022 — and you’ve got the perfect recipe for online chatter. Many questions persist: What does Lumon do? What kind of people really work here? Why are there goats in the office?

On Reddit, YouTube and X, fans have been spinning theories about the show, and its cast and producers have mixed feelings about that.

Dan Erickson, the show’s creator and writer, loves reading the show’s dedicated Reddit forum, which has 235,000 members. He tries to limit his intake, though.

“Every couple of days, I tell myself I’m done and I’m never checking Reddit again, because it threatens to be a little overwhelming,” he told Yahoo Entertainment. “You see all these great theories and part of you wants to make all of those shows.”

Erickson mentioned one theory that the goats in the office are all clones of office drone Milchick who got transformed into animals. That’s not his vision, but he offered the “frustratingly vague” explanation that the audience would get “some answers [that] lead to other questions” about the goats.

“At the end of the day, we keep coming back to our original plan,” he said. “The Reddit thing is just fun … I find it hard to quit because it’s so wonderful to watch people want to play in the world that you helped create.”

Ben Stiller, the executive producer of Severance, told Yahoo Entertainment he loves checking out fan theories. He just doesn’t totally understand how.

“Luckily, I don’t know how to use Reddit,” he joked. “It’s fun to delve into it every once in a while just to see how people’s imaginations are sparked by the show. There are lots of really interesting ideas there.”

Ultimately, he tries to make the show “in a bubble.”

Adam Scott, who plays a devoted Lumon employee named Mark who begins questioning his loyalty, said people often tell him theories but he doesn’t want to “define everything.”

“You want people to live in the mystery of it,” he told Yahoo Entertainment.

His co-star Britt Lower, who plays a frustrated new employee Helly with a cryptic past, said she loves how engaged the fans are.

“It’s been really energizing for us, and that’s what’s exciting about a television series,” she told Yahoo Entertainment. “It evolves with the time that it’s made in, and it evolves because of its reception.”

Patricia Arquette, the actress behind an enigmatic manager named Harmony Cobell who isn’t “severed,” said she started reading fan theories at the beginning but stopped because she was afraid it could become “problematic.”

“I read something that was kind of hinting toward something that was right, and I didn’t want to read anything else that someone could at some point say, ‘That was my idea!’” she said.

When she addressed things online, she did so in character.

“Sometimes I would chime in on people’s comments, and I’d pretend I was Cobell,” she said. “I would make them hit their quota and go back to their cubbyhole.”

Severance Season 2 premieres Jan. 17 on Apple TV+.

EMEA Tribune is not involved in this news article, it is taken from our partners and or from the News Agencies. Copyright and Credit go to the News Agencies, email news@emeatribune.com Follow our WhatsApp verified Channel