Future Severance stories might draw from the Hollywood strikes

With the first episode of Severance Season 2 finally released (more set to follow), we may have already received a hint of what’s to come in the series’ future storylines.

The popular Apple TV+ series Severance had years fall between Season 1 and its sophomore outing, with its production process affected by everything from national-grade crises to narrative perfectionism.

One part of the story concerned the impact of the wave of Hollywood strikes that heavily impacted the production of numerous films and series, Severance Season 2 among them.

With Season 2 affected by the strikes, and the series as a whole centered around Innie resistance against terrible workplace conditions, series creator Dan Erickson finally gave fans window into whether or not those events might find a way into Severance Season 3.

Future Severance plotlines might be affected by the strikes

In an interview with THR, Severance creator Dan Erickson discussed both the various ways real-world crises affected his approach to the material, and how they might specifically fuel Season 3.

“It affects it a lot,” he explained. “Those things make their way into the text of the show kind of organically.”

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“We didn’t really know when we were making season one what the return to work was going to feel like, when the world ultimately did start doing that, and what it was going to feel like to come back into the office having been doing remote work for so long. That experience informed the way we wrote Season 2.”

Erickson broke down how Season 2 wasn’t just affected by different work styles, but also by the subsequent conversations that those experiences provoked. “And then similarly — all these things are related — that experience of coming back to work changed the way people were talking about work,” he said, “and talking about how much of ourselves we owe to our employer, and what we should expect back in return.”

These national-level conversations made their way indirectly into the show, but Erickson says they also fueled the wave of strikes that shook Hollywood. “It’s not a straight line, but I think that those kind of conversations led to things like the strikes, and people reassessing what work should feel like. So that made it into the story… Season 2 dealt with a lot of the issues that [were] experienced in real time for Season 1.”

As for Season 3, which has been played pretty close to the chest so far? “When we do think about continuing the show — if we are able to do that — we can’t help but think about things like the strikes, and what it was like to be on a strike line, and what it was like to be fighting for a better situation. It can’t help but affect our thinking as we continue to think about the show.”

We don’t yet know how Season 2 will end, nor what we can expect of Innie resistance or Lumon’s response, but an Innie work stoppage might be in the cards. Regardless, expect Mark S. and crew to raise a lot more hell in Season 2.

The first episode of Severance Season 2 has premiered on Apple TV+, with 10 episodes in Season 2 and Season 3 en route.