Severance audiences were so happy with Season 1 it sent the creator to therapy

Severance Season 1 was met with such an enthusiastic reception that it sent creator Dan Erickson to a very different kind of office.

The first season of Severance seems like a lifetime ago. Fans waited in limbo for almost three years as the creative team behind the show pursued a worthy follow-up to the widely lauded series, with rampant audience excitement raising the stakes for a second season.

For Erickson, the wild reception had a rather unexpected result.

In a December 2024 interview, Erickson revealed that the series’ welcome, high praise on such a broad scale sent him to a very different kind of office than the one at Lumon Industries.

Dan Erickson went to therapy to cope with fans’ expectations

The series’ first season was widely beloved for its strong performances, unique mysteries and clever sci-fi twists and turns, but a new interview in SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar) reveals the welcome but unexpected level of response sent the series creator to the therapist’s couch.

Apple TV+

“I was in therapy because of all the wonderful feelings I was getting from people responding to the show, and the surprise of it,” he said. “I really thought it would be a much more niche audience.”

The wide array of praise raised expectations, fueling deep introspection about the need for a quality Season 2. He continued:

“Then you’re like, ‘How do I avoid letting these people down that have suddenly invested a little piece of themselves in this show?’ Knowing that we’re going to come back and shoot this again, I don’t want to make people come back and spend months and months shooting something that’s not up to the quality of the first season. So it was really intense.”

When you write one of the smartest shows on television (and it becomes a massive hit), coming up with a world full of interesting twists and surprises was undoubtedly a high priority for Erickson and crew.

“It took a long time,” he says, but “there came a point, a certain ways into production, where I finally started to feel, ‘I actually think this is better.’ I don’t think this is any more a matter of, like, ‘Can we make something acceptable?’ I think we’ve actually got something that’s even more exciting than what we had before.”

It’s an exciting update for the follow-up to such a great season of TV. Stay tuned for our coverage as the series rolls out, and in the meantime catch up with everything you need to know about Season 2, along with one of Season 2’s most curious theories.