If Severance underwent the kind of performance review that corporate employees are subjected to each year, the show would get high marks for innovation and dedication, but it would face renewed pressure to engage in creative problem-solving. Fans have waited almost three years for the second season, and executive producer and director Ben Stiller and writer and creator Dan Erickson say they understand the assignment ahead: New episodes must bring resolution to some of the broader mysteries that have launched a thousand fan theories.

“I’m excited that we finally are at this place,” Stiller says of Severance’s return to Apple TV+ on January 17. “It’s an interesting process making something like this second season because you now know there’s an audience there that cares. That has been in our minds the entire time: ‘Wow, people really are paying attention to these details.’ My hope is that, when they see this season, there’s an awareness that we’re trying to connect some dots and also leave some dots unconnected and put out some new dots to connect. But also, geez, the dot analogy…”

To continue the annual evaluation motif for this exclusive Vanity Fair preview, Severance would also earn praise for above-average character building. Stiller and Erickson vow to keep up the pace in that department, with the new episodes delving much deeper into the split identities of its four central leads, whose personal lives have been technologically separated from their workplace memories. That essentially turns each one into two different people, sometimes with opposing interests.

Communication skills? Not bad—although uncertainty has actually been part of Severance’s appeal. Even the most diligent viewers of the series still don’t quite understand what the show’s four main cubicle dwellers actually do for a living in the “macrodata refinement” division. (To be fair, the characters don’t fully grasp it either.) The broader purpose of their employer, Lumon Industries, remains nebulous as well. Count those high on the audience’s to-do list of questions to answer.

Then there’s the issue of punctuality. Put bluntly, Severance needs improvement—although a seasoned HR professional would soften that by calling it an opportunity for development. The show’s first season concluded in April 2022, and Stiller and Erickson are aware that fans have grown impatient for the next chapter. They explain (in classic annual evaluation fashion) that, if they have a flaw…it’s perfectionism. “We do shoot pretty methodically, and we probably don’t turn around as many pages of script per day as a lot of other shows,” Erickson says. “That comes down to just trying to make sure that we get it right.”

These employee reviews always begin with a recap of previous performance, so let’s start there with a Severance refresher:

Past Assessment

At the end of Severance season one, Adam Scott’s Mark made a startling connection between his two realities: The deceased wife he is grieving in his personal life is in fact the “Outie” version of Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) from the office, who is in reality very much alive. Helly (Britt Lower), the coworker Mark has been tentatively falling for in their cubicle farm, is revealed in her outside existence as the granddaughter of their sinister corporation’s founder.

In more office heartbreak, Irving (John Turturro) lost the colleague he loved (Christopher Walken) when the man retired, and ultimately discovers he already has a partner on the outside. In the control room of their company, Dylan (played by Zach Cherry) held open the switches between his coworkers’ two consciousnesses so they could make these connections between their inner and outer lives. That makes him a target of their boss, Mr. Milchik (Tramell Tillman), while their previous supervisor, Patricia Arquette’s imperious Ms. Cobel, was fired from the company for her sadistic practices.

Future Goals

In season two, Mark must discover what became of Ms. Casey, while reconciling his feelings for Helly—unaware that her other self is one of the leaders manipulating the employees of the Lumon corporation. Ms. Cobel continues her scheming despite being cast aside by Lumon, and the overall mystery of what the company does becomes even more important as the employees are required to answer for their disobedience and violation of the terms of their severance agreement.

Growth Plans = Ambitious

Severance has generated a devoted fan base who speculate and analyze episodes on a forensic basis for clues about the nature of Lumon Industries and the broader meaning of the show. What directions will season two explore?

Erickson: I think things get darker. We very much wanted to put our heroes in a scarier place because season one ends with them poking the bear. They form this little rebellion, and they’re able to achieve a modicum of success with it, but the question with season two was: What happens when the bear pokes back? What’s the fallout of this victory that they had? I think, without giving much away, the fallout is dire.

Stiller: When [season one] came out, it was fun to look at all of the reactions and how people would kind of dig into theories. We wanted to pick up the story where it left off. We’re bringing the Innies to the Outie world and then will answer some questions by the end of the season. Hopefully we keep it enough of a mystery and intriguing enough that people want to keep following the story.

Erickson: In season one, the Innies are basically children. They’re adults in some ways, but experientially they’re children, having your first crush and finding out things about yourselves. Season two, it’s a little bit more of an adolescence story. There’s more of a sense of finding your own autonomy and deciding who you are going to be, as opposed to who you’ve been told you are.

Character Building = Doubled

What does it mean for the core characters now that their inner selves have information their outer selves don’t?

Stiller: For me, a through line in this series has always been about Mark trying to grieve his wife. But then, we find out that his wife is alive. Is Outie Mark going to find out that Innie Mark knows? And how is Outie Mark going to deal with that? At the same time, I think we’ve sort of developed a relationship with Innie Mark and Helly on the inside that feels like it’s going somewhere. So there’s a natural tension that’s growing there between Outie Mark’s interests and Innie Mark’s interests.

Erickson: In some ways, the most interesting character to explore is Helly because we find out at the end of season one that her Outie has had a very, very different life experience from her, and seemingly has become a very different person than she is [in her office self.] We talk about the difference between a freedom fighter and a dictator. Sometimes the only difference is success. Somebody who successfully gets into power can become a dictator, versus if they never had, then they could have spent their life fighting for freedom.

Interpersonal Skills = Fraught

Will some of the characters become their own antagonists, as the interests of their inner and outer selves diverge?

Stiller: These characters are dealing with parts of themselves that they don’t want to deal with or don’t know about necessarily, but are still part of them. We’re at odds with ourselves as people in life. Reintegration is a big thing in the show. It’s a chance to become whole.

Erickson: Suddenly, your brain is having to unnaturally comprehend these two different lives as though they’re one. One of the big central questions of the show is how much of you is just defined by who you are naturally versus your experience. We always ask, “Are Innie and Outie Mark truly two different people, or are they the same guy, but just tweaked because they have these different life experiences?” It comes down to what makes us who we are.

Technological Proficiency = Within Range

Are there ways in which Severance season two actually connects its fantasy to real life?

Stiller: Severance was kind of a sci-fi idea. But really, it’s not. The only piece of science fiction technology that doesn’t exist is the chip, and we know people are working on those. It’s about the idea of memory and things that we are aware of and aren’t aware of. And if we suppress our memories, are we able to go forward in life without acknowledging them? I think that happens a lot of times to people in life.

Erickson: The initial concept just came because I hated my job, and I was finding myself wishing that I could disassociate from it. I worked at a door factory. I had just finished grad school, and I was feeling like I should be moving my career ahead, and not cataloging door hinges. I was walking into work one day, and it was just, like, ‘I wish so much that it was five o’clock right now, and I could just jump ahead and have done the work, but not have to experience it.’ That led to thinking about how we are all different people at work and, when we go to these different spaces, we become these different versions of ourselves.

Company Loyalty = Questionable

Severance is not just about cracking the mystery that brings down the evil corporate overlords. If their employer goes down, so do the identities of the workers viewers have come to know and love. Only their outer selves would remain.

Erickson: We saw people die—actually physically die—in the first season, but death does mean something different as an Innie, because there is always the specter of what happens if your Outie never comes back? If, for one reason or another, you don’t return to this office, that equates to death for these characters.

Stiller: The information that has come out into the world that Mark’s wife is alive—if that is actually something that people believe and follow up on, it would have ramifications, obviously, for Lumon going forward. And if Lumon somehow gets exposed, what would happen to the lives of all these Innies who, basically, only exist in Lumon?

Punctuality: Needs Improvement

The finale for season one aired on April 8, 2022—so fans of the series have waited almost three years for it to return. The creative team is aware viewers are impatient. What happened?

Erickson: On a practical level, it’s a very intricate show. Each character has two lives—essentially, two personalities—and we are expanding. For me, the writing was the most painstaking part of the process because there were so many ways we could go. And sometimes we would come up with something that worked perfectly well on paper, and then it wouldn’t be until we got there and we’re shooting it that we realize: This isn’t quite it. We were never willing to let that turn it into something that wasn’t perfect.

Stiller: It took a while to write season two. Then we started to shoot in October of 2022, and we got shut down by the strike in May [2023]. At that point, we had completed about 7 of our 10 episodes, and then we had to regroup after the strike. It takes us a while to prep the show. And so, we didn’t start shooting until January [2024]. Then we shot from January to May to finish the last three episodes.

Erickson: [We had] entire locations that we were planning to go to. We had already built or partially built them when we realized, ‘Oh, that’s not going to work.’ Those aren’t always fun calls to have with the studio, where you’re. like, ‘Hey, you know that thing you put a lot of resources into? Well, we’re not going to do it now, or we’re going to do something that’s totally different.’ But again, at the end of the day, it’s worth it.

Off-Site Excursions = Approved

In the upcoming season, the core Innie team ventures away from their macrodata refinement department for a field trip to a snowy landscape. No further information can be revealed due to spoilers, except for: Things get weird.

Erickson: We’re not just in MDR. We’re not just walking around the hallways. We’re going to these kinds of dangerous new places.

Stiller: Corporate retreats are interesting. You’re always having to think a few steps ahead in terms of how Lumon is trying to control their employees with their company ethos. There’s other team-building exercises and dynamics that I think ultimately have a different agenda. This started out as a weird workplace comedy that had this other absurdist feeling to it. Corporate ideology is very much inherent to the tone of the show.

Team Building = Works Well With Others (Sometimes)

Several new actors are joining season two, including Alia Shawkat, Stefano Carannante, and Bob Balaban as members of a rival MDR pod; Gwendoline Christie in a still-shrouded role; and Sarah Bock as a character who seems suspiciously young to work in an office. How will they fit in—or not?

Stiller: There are three new people in MDR, in the place of our regular group. Lumon is aware that these three Innies [Mark, Helly, and Irving] have somehow breached the severed floor and activated their overtime contingency. The new people who are in place there are somehow in reaction to this. Seeing new people at the desks would definitely bring up questions, especially for Mark.

Erickson: The idea is also to start moving further towards this question of what is the company actually trying to do, and why do they need all this secrecy? In a way, severance is the ultimate NDA because it means that you literally can’t share what’s going on, and the characters themselves don’t know what’s going on on the floor. But they will take steps towards figuring that out, and that’s going to involve new locations and new characters.

Stiller: In terms of Gwendoline, it’s pretty clear she’s in a different department. She is doing some kind of work where she’s not in an office. There are people who are not in the white-collar aspect of what goes on at Lumon but who get their hands dirty and are working towards other ends. And one of the fun parts of the show I think is also trying to figure out how all these different departments connect with each other.

Erickson: I don’t necessarily want to talk much about [Sarah Bock’s character.] I do feel like I need to be pretty cagey here. You want to open doors that you haven’t opened before, and we were lucky enough to get some really great actors to help us flesh out that world.