After a long wait, Severance is back. Season 2 premiered on Apple TV Plus on January 17th, more than two years after the first season wrapped up. The wait was particularly hard because of how the season 1 finale ended — a massive cliffhanger that would completely upend the lives of almost everyone in this sci-fi thriller. Cliffhangers are a tricky business. They can help keep viewers interested in whatever comes next, but they can also be frustrating, seeming to withhold information purely for the purpose of keeping people hooked.
Severance has managed this balancing act well so far, and I had the chance to talk to some of the creative team behind the show — creator Dan Erickson, director Ben Stiller, and star Adam Scott — about how they’ve pulled it off. “Honestly it’s just sort of guessing in your mind,” Stiller tells The Verge. “You try to think about what the stakes are that we’ve established, and hopefully you’ve earned it by the end.”
One of the trickiest parts for Severance, at least early on, was that the team wasn’t really sure how audiences would react. It’s a weird show that follows a group of office workers who have their brains surgically altered to separate their…