New trailer for Severance season 2

July 10, 2024 11:36 PM

Release date announced: January 17. But not much else. Perhaps my innie discovered more in this trailer than I did.
posted by verylazyminer (24 comments total)

I can't tell which me held these two opinions: it's sumptious, beguiling and beautiful and it's slow such that the season-ending cliffhanger should have been ep3/10.

Would you look at that: ofc my inner wanted work to be over faster.
posted by k3ninho at 12:45 AM on July 11, 2024

That season-ending cliffhanger was the most excited I've been watching scripted television in a very long time, it feels. The agonising wait for S2 has been excruciating, I hope they don't fuck it up.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 1:47 AM on July 11, 2024 [13 favorites]

The next part is coveted as fuck.
posted by flabdablet at 1:54 AM on July 11, 2024 [19 favorites]

I looked forward to each episode of the first season with equal parts excitement and dread, and I'm very pumped for the second season. It's been a long time coming due to a combination of global pandemic, writers' strike, and just plain ol' creative differences, but that first season was basically "14 out of 10 maybe the best single season of TV in a decade" territory so I'm feeling optimistic here.

plus I'm a Venture Bros. fan so only two or three years between seasons is nothing
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:14 AM on July 11, 2024 [11 favorites]

Yes! Can't wait!
posted by Captain_Science at 5:07 AM on July 11, 2024

There was a season one?
posted by Czjewel at 5:15 AM on July 11, 2024 [4 favorites]

it's slow such that the season-ending cliffhanger should have been ep3/10.

The season ending cliffhanger in episode 9 was originally going to be the penultimate episode of the show. I’m pumped for the return but I’m worried about how they are extending it beyond their original plot.
posted by thecaddy at 5:17 AM on July 11, 2024

i think that first season is genuinely one of the best seasons of television period so i’m of course excited but damn 2025! so far away!
posted by dis_integration at 5:19 AM on July 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

( ( defiant jazz wiggling ) )
posted by neuracnu at 6:42 AM on July 11, 2024 [9 favorites]

The season ending cliffhanger in episode 9 was originally going to be the penultimate episode of the show

Nothing kills my confidence in a show more than learning that they're no longer telling the story they set out to tell. Suddenly popular characters develop plot armor, the writers begin to retcon to give themselves freedom to wander and the whole possibly open-ended thing becomes a mess.
This world is interesting and offers a lot of possibilities for exploration. I don't see why they didn't tell the story, the whole story, in season one and then begin anew. It's one of the strengths of shows like Fargo, and, without opening a new can of worms, one of the things that killed shows like Lost.
I'm looking forward to this second season, but with a heavy dose of well warranted skepticism.
posted by OHenryPacey at 6:49 AM on July 11, 2024 [8 favorites]

I'm worried high expectations among the fanbase are be its undoing. While the first season as a whole was one of the best pieces of television I've ever seen, not every episode was enjoyed equally (at least by me). There were the inconsistencies of tone, plot points (and goats) that seemed like they were going somewhere but ended up going nowhere, and so on that are true of any serial show, no matter how good.

I feel like there's a chance that everything that isn't absolutely perfect and mind-blowing is going to be ruthlessly picked apart by rabid "fans" who are going to turn into hate watchers. I might be avoiding fanfare and the reddit sub for this one
posted by treepour at 7:03 AM on July 11, 2024

The season ending cliffhanger in episode 9 was originally going to be the penultimate episode of the show

Citation needed. Nothing I've read about the development of the show indicates it was originally intended to be a limited-run, and in fact here is a contradictory quote from Dan Erickson: "There’s an overall plan for the show. I have an end point in mind, and I intentionally didn’t plan it season by season, because I wanted it to be flexible enough that we could get there in two seasons or six seasons."
posted by Plutor at 7:26 AM on July 11, 2024 [7 favorites]

Looks like I slightly distorted my memory from a post-season-one retro with Erickson in 2022:

“As we’ve discussed a potential season 2 [...] it’s a lot of those ideas from those subsequent [episodes], what was going to be episodes 9 and 10,” Erickson tells Polygon. “And we’ve sort of rethought and reconceived it to be kind of the beginning of our season 2.”

So it's not completely crazy that I read that the way I stated above, but it jibes with your quote too. So it's less of a "we're radically expanding the scope of the story" thing and more of a "oh, we need more time to sit with some of these plot elements to make them work the way we want to."
posted by thecaddy at 8:03 AM on July 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

(There's also a lot of elision going on in that quote, and the original doesn't appear in the interview section, so ...)
posted by thecaddy at 8:04 AM on July 11, 2024

Time for a Wellness Session.
posted by emelenjr at 8:13 AM on July 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

When describing it, I explain it as Office Space meets The Prisoner.

But that elides what is (IMO) a key underlying concept, particularly in the time of global warming and rising fascism: empathy. The thesis here is that people can't even manage to have empathy for their own selves, how can they have empathy for others?
posted by microscone at 8:30 AM on July 11, 2024 [7 favorites]

So excited. I just watched the first season a second time, this time around with my family. They got so engrossed by it that they asked me, grinning, "why didn't you tell us how good this is?" after 2 years of being sick of me talking about how good it is and them passing on it.

Now umbuzinho has a lumon t-shirt and keeps talking about asking college interviewers, deadpan, about their school's offerings for students planning to go into macrodata refinement.
posted by umbú at 9:02 AM on July 11, 2024 [1 favorite]

I watched it a second time at 25% speed, and they packed SO MUCH into that trailer, but it's all MOMENTS and gave me no real clue as to what comes next. But I can't wait.
posted by rednikki at 9:04 AM on July 11, 2024

I liked the first season. It was slow in the first half, but at least it was entertaining, interesting, had some oddball characters and didn't feel like other things I have seen on TV.

This probably won't be a popular opinion, but I think it should have ended with one season. The reveal at the very end felt like the ending gut-punch of a classic Twilight Zone episode. It left me with things to think about, made me ponder the story. I'm not sold on the idea of thirty more hours of this concept. The premise is far-fetched to begin with, and I don't think we need every little detail and nuance to be explained. I don't need five more seasons of "lore" and origin stories, or an "Expanded Severance Cinematic Universe."

What ever happened to ambiguity? Ah, hell I'll probably watch it... THAT'S what's happened with ambiguity. They aren't stories anymore, they're "content." (I have Covid, I'm grumpy)
posted by SoberHighland at 9:21 AM on July 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

My understanding was that the show was written hoping for multiple seasons but that they had a plan/budget for a final extra episode to give the story some closure in case the show wasn't renewed for a second season.
posted by straight at 11:47 AM on July 11, 2024

It’s already a season that starts slow before considerably picking up speed towards the end so it’s hard not to imagine it feeling pretty rushed if they had to wrap it up in one more. The events of the last episode and the cliffhanger, are one thing, but big reveal from a couple of episodes before that is such a “raising new questions for next season” thing, would they just not have done that? Or just left the whole thing as an unresolved nightmare?
posted by atoxyl at 12:09 PM on July 11, 2024

I do feel like these kinds of shows can inevitably only keep it going for so long. But it feels like Severance has set itself up with enough threads to follow that I bet they can pull off at least one more season.
posted by atoxyl at 12:13 PM on July 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

I loved the slow burn of season 1. It's a great show partly because it doesn't dole out a set quantity of standard-issue dopamine-inducing plot points in every episode. It spends more energy on character and atmosphere... and yet it still does weave an intricate, emotionally rich story as it goes.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:38 PM on July 11, 2024 [2 favorites]

Man yeah the first season does this thing where episodes somehow manage to end right before what would ordinarily be where you’d put the big reveal and cliffhanger, choosing instead to start episodes with a big thing that propels the plot forward. Real weird structure but they sure do make it work.
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:36 PM on July 12, 2024