Lumon Industries The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more Cult documentaries, science fiction classics are named as the show's influences. Samuel Axon Jan 31, 2025 7:00 am | 0 The core cast members return for season two. Credit: Apple The core cast members return for season two. Credit: Apple Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe following story contains light spoilers for season one of Severence but none for season 2.The first season of Severance walked the line between science-fiction thriller and Office Space-like satire, using a clever conceit (characters cant remember what happens at work while at home, and vice versa) to open up new storytelling possibilities.It hinted at additional depths, but its really season 2s expanded worldbuilding that begins to uncover additional themes and ideas.After watching the first six episodes of season two and speaking with the series showrunner and lead writer, Dan Erickson, as well as a couple of members of the cast (Adam Scott and Patricia Arquette), I see a show thats about more than critiquing corporate life. Its about all sorts of social mechanisms of control. Its also a show with a tremendous sense of style and deep influences in science fiction.Corporation or cult?When I started watching season 2, I had just finished watching two documentaries about cultsThe Vow, about a multi-level marketing and training company that turned out to be a sex cult, and Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God, about a small, Internet-based religious movement that believed its founder was the latest human form of God.There were hints of cult influences in the Lumon corporate structure in season 1, but without spoiling anything, season 2 goes much deeper into them. As someone who has worked at a couple of very large media corporations, I enjoyed Severances send-up of corporate culture. And as someone who has worked in tech startupsboth good and dysfunctional onesand who grew up in a radical religious environment, I now enjoy its send-up of cult social dynamics and power plays. Lumon controls what information is presented to its employees to keep them in line. Credit: Apple When I spoke with showrunner Dan Erickson and actor Patricia Arquette, I wasnt surprised to learn that it wasnt just methe influence of stories about cults on season 2 was intentional.Erickson explained:I watched all the cult documentaries that I could find, as did the other writers, as did Ben, as did the actors. What we found as we were developing it is that theres this weird crossover. Theres this weird gray zone between a cult and a company, or any system of power, especially one where there is sort of a charismatic personality at the top of it like Kier Eagan. You see that in companies that have sort of a reverence for their founder.Arquette also did some research on cults. "Very early on when I got the pilot, I was pretty fascinated at that time with a lot of cult documentariesWild Wild Country, and I dont know if you could call it a cult, but watching things about Scientology, but also different military schoolsall kinds of things like that with that kind of structure, even certain religions, she recalled.She gave an example of how that framework informed her view of the character:Even in her sleep clothes when shes Sevig, its like a nod back to when she was a little girl, and you cover your neck, you cover certain part of your body in modesty. So it was fun coming up with this history and where things began and what theyre referencing. Patricia Arquette's character returns from season 1 to grapple with the ups and downs of navigating a corporation that is also a cult of personality. Credit: Apple By incorporating these influences, Severance ends up being not just about bad work/life balance and manipulative corporate leadershipits about all kinds of mechanisms of social control.Erickson said he hopes more people will see the themes about how people in power can sometimes divide in order to conquer. They do [that] on a personal level literally with severance because they know that the more you divide up a persons mind or consciousness, he explained.Season 2 further explores this idea as it introduces more departments to the mix. Season 1 had some hints at thatfor example, the paintings and mythology depicting different departments rebelling, where the content varied by department. On moving beyond severed individuals to focus more on severed social groups, Erickson added:You see that also play out on a wider level on the floor with the different departments, because theyre literally keeping them physically separated, and then theyre also seeding distrust. And I think theres something to take from that in terms of, you know, that those in power will often try to divide up a populace, turn them against each other, get them fighting each other so that theyre not noticing whats going on above their heads. Season 2 expands beyond the departments mentioned in season 1 with new additions like the one Gwendoline Christie's new character hails from. Credit: Apple A new layer of dramatic ironyOf course, what makes Severance special is the first example: the dramatic opportunities created when this divide-and-conquer framework is applied not just to social groups but to a single individual.There are only a few other shows or films that have explored the idea that when a persons memories are severed like this, you end up with the emergence of two distinct identitiesand those identities might end up having conflicting goals or desires. When I asked actor Adam Scott how he approaches playing a severed character, he said:Its interesting because theyre the same guy, its just different parts or sections of the same person. Particularly in season two, as their interests start to differ a bit, they become more and more separate, and I guess playing it, I do treat them as sort of separate charactersbut always remembering that theyre just different sort of sections of the same person.The longform format of a prestige TV series allows for a richer exploration of this kind of role than, say, relatively short feature films that have touched on it before. Severance works as well as it does because it's a slow burn.I feel like theres really room to stretch out in one way or the other, for lack of a better term, and work my way through the story, Scott said on that point. Ive been at this a while and often had roles where I had to squeeze so much into a small amount of screen time, and with Mark, his journey is pretty gradual. Mark, played by Adam Scott, lives a double life where the interests of his "outtie" and "innie" don't always align. Credit: Apple Because they live in a bubble they cant see outside of, corporate employees in the show are relatively easy to manipulate and control. But they often test the boundaries and outwit their captors in unexpected ways.Erickson said that he and director Ben Stiller looked to the 1998 Peter Weir film The Truman Show for inspiration here. Like that film, Severance flirts with being a science-fiction story without adopting all the trappings.Digging into the shows influencesWhen asked about the shows influences, Erickson didnt stop with The Truman Show. The Truman Show is another thing where youre like, Is that sci-fi? Kind of. Theres tech in there that doesnt really exist, he said. But from that to The Matrix to Dark Cityto Brazil, Being John Malkovich all this stuff sort of came into the soup.He said he and Stiller mixed ideas and approaches from those science-fiction films with everything from The Office to Office Space. He also said Stiller put special emphasis on a sci-fi thriller called The Conversation.When I asked him if he considers Severance science fiction, he was happy to accept the label.I do consider the show science fiction, even though it doesnt always feel like that. To me, Ive always had a pretty broad definition of science fiction, and I dont think that its just one thing. What I love about the genre is that it can be very, very grounded. It can be something that feels like it could be five years from now, or it could be space lasers, and both are cool, he said.Aesthetically, Severance reminds me of the video game Control, so I asked if it factored in, too. Scott said:I am familiar with Control, and Ive taken a look at it. It wasnt something I knew of before, nor was The Stanley Parable, which people have also sort of compared [Severance]to. But both of those, Ive looked at since then and I totally see it. I think that a lot of the interesting storytelling that is being done today is being done in games, and so to me its cooleven though it wasnt intentional on my partits cool to be compared to stuff like that. I think it is the hugest possible compliment.As a longtime Star Trek fan, I found an aesthetic parallel in Severance: the characters are always traversing nondescript corridors, akin to those on the USS Enterprise (but much more unsettling). On The Next Generation, the show's producers, directors, and production designers got a lot of mileage out of shooting or decorating one very small hallway set in creative ways. I brought that comparison up to cott and asked him if it was a similar situation.He said it wasn't:There are many, many hallways that we're working with, and in season two, there are even more. Ben built even more hallways for us to walk down, and they seem to never end, and they're always being shifted around for different patterns or depending on what we're shooting, so it's very easy to get lost in these hallways, and you hit dead ends. It can be frustrating.But at the end of the day, it's great because we get to shoot these long oners where we're walking down hallways for an extended period of time, and we don't have to cut because we have lots of hallway. I wonder if we could measure at some point and find out just how many miles of hallway we have built. Just one of the many, many hallways from Severance. Credit: Apple I opted not to include any spoilers in this article since the season is still airing, but I will say this after watching six episodes of season 2: I think its just as good as season 1. The world retains its air of unsettling mystery, even as some questions are answered, and its scope expands beyond just a couple of offices. The story takes some unexpected turns, and if you're into this Lost-style "big mystery" type of show, there's simply nothing better on the air right now to scratch that itch.Season 2 began on Apple TV+ on January 17 and airs new episodes weekly. There will be 10 episodes in the season.Samuel AxonSenior EditorSamuel AxonSenior Editor Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica. He covers Apple, software development, gaming, AI, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and heis a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development. 0 Comments