Severance season 2: everything we know about the hit Apple TV Plus show's return

Severance season 2: key information

- No release date announced
- First official image and footage revealed in mid-June
- Main cast all expected to return, along with eight new additions including Gwendoline Christie, Alia Shawkat and John Noble
- Plot expected to pick up straight after season 1 finale
- No word on whether a third season will be greenlit

Severance season 2 has moved a step closer to landing on Apple TV Plus. As it's one of the streamer's best original series, it'll come as no surprise that people are excited for its next outing. Unfortunately, a release date continues to elude us, but at least a first official image and some footage has officially been revealed. Here's hoping, then, that a confirmed launch date isn't too far off being announced.

If you want to know what we thought of its debut outing, you can read our Severance season 1 review. Once you're done reading that (or watching the show itself), you'll want the full lowdown on Severance season 2. From the aforementioned first clips and release date speculation, to its possible plot and confirmed cast, here's what we know about the return of one of the best Apple TV Plus shows. Praise Kier! Oh, and full spoilers follow for Severance's first season.

Severance season 2 release date: what we know

Severance season 2 doesn't have a release date yet. But, with a first-look image and footage debuting at Apple's 2024 WWDC event in early June, it's possible that it could (albeit whispered quietly) arrive sometime this year.

Filming on season 2 began in October 2022 and was originally slated to wrap in May 2023. However, numerous issues, including the 2023 Hollywood strikes, mean it's suffered significant production delays, with principal photography only wrapping in April this year. How much the industrial action will delay Severance season 2's release date remains to be seen, but we're a bit more hopeful that it'll launch before the end of the year now.

Severance season 2 cast: confirmed and rumored

These are the season 1 stars we expect to return as part of Severance season 2's cast:

• Adam Scott as Mark S / Mark Scout

• Zach Cherry as Dylan G / Dylan George

• Britt Lower as Helly R / Helena Egan

• John Tuturro as Irving B / Irving Bailiff

• Patricia Arquette as Harmony Cobel

• Tramell Tillman as Seth Milchick

• Christopher Walken as Burt G / Burt Goodman

• Dichen Lachman as Ms. Casey

• Jen Tullock as Devon Hale

• Michael Chernus as Ricken Hale

There were also plenty of recurring and guest characters in Severance's first season, so we might see some of those individuals return for the show's next outing. However, Apple is yet to confirm which of those might be back, or whether new actors have been hired to play new characters.

As revealed in the The Hollywood Reporter (THR), there will be at least eight new faces, joining the Severance season 2 cast in yet-to-be revealed roles:

• Gwendoline Christie (The Sandman, Game of Thrones, Wednesday)

• Bob Balaban (Gosford Park, The Grand Budapest Hotel)

• Robby Benson (Beauty and the Beast)

• Stefano Carannante (Mirabilia)

• John Noble (Fringe, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)

• Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (The Tourist, Trapped)

• Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development, Search Party, The Old Man)

• Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie, New Girl)

"I'm like geeking out about all of [the new cast]," star Britt Lower told the Hollywood Reporterat the 2023 Golden Globes. "They're really dynamite."

Severance season 2 plot: rumors and speculation

Major spoilers for Severance season 1 follow. 

So, what’s going on in Severance? The show is set at Lumon Industries, a shadowy corporate organization (founded by so-called visionary Kier Eagan back in 1865) that has figured out a way to split a person’s psyche into two: an ‘innie’ who works on Lumon premises, and an ‘outie’ who never has to work a day in their life.

The downside, of course, is that the ‘innie’ doing all the work experiences a never-ending nine-to-five loop where they never leave the office, and are doomed to complete obtuse and meaningless tasks on repeat for eternity. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t take long for some employees to take issue with life as a guinea pig in a soul-destroying, Kafkaesque experiment.

Mark S (Adam Scott) initially joins Lumon to escape the crippling grief of losing his wife, Gemma, in a car accident, allowing himself to disassociate from his ‘outside’ psyche for most of the week. But his inner self becomes more curious about the workings of the company after his friend and manager Petey (Yul Vazquez) unexpectedly stops showing up to work. Then, new recruit Helly R (Britt Lower) seems determined to escape the office. Cue plenty of manipulation by their shadowy employers, a surprisingly violent disco, and unexplained baby goats showing up in the workplace.

Season 1 ended on a big clif fhanger, when rebellious innies Mark, Helly, and Irv (John Turturro) successfully activated their work psyches ‘remotely’, allowing their Lumon personas to exist briefly in the outside world.

We expect Severance season 2 to pick up the moment its predecessor ended, when the remote activation was interrupted by the employees’ supervisor Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman).

Dylan (Zach Cherry) was caught red-handed in the Lumon control room, as Irving knocked on the front door of office sweetheart Burt (Christopher Walken); Helly (whose outie is the daughter of Lumon's boss) was caught on stage at a Lumon gala, having just outed the company's sinister practices; and Mark was in his sister's home, where he'd just realized his late wife is not only alive, but working as Lumon employee Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman).

All that will leave a bunch of very confused outies, and plenty of storylines to be resolved. The question is, how much impact did the Lumon employees have during that brief adventure in the outside world? And will anyone believe their stories about Lumon's inner sanctum?

We expect Severance season 2 to focus more on the world outside of Lumon Industries, now that Helly’s gala outburst and Mark’s discoveries have leaked some company secrets to the public. But it wouldn’t be Severance without, well, severance, so we’re sure to see the cast making frequent switches between their 'innies' and 'outies' – especially if they need to further investigate Lumon’s labyrinthine office corridors, which presumably contain plenty of secrets we’re yet to unearth. Those baby goats could just be the start...

Cast and crew are, unsurprisingly, remaining tight-lipped about the Severance season 2 plot, to the extent you wonder whether their on-set and outside world selves might have been severed like their alter-egos in the show. Adam Scott even divulged on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that "we have secret scripts and have to use like code words when we're on email. It's so secret it's crazy and it feels ridiculous. It's also great because people wanna know [what's going to happen]."

He maintained this policy of secrecy in a red carpet interview with Deadline in February 2024:

"It’s really fun and I can’t wait for everyone to see it so I don’t have to continue, like, keeping secrets, which is a total bummer,” Scott said. “There’s so much crazy stuff that happens, I just can’t wait for everyone to see it.”

Not everyone is quite so reluctant to spill the Severance season 2 beans, however, and luckily we have had a few very minor teases about what's in store.

"There is an expanding world that I think is sort of teased and in a way is owed by the way we ended season one where we did suddenly get some glimpses of Helly's life on the outside and Dylan's life on the outside, and Irving's life on the outside," the show's creator Dan Erickson told Gold Derby. "I don't want to get into how much time we’re going to be spending in those various arenas, but we know that they have stuff going on the outside that we haven't seen that we haven't really explored yet, and of course, inside the company it's a vast company and there's plenty of stuff that we haven't seen yet.

"It's expanding on both sides and that's both the fun and the challenge," he continued. "How do you make it bigger and how do you take a broader view of it and include some new elements that weren't there before but still keep it feeling like it's centered in the same world, on the same story that you were doing before?"

Ben Stiller expressed similar sentiments to Variety : "I think that the biggest thing is how to maintain all those things in terms of the feeling of the show, while at the same time expanding the world since the end of the last episode. We’ve brought Mark and Irving and Helly to the surface, and I think those are storylines that people are going to be interested in. So, it’s going to be figuring out that balance."

Oh, and expect there to be a reveal of sorts concerning those goats in season 1. Asked if there was any significance to their appearance at San Diego Comic-Con in 2022 (per Time magazine), Erickson simply replied: "Yeah."

Severance season 2 trailer: is there one?

Not an official one, but he first 10 seconds of Severance season 2  footage were unveiled during Apple WWDC 2024's event. As part of the Apple TV Plus sizzle reel, we see Adam Scott's Mark arriving at Lumon Industries and being greeted by Milchik (Tramell Tillman), who says: "Welcome back. It's been a minute."

After a break to reveal footage from some of Apple's other offerings, we then see (around the 0:45 mark) a brief glimpse of Mark laying on a Lumon Industries table flickering between his Innie and Outie persona, based on the outfit changes. The trailer then cuts to Mark sprinting down the maze of Lumon's ominous white corridors. Where to, or what from, is currently unclear.

Prior to this proper first look, we'd only been given an even smaller teaser during Apple's iPhone 14 event in September 2022. The footage only shows Helly disembarking from a subway train, either on her way home or to her Lumon office, so it doesn't really give anything away about the show's second season. Still, it's a fun little Easter egg-style clip, and shows how much Apple is leaning on one of its flagship shows (like Ted Lasso before it) to drive subscribers towards its streaming service.

Will we get more seasons of Severance?

It seems likely. Severance is one of the best TV shows to have landed on Apple TV Plus since the streaming platform launched in 2019, and the company will want to maximize the potential of a certified hit. It holds a 97% certified "fresh" rating on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, and was a big part of the conversation during awards season in 2022, with several wins and even more nominations.

Also, it feels like there's much more story to tell, with so many mysteries left to unravel, that it seems unlikely they'll squeeze everything into two seasons – especially as the show has been such a major hit for Apple TV Plus (one of the best streaming services) that they won't want to end it too soon.

Besides, Ben Stiller hinted in a statement released when Severance season 2 was confirmed that the show should have legs to continue. "It has always been a multi-season story and I’m really happy we get to continue it," he said. "I’m grateful to our partners at Apple TV Plus who have been behind it the whole way. Praise Kier!”

If there is a Severance season 3, however, don't expect to see it before 2026 – TV shows as clever and complex as this don't happen overnight. Especially with all those baby goats to wrangle.

For more Apple TV Plus-based coverage, check out the best Apple TV Plus movies, how much a subscription costs, our review of Apple TV Plus as a streaming service, and our Foundation season 3 hub.