Apple Takes Full Control of 'Severance' in Surprise Deal

2/12/2026 at 2:39:09 PM

> Apple apparently now plans to position Severance as a long-term flagship franchise. The show has already been renewed for a third season, and a fourth season is reportedly considered a certainty

Ok, so the show has now turned into Lost and nothing will get resolved. No need to waste any more time watching it.

by DustinEchoes

2/12/2026 at 6:48:16 PM

This is such a disappointing development. They can create sequels or prequels after the show is done. Further complexity to the show to stretch it for two seasons, or worse dillute it, really feels now like a net negative for the show.

by mhitza

2/12/2026 at 2:52:07 PM

I don't know why this is getting a negative reaction: there was already a 3 year gap between season 1 and 2, and watching this show originally it felt like a 1-2 season premise.

It becomes a very different show (and yes, probably very Lost-like) if they have to make it last 4+ seasons.

by BoorishBears

2/12/2026 at 5:33:51 PM

It doesn't seem farfetched that Apple is privy to the overall plot and story beats the writers have planned. If you've got a very popular, profitable show, and you know it's going to be about X seasons long, why wouldn't you just send it? I'm just spitballing.

by nozzlegear

2/12/2026 at 5:39:35 PM

What does this have to do with either comment above?

You think a show is going in a certain direction: a news piece comes out and confirms that, with millions of dollars of incentive to seal it, it's probably not going to go that way...

What's wrong with voicing displeasure at that? They said they're canceling their viewership, not that the show should be shut down due to their preference or something.

by BoorishBears

2/12/2026 at 8:14:39 PM

> What does this have to do with either comment above?

Your comment implied that, because the show is now making so much money/worth so much money to Apple, and because it's being renewed for a fourth season before we've even seen the third, it must surely be on some Lost-esque meandering disaster wherein the execs will keep renewing it and milking it dry until they're forced to kill the series with a smoke monster ending.

by nozzlegear

2/12/2026 at 10:13:25 PM

That's a massive jump.

It becomes more like Lost because you can't go on even the planned 4 seasons without expanding an already pretty expansive in-universe lore.

Without spoiling it, obviously Season 2 opened a lot of lore-based threads that the confirmation of a Season 4 ensures will not be getting resolved for another 3+ years and over a lot more content.

That's not inherently bad, but it becomes a different show than if it had been trimmed to 3 seasons, and I can easily see why it's no longer for some people.

by BoorishBears

2/13/2026 at 12:15:58 AM

Sorry, I just don't understand how three seasons could resolve the lore threads, but four seasons blows the lid off the whole thing? The numbers seem arbitrary to me, especially when we don't know what they're planning regarding the plot, or if the writers even intend for all the lore threads to be resolved at all.

by nozzlegear

2/13/2026 at 12:59:47 AM

Ok.

by BoorishBears

2/12/2026 at 4:17:30 PM

I bounced off Season 2. Too much "weird for the sake of being weird". You could tell the first season had a plan, and the second was just winging it. Sadly an all too common occurrence for successful shows.

by firmretention

2/12/2026 at 3:36:44 PM

I loved season 1. Season 2 I thought was great, but to me they opened much more new story than they resolved. I worry season 3 will be much of the same, especially if they’re saying season 4 is basically a certainty. I think severance could have been 2-3 seasons.

by willio58

2/12/2026 at 4:00:22 PM

I was ok with it opening a new story at the end of season 2 because it’s a fascinating dilemma and I’m happy they wanted to explore a deeper question about the morality of having two souls in one body and how that affects their humanity.

However, it should end next season. This idea it’s going to be a long term project is going to ruin everything and now I am sad.

by rPlayer6554

2/12/2026 at 4:00:06 PM

I think they've been making a solid pace for the story including answering more questions than I expected, but then I can't help but compare the pacing favorably to both the problematic Dollhouse and the under-appreciated later seasons of HBO's Westworld.

by WorldMaker

2/12/2026 at 5:39:35 PM

I think Dollhouse would have been better had it been an HBO series rather than on Fox... Likely 90% of the issues were studio interference.

And totally agreed on Westworld... they just went off the rails at some point.

by tracker1

2/12/2026 at 6:09:11 PM

Knowing what we know of Joss Whedon today, I think at least 70% of the problems with Dollhouse were Whedon's own issues. It came out in an interview that morally dubious character Topher was Whedon's close to a self-insert character, and that tracks and also explains a lot about the show's problems.

I maintain that Seasons 3 and 4 of Westworld were quite good, but not enough people watched them because they got lost or otherwise fell off in Season 2. But you sort of have to understand Season 2 to get a lot of what 3 and 4 did, to the show's peril. (Massive spoilers: I refer to Season 2 as the Futurama Robot Church season as I think the Season 2 arc was largely about how Delores was the Robot Devil, like in the Futurama Robot Church stories if they were not played for laughs. A lot of what Delores does in S2 and S3 maybe doesn't make half as much sense without that context. S2 trying to be an S1-like puzzle box made the meaning of that a lot less clear than it should have been. Not to mention how many people didn't want Delores to take that dark of a turn, despite it being deeply telegraphed in Season 1, and per flashbacks had already happened once before, hence the whole weird Wyatt thing.)

by WorldMaker

2/12/2026 at 2:59:45 PM

The "Lost" curse.

by tibbydudeza

2/12/2026 at 5:13:56 PM

20 million an episode, for a show filmed in a single room?

by MagicMoonlight

2/12/2026 at 5:35:42 PM

Season 2 in particular has a lot more locations than just "a single room."

by nozzlegear