You thought big news in tech was how many products Nvidia announced at GPT or whether Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan can improve Intel’s future chances as both a chip designer and chip fabricator. Or maybe Trump tariffs on copper. All that.
Wrong.
The real news of late in tech was whether Apple CEO Tim Cook would renew for a third season the amazing/disturbing/awkward/devastating psychological thriller Severance that has kept many fans glued to Apple TV+ every Friday.
Yes, Season 3 is coming, sometime, Cook revealed on X in a 20-second video filled with images related to “3” that finally says “Severance...Renewed for Season 3.” This renewal news was announced March 21, but resonated on social media days later.
Cook introduced the video with the words, “Season 3 of Severance is available upon request,” following a cute tweet by director Ben Stiller, “So some fans are asking for Season 3 of Severance. What do you say, @tim_cook?”
No spoilers here, but the cries for a Season 3 were indeed pronounced following a captivating final 10th episode to Season 2, “Cold Harbor.” Severance surpassed Ted Lasso to become the most-watched show on the OTT platform and tech fans (and probably a few others) revealed why on X and other platforms.
“Imagine the horrors of Tim saying no [to Season 3] and we were left with THAT ending for eternity,” tweeted Dan Barbera on X, referring to the Season 2 cliffhanger.
To me, the ending of Season 2 in “Cold Harbor,” was troubling and captivating, primarily for the odd love story woven throughout a dystopian, funny, annoying world. It is a world that one commenter on X described as similar to working in marketing and communications at Apple in the real world.
Severance offers scenes of how evil Lumon Industries created a surgical severance procedure where office workers fret about their existence as they move throughout a maze of white hallways in a set almost as terrifying as anything the characters say or do.
Yes, these innies are divided from their outies, although really? A major plot device follows an icky brain integration procedure that Mark (also Mark S) undertakes to find and rescue his former wife Gemma from where she’s been kept on the testing/torture floor at Lumon. But Mark S is also in love with Helly as we discovered in the first season when they met while performing mind-numbing computer desktop work on deadly greenscreens at Lumen.
Ultimately, it is the love triangle of Gemma, Mark and Helly that became the centerpiece for me, and not so much how Lumon Industries got corrupted or crazy. (I finally realized—duh! that “Helly” is close to “hell” but not exactly hell, and a third season could tell us more on that theme. Such a theme might turn on or turn off some sci-tech fans who love to question whether God or Heaven or Hell exists, and who cares anyway and how do you prove it? Etc.)
Love stories buried inside of science fiction are not uncommon, but Severance is a genre-bender anyway and the series sometimes dips into the comedic, almost as if Ben Stiller or creator Dan Erickson is running through those white hallways trying to find Tim Cook or The Beatles, for godsake. These confusing elements are part of what makes the show popular, as social comments indicate, and why tech nerds seem to love it. But…some of them want to let it go without offering another season, but only if it leads to something else, as related in the first of the following:
Moin on X:
“Nah I’m good. Season 2 already felt like the story was stretched too thin. But I’d like other shows in the severance universe. Like maybe a show set in the past about how Kier came to be and what the bastard even did.”
Oli on X:
“Anyone actually like this show?”
Or T Symone XXX on X:
“Season 3 of Severance served fresh, with a side of confusion. (smiley face)”
So, without laying it on too heavy, part of what Severance is about, indeed, is Confusion, big C. It’s a reminder of what Evelyn faced in the 2022 Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Many of us , in tech and other fields, are confused about:
-- Where AI is taking us, lord help us.
--Where the Trump administration, tariffs and anti-globalism are taking us.
--Will I make it through my next performance review? (Depending on which tech firm is hiring/laying off.)
--Can my own innie and outie personalities ever really get along inside my solitary body?
Given all such weighty concerns, it’s worth listing one more tweet by Matt Kielczewski, mimicking a recurring phrase in Severance that now appears on T-shirts and other merch in real life: “THE WORK IS MYSTERIOUS AND IMPORTANT.”
(You can decide for yourself how important Severance is, if you can wait for maybe another three years for Season 3.)