Dan Erickson, creator of ‘Severance’: ‘I thought Apple would discourage us from critiquing the capitalist structure, but that never happened’

What if we could escape the rigors of work? What if it were possible to disconnect from certain harsh realities of life — those that bring us pain and sorrow? These were the questions Dan Erickson, 41, pondered while working in an office. What he never imagined was that these ideas, these utopian longings, would materialize into one of the most acclaimed, discussed, and watched streaming series.

“People can relate with wanting to disassociate from certain realities of their life. The whole show began because I found myself wishing that I could do that. It didn’t start as an idea for a show, but rather as something I wish I could do,” admits Erickson. He is the creator of the Apple TV+ Severance, whose second season is one of the standout television dramas of early 2025.

In Severance, technology allows the employees of Lumon Industries to split into two versions of themselves: one that lives outside of work and another that exists solely in the office — the “outies” and the “innies.” The sci-fi thriller takes off when the innies begin to question their reality: What are they really doing? What are their outie versions like? In other words, they start to become self-aware.

After a first season that posed a wealth of intriguing questions and captivated audiences with its striking visual style, the second installment shifts the focus to the characters and their emotions — especially the innies, who have been given the fewest answers.

“It was important to us that the characters started to feel more human, because this is the story of them discovering their humanity. Part of the fun of the first season was that these characters were almost a sketch, a facsimile of the human experience. But this season, they start to wonder, ‘Who am I outside of here? Who would I be if I didn’t live in here?‘” explained Erickson in a video interview with EL PAÍS a few days after the second season finale aired.

That desire to enrich the characters led the creators to put the protagonist, Mark (played by Adam Scott), in a difficult position: his innie must choose between his life inside or outside Lumon, each path fraught with uncertainty about what the future holds.

Rather than prolonging the mystery and stretching out the show’s big questions indefinitely, Severance has chosen to resolve many of them in the second season. “You can only ask those questions for so long before people say, ‘okay, what’s the next thing?’ And we wouldn’t have answered them if there weren’t more interesting questions on the other side. For example, we still don’t fully understand what it is that Lumen is trying to do, what their end game is,” says the screenwriter.

It’s paradoxical that a series that offers sharp critiques of capitalism and workplace alienation is one of the flagship productions of a company like Apple.

“I wondered when we started whether we would be discouraged from getting too deep into critiques of the capitalist structure. That’s never happened,” says Erickson. “There’s never been something that we’ve written where they’ve told us, ‘oh no, you can’t do that.’ It is a show that looks at the way that this capitalist system discourages the fullness of humanity and how it encourages people to diminish themselves a little bit and the dangers of that.”

For Erickson, Severance is his first experience directing a series, but he’s not alone in that task. Actor Ben Stiller has been deeply involved, both as a director of many episodes and as a producer. “Ben is incredibly smart and hardworking. He really cares about the quality of the show. We’ve collaborated from the very beginning on the story,” says Erickson.

He also acknowledges the crucial role of the show’s distinct aesthetic, highlighting the contributions of production designer Jeremy Hindle and cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné, who also directed several episodes this season. “It’s an experience watching the show. You’re plunged into a world that is both troublingly familiar and also feels a little bit like a fantasy, a dream,” says Erickson.

Severance continues to raise questions and spark debate among viewers, leading to an explosion of fan theories about the show that multiply week after week. Although Erickson enjoys reading these theories, he’s had to step back from them. “They get in your head, and you find yourself wanting to service every single theory and write every version of the show,” he explains.

Beyond its plot, the relationship between innies and outies, and the mystery surrounding Lumon, Erickson wanted to tell a story about the search for one’s authentic self — a journey of self-discovery. “It’s about finding your whole self and trying to not hide from pieces of your identity, from your pain, accepting that as part of who you are and letting it help you grow,” he explains. “And the excitement of discovering who you really are when you pull all those pieces together.” Even so, he acknowledges that each member of the team interprets the series differently.

In this game of mirrors, filled with split personalities, the performances of actors Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, Tramell Tillman, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro, and Christopher Walken play a key role. “One of the many benefits of working with Ben [Stiller] is that he’s fostered relationships with so many brilliant actors over the years. If you’d told me John Turturro and Christopher Walken would be together in a scene… And it turns out they’re magnetic together and just so fun. That’s the kind of thing Ben is able to see and predict.”

Although Erickson can’t reveal anything about the third season yet, which they’re already working on, he says that they have a detailed plan for where they want to go. “We want to be open to discovering new things and improvising and changing the plan a little, but we also think it’s important to have a roadmap, and we know we’re building toward something really cool,” he says.

Critics are almost unanimous in their praise for Severance. The only complaint has been that viewers had to wait three years for the second season. Will the third season take that long? “I hope not,” smiles Erickson. “Each season was delayed by something, first Covid-19, then it was the [writers’ and actors’] strikes. Apparently there’s an asteroid heading for Earth, but now it looks like it’s not likely to hit Earth. So, unless a crack opens up in the Earth and swallows our production team, we’re hoping it’ll be less than three years.”

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