After THAT Finale, We Can't Stop Thinking About 'Severance' Season 3 — Here's Everything We Know So Far

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26-03-2025

Following an excruciating near-three-year wait, Apple TV+ finally delivered the second season of Severance in January. We all returned to the offices of Lumon alongside Mark S., Helly R., Dylan G., and Irv, where Mr. Milchick ascended the ranks as the floor manager of the severed floor, and the work of the MDR department remained nothing short of mysterious yet important.
Buuut, after the "Cold Harbor" finale last week, we certainly got some of the answers that we've been looking for after two whole seasons.
Just hours after airing, Tim Cook and Ben Stiller confirmed that Apple TV+ had ordered a third season of Severance. Praise Kier!
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Theories are running rampant online surrounding the direction of the show in the next season. But before we dive into what we know about season 3 of Severance, let's recap what we learned in the season finale.
Ms. Cobel finally reveals the sinister operations at Lumon and Mark's significance to the company. He has been instrumental in creating multiple consciousnesses for his wife, Gemma, who is alive and held captive as Ms. Casey. Mark's task, including the Cold Harbor file, involved refining data clusters that corresponded to these personas, effectively constructing new identities for use within Lumon's severance program.
And "Cold Harbor," the highly discussed file throughout the series, is finally revealed to be the final test in the Macrodata Refinement project that creates new consciousnesses for Gemma, Mark's wife, as part of Lumon's experiments to test the severance chip's ability to suppress core emotional responses. And seemingly, the end of Gemma Scout's existence as we knew it.
Calling back to "Chikhai Bardo," the baby crib in the Cold Harbor room serves as an emotional trigger related to Gemma's past miscarriage, and her dismantling of it without emotion demonstrates the chip's effectiveness in erasing deeply ingrained trauma.
Meanwhile, we got to see Innie Mark and Outie Mark share their first conversation together. While it was kind of heartwarming at first, it didn't take long for things to take a turn once Innie Mark realized that he, along with the rest of the Innies at Lumon, might not exist if Outie Mark had his way.
Of course, this episode took us through a serious and violent journey that saw Mark catching a body (I'm still wondering how a court would hold an innie accountable...), finally finding Gemma, and sadly, abandoning her at the last minute (as his Innie) so he could remain inside Lumon with Helly R.
Speaking of Helly R., as part of this plan to take down Lumon and save Gemma, she led the revolt on the severed floor that saw her and Dylan G. imprisoning Mr. Milchick in a bathroom. We also have to mention that creepy look on her face at the end of the episode that spurred theories that it was actually Helena Eagan.
The ending gave much more closure than the cliffhanger of season one (and a stellar marching band performance led by Tramell Tillman), yet there are still many more questions that need to be addressed.
Without further ado, here's everything we know about season 3 of Severance.
The good news: we probably won't be waiting another three years between seasons.
A few factors played into the delay between the first and second season including the writers and actors strikes in 2023. So it seems like everyone is hopeful that the next season of Severance will be back in the near future including both Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller.
"I would love to finish the show before I'm 70," Erickson told Entertainment Weekly.
"I would hope that season 3 comes sooner," he continued. "Certainly a big part of it was the fact that we had the strikes which shut us down for five or six months for production. And there was a difference between that and being shut down for Covid in season 1, because when we were shut down for Covid, I was still writing that whole time, and this time literally it was pencils down. I was making an effort to not even really look at or think about the scripts during that time."
He added, "... Having done it twice now, there is more of a sense of understanding procedurally what works and how to streamline it, so our goal is never to draw out people's pain for three years. And I hope that we don't have to do that again." Hopefully, 2026?
Even better, Ben Stiller already confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter in February that they were working on the new season in a writers' room, adding that he hoped that we wouldn't have to wait three years between seasons, again.
Speaking of writers' rooms, it appears that they've recruited new showrunners for the third season, according to Nexus Point News. Per the Writers Guild of America database, Eli Jorne (Walking Dead) and Mary Laws (Succession) will be joining Erickson for the third season, replacing Chris Black and Mark Friedman, who served as showrunners in seasons 1 and 2.
There isn't a whole lot of information surrounding the plot of the upcoming season or what might happen to Mark and the gang after breaking Gemma out of Lumon. However, as pointed out by Harper's Bazaar, the final shot of the season finale strongly indicates what's to come in season 3.
Apple TV+
"For me, that image was just in my head from the beginning — when we said, OK, we're going to go this far and this is where we're going to take it,' Stiller told Indie Wire. 'You don't see freeze-frames at the end of movies that often these days, but it used to be done a lot more. It's just kind of this moment in time where you're like, 'Oh, wow, this is the end of the movie, but it's going to keep going. We just don't know where it's going to go.'"
The most important question is, who will be making their return? Adam Scott suggested that we might see the whole crew back on screen again, which makes sense. After all, the last time we saw Dylan G., he rallied the Choreography and Merriment department against Milchick while Mark S. and Helly R. ran off.
Apple TV+
"I couldn't be more excited to get back to work with Ben, Dan, the incredible cast and crew, Apple and the whole 'Severance' team," Scott said in a statement announcing the show's renewal.
However, a key question surrounds the return of Irving, played by John Turturro. By the end of episode 9, Irving boards a train with his dog, Radar, after Burt (Christopher Walken) spares his life and tells him to never return to Kier again. It could be the end of Irving's story as we know it but there's a chance it might not be.
"When you're doing scenes at the end of the season, it's always tricky to find that sweet spot," he told The Wrap about that emotional scene at the train station with Burt. "Because you think it could be the end, but it maybe it's not the end."
What's a bit more promising is that Turturro said he's in "open" conversation with Stiller and Erickson about what could come next. "If there's stuff that's good and active and interesting to do, then I could see that, yeah,' Turturro said. 'If people wanted there to be [a third season], there could be, and there could be big, big surprises too. You know, Irving's left all those paintings behind. There's a reason why they went into his apartment, why they're looking around.'
Although details on the plot of Severance season 3 are still under wraps, the wait for answers is already unbearable. Does outie Mark reunite with Gemma in the outside world? Will Milchick survive the revolt of the innies at Lumon? And how deep does the rabbit hole go? Share your best theories below.