Severance’s Original Pilot Script Introduced Show’s Concept in a Much Darker Way

The second season of Severance is finally creeping around the corner and fans can’t wait to return to its surreal sci-fi world filled with mind-bending questions about what is really going on at Lumon Industries. Created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller, it has been revealed that the series’ original pilot script was a hell of a lot darker than what viewers eventually saw on Apple TV+.

Recently, Stiller said that Severance season two almost went in an entirely different direction to the one fans know and love, where he thought about making the series into something like The Office. Although this concept would still likely have proven a success due to the show’s amazing cast lineup and excellent writers, Severance‘s unique and strangely addictive narrative went on to win numerous awards for its insightful and dystopian telling of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives.

Related

The Brain Uploading Trope In Science Fiction, Explained

Of all the ill-advised ways to cheat death, some choose to download their consciousness into a sturdier form.

Severance Creator Reveals Dark Pilot Script That Was Cut

As reported by Kotaku, it seems as though Severance‘s already weird and wonderful world would have been so much wilder if the series creator had gone with his original 2015 script. On the newly released The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller & Adam Scott, the pair revealed that viewers would have been greeted with another strange concept that consisted of Mark, played by Adam Scott, being portrayed as divorced rather than widowed, who would have been interviewing Hatty in a video store called Crazy Eagle Video rather than at Lumon Industries. However, the lead-up to this would have involved Mark unwittingly knocking down a cat, but the cat vanishes when he gets out of his car to look for it. In an effort to locate the cat’s owner, he knocks on the door of a home that turns out to be Ms. Cobel’s house, and this is where things get very bizarre.

“There’s a sequence of her showing him her pet rat, who she then tortures. But, it turns out the rat is severed. So, she switches, and suddenly the rat is now snuggling her. That’s how she explains to him what severance is,” Erickson revealed in the podcast. Although the creator didn’t elaborate further, he said that Mark goes back to Ms. Cobel’s address but her house has been, somehow, exchanged with a porta-potty as a means of communication between the pair. It certainly seems very Twilight Zone, but then again, it would fit into the show’s amazingly weird vibe, so maybe this concept could have worked.

This concept for Severance could open up the mystery of why Lumon Industries keeps goats in the facility, which could be what they are testing their “program” on, akin to lab rats, since animals can apparently be severed too. According to Erickson, another major script plot reform saw Mark waking up on the table instead of Hatty, and being “birth[ed] out of a giant sphincter in the ceiling”. This revelation would have seen Mark running around the corridors of Lumon in a panic and trying to find a way out rather than Hatty.

Severance Season 2 premieres on Apple TV+ on January 17, 2025.

Related

Severance Season 2 To Feature More About The Eagan Family

The members of the Eagan family will have more exposure and onscreen time in Severance Season 2.

Your changes have been saved

Severance

Release Date

February 18, 2022

Cast

Christopher Walken
, Tramell Tillman
, Michael Chernus
, Adam Scott
, Britt Lower
, Patricia Arquette
, Jen Tullock
, John Turturro
, Dichen Lachman
, Zach Cherry

Seasons

1

Story By

dan erickson

Writers

Dan Erickson

Streaming Service(s)

Apple TV+

Directors

Ben Stiller

Showrunner

Dan Erickson
, Mark Friedman

Expand

Source: Kotaku