Why ‘Severance’ Speaks to the Current Moment of Distrust of Corporations and Technology

“Severance” was a better show in its first season. But with its dystopian 10-minutes-in-the-future view of a big, faceless corporation using cutting-edge technology to control its employees, it’s a timelier, more relevant and oddly unsettling one in its second-season return.

Chalk that up in part to the long lapse between seasons, as the Apple TV+ show premiered in 2022 and didn’t return until January of this year, steadily building audience toward last week’s season finale.

In between, the underlying premise has felt increasingly urgent and resonant in Hollywood and across media, as the series premiered before the 2023 strikes by writers and actors that hobbled the entertainment industry — where technology, and specifically the use of AI, was among the sticking points — and returned to find lots of lingering apprehension about artificial intelligence being used to put humans out to pasture.

Indeed, recent weeks have found Hollywood talent — including “Severance” executive producer Ben Stiller — pleading to the Trump administration to introduce safeguards about the use of OpenAI and newspapers joining that chorus, calling potential applications of the technology a “license to steal” their content.

“Severance” represented the kind of attention-grabbing idea — a world where you can achieve work-life balance by literally splitting your consciousness in two — that was sure to spawn think pieces and hot takes. Thanks to the initial brilliance of its execution, there has been an abundance of both.

Granted, some early takes ran hotter than others, with headlines like “Apple’s dystopian workplace series ‘Severance’ is every Big Tech worker’s nightmare” (warm) and “‘Severance’ is Actually an Argument for Returning to the Office” (maybe not so much).

What “Severance” best captures, arguably, can be seen as simpler than that, beginning with distrust about big corporations having workers’ best interests at heart, technology, and the marriage of the two — not a particularly original idea (see “Office Space” or any season of “Black Mirror”), but here packaged as old wine in a new bottle.

In an age where media companies preface emails with “Dear Team,” trying to foster a sense of camaraderie and “We’re all in this together,” “Severance” taps into the reality that those same companies have been regularly passing out pink slips and downsizing, reminding us that plenty of individual “team” members are viewed as expendable.

As series creator Dan Erickson observed when Season 2 premiered, the reverent tones used to describe the company’s founder reflect having a “charismatic personality” at the center of such an enterprise, creating “this weird gray zone between a cult and a company.”

Some tech moguls and media figures have certainly cultivated that image, as the conversation turns more toward a system tilted toward oligarchs at the expense of workers. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders found receptive ears for that when he ran for president in 2016 and 2020, and events since then have, for many, only appeared to buttress his argument.

As is so often true of drama, “Severance’s” Lumon Industries offers an exaggerated twist on all this, but one that feels rooted enough in contemporary trends and apprehensions to provoke conversations that go beyond the show itself.

That’s true despite the series, perhaps inevitably, becoming a little too dense and purposefully weird in its second season — call it the curse of “Twin Peaks” — illustrating how anything that burns brightly in the current media landscape can easily exhaust its heat supply.

Still, as media companies lobby for protections from AI, the questions “Severance” invites take on an unsettling air for employees: Would my company use AI, or some other innovation, to replace me? Would it lie to me? Would it employ children? Would it potentially sacrifice my well being, even my life, to advance its profit objectives?

For those tempted to write that off as science fiction, it’s worth remembering all that happened in a bygone era, before unions and organized labor won protections that the current generation of pro-business politicians appear determined to unwind, including, yes, a relaxation of child-labor laws.

Although writers and actors won concessions placing restrictions on AI usage in their last negotiations, which also focused on compensation and the overall industry shift to streaming, the agreement recognized how fast things are moving on the technological front. Talent and the studios agreed that the legal landscape around generative AI is “uncertain and rapidly developing,” and to revisit the issue twice annually during the contract’s three-year term.

“Severance” is merely a TV show, and even as a (still) very good one, can’t really shoulder all that baggage.

Based on all that’s happened since 2022, though, if it takes anywhere close to three years for Season 3 to reach screens, the distance between the world we inhabit and that of Lumon might be shorter than one of the show’s blindingly white, labyrinthine hallways.

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