Severance’s Unique Script Would’ve Modified The Total Present

If Severance hasn’t already twisted your thoughts right into a mangled maze of confusion and Lumon propaganda, then the latest revelations about its unique script will. On the debut episode of The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller & Adam Scott, the hosts reveal that our introduction to the Severance world was as soon as a lot totally different than the one finally streamed on Apple TV. And it might’ve utterly modified the complete sequence.

Present creator Dan Erickson’s unique thought for the pilot from his 2015 script concerned Mark (Adam Scott) being divorced as an alternative of widowed, and truly had him interviewing at a video retailer known as Loopy Eagle Video after by accident working over a cat. When he goes again to see if the cat continues to be there, he discovers it’s lacking. So, he knocks on the door of a house, and its Lumon boss Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette). It’s on this assembly that we might have witnessed the one aspect that may’ve made it a really totally different sequence.

“There’s a sequence of her exhibiting him her pet rat, who she then tortures. However, it seems the rat is severed. So, she switches, and all of the sudden the rat is now snuggling her. That’s how she explains to him what severance is,” Erickson says. After this encounter, Mark returns to Cobel’s home solely to see it changed with a Porta Potty, which Mark communicates to Cobel in by means of some unspecified method.

Notably, that rat sequence would’ve launched audiences to the concept animals cannot solely be severed but additionally switched between severed and acutely aware states immediately. That may’ve given a bit extra rationalization as to why there are goats on the severed flooring later within the season, a thriller that’s nonetheless one of many major unsolved questions for Severance followers.

Mark’s Outie being launched to Cobel as a Lumon worker who’s recruiting him to be severed would’ve eradicated one of many major tensions of the primary season, in addition to the upcoming second season. Within the sequence as we all know it, he goes by means of the severance course of as a option to take care of the grief of his spouse’s passing. It’s a significant factor in the complete sequence, establishing the large twist that his spouse is, actually, seemingly not useless, as a result of she’s the wellness counselor Ms. Casey (Dichen Lachman) on the severed flooring. His Innie has this revelation, and it’s one that’s the impetus for a lot of his awakening within the upcoming second season.

One other change is that the unique model of the pilot script concerned Mark waking up on the desk at his Lumon orientation, after which being “start[ed] out of a large sphincter within the ceiling,” in accordance with Erickson. The episode would’ve adopted his first day at Lumon, the place he’d be skilled by Helly R (Britt Decrease), get misplaced in a storage closet that by no means ends, and see his welcome video from his Outie.

That is drastically totally different from the pilot episode we’ve all come to know and love, wherein it’s Helly who wakes up on the desk and is skilled by Mark. She doesn’t find yourself in an limitless storage closet, however she does repeatedly run by means of an exit door that warps her again into the severed flooring earlier than seeing her Outie’s welcome video explaining her resolution to undergo the severance course of. That change alone would’ve altered the dynamic of the core forged. As an alternative of Helly being the one keen to jot down a message to her Outie into her arm or try suicide, all in efforts to go away the severed flooring, it might’ve been Mark.

There are nonetheless eight extra episodes of the podcast set to be launched earlier than Season 2’s January 17 premiere date. If these are the varieties of revelations we’re getting from simply the primary 20 minutes of the primary episode, we could by no means see Severance the identical method once we’re performed listening to all of it.