Spoilers ahead for Severance Season 2, which can be streamed with an Apple TV+ subscription.
It’s now been over a month since the Severance Season 2 finale hit the 2025 TV schedule, and that heartbreaking final scene between Gemma, Mark and Helly has been living rent-free in my head. I know I’m not alone, because fans continue to crank out theories about what we’ve witnessed and what’s to come in Severance Season 3. It turns out executive producer Ben Stiller is listening (as is Lumon!), and he gave the loveliest explanation for why he’s joined the discourse.
It turns out Ben Stiller — who has directed more than half of the Severance episodes across two seasons — really enjoys jumping on social media to talk Season 2’s big goat reveal and weigh in on where the sprawling story is going. That’s not exactly common amongst TV creatives, but as Stiller told Variety:
I find it, actually, really inspiring to be interacting with the audience because we never had that, my generation growing up. When somebody doesn’t like something, I’ll [still] go back and forth with them sometimes and I find that fun, too, because usually once you start talking to somebody or interacting, something positive can come out of it. It’s also kind of fun. And at the end of the day, I don’t really take it that seriously.
There honestly may not be a healthier way to view the Internet than how Ben Stiller does, and I say we should all officially strive to be more like him. The Tropic Thunder star isn’t just paying attention to the fans who agree with everything he does and want to praise him. He listens to people with a different view and tries to understand why they don’t like something.
He also doesn’t take it that seriously (not all that surprising, coming from the guy who wrote, directed and starred in Zoolander). Even the disagreements are something he said he finds “fun,” and he likely takes away the perspective of a different corner of Severance’s audience.
Ben Stiller makes a good point that this kind of fan interaction wasn’t possible before social media. There was watercooler talk, of course, but the Internet has opened up fan reactions so that showrunners have instant access to honest feedback. What theories are being debated? What side characters are viewers interested in? Which stories are sending Redditors down the deepest rabbit holes?
Why shouldn’t Ben Stiller and others take advantage of this as a way to better understand the very people who are ingesting their media? Now, I’m not saying he should let that influence the product. Severance has had some brilliant minds behind it — including creator Dan Erickson — and Season 3 will feature some big creative changes, but knowing what your audience is talking about can’t be a bad thing.
Helly-related fan theories were particularly prevalent in Season 2, including that big ORTBO episode, and “Chikhai Bardo” — possibly one of the darkest episodes of television ever — pretty much brought all frivolous jokes about scary numbers to a halt after we realized it all just meant Gemma was being tortured.
Maybe Ben Stiller can shoot me a DM and tell me how I’m supposed to laugh at Dylan’s jokes without thinking about whether or not he’s a bad dad.
All kidding aside, I think it’s really cool that Ben Stiller cares enough about Severance and its fans to jump into the sometimes-scary world of social media to debate the show. Now let’s get to Season 3 already!
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