The world of streaming can be a hard one – almost everyone can recall at least one show that they desperately wanted another season from, only to hear of its cancellation. It's a problem that the best streaming services aren't immune to, but Apple TV+ just proved again that it should be more trusted than most.
I had been one of many viewers watching the second season of Severance over the last few weeks and wondering with each passing episode how on earth the show would wrap itself up in just a single finale. After all, there have been quite a few plot threads hanging loose, and even with a bumper 70+ minute episode, there are a lot of answers left to find. So, imagine my surprise to see, in the mid-afternoon on UK time, an announcement from Apple that the show's just been renewed for a third season after all.
It's the best sort of news, even as someone who, at the time of writing, hasn't seen the end of Season 2, and therefore has no clue how much of a cliffhanger we might be getting left with.
This is now quite a common occurrence in the world of TV and streaming – networks and streamers have to make announcements as soon as they can, to avoid backlashes of frustration from people on social media, and those announcements don't always make sense in different timezones.
After all, on Friday afternoon in the UK only those who'd woken up early to watch the show before work, or crammed it into a jumbo lunch break, would have actually seen it. If you're in the US, of course, you had Thursday late evening in which to enjoy it properly, and might be wondering what I'm even talking about.
Regardless, this is great news – Severance is unlike anything else on TV, and I'm glad we'll get a third season of its offbeat, gentle and mysterious storytelling. It was pretty clear that Season 2 was aiming for a more exploratory structure, with digressions and flashbacks helping to develop characters but perhaps not giving the most riveting sense of plot development.
Now there's the chance for much more payoff to come, although we'll also have to hope that the turnaround is a lot quicker this time. The gap between the first two seasons of the show was years long, a span that tested some people's patience. Still, knowing we've got more to come will be huge for easing that pain a second time – and I can't wait for another round of Severance.
