Yahoo Lifestyle 'Severance' Creator Breaks Down That Shocking Character Reveal and Death (Exclusive)
Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 4 of Severance
For weeks, fans have theorized that Helena, not Helly, appeared on the severed floor when the Lumon employees were reunited in Episode 1 of the second season of Severance. Viewers were right about this one, and creator and showrunner Dan Erickson wasn't surprised. Severance has "the smartest viewers on TV," he said.
Erickson said he knew fans would start to put the pieces together. He had hopes that as the episodes went along, some people might doubt whether it was Helena or Helly. But ultimately, they had no illusions that the debate over the identity of the character "wouldn't become part of the conversation."
"It ended up being exactly what we wanted," he added, stating that the show is a fun "back-and-forth" between the team behind the show and the fans of it.
Check out our full interview with Dan Erickson below.
Related: Everything to Know About Severance Season 2
I know you said you’ve looked on Reddit, and you feel like the fans are tuned into the show's twists and mysteries. Lots of fans had guessed that it was Helena on the severed floor rather than Helly. But I am wondering how you feel about the fans and how they engage with the show. How are you feeling now that it's out there and this moment has been revealed?
You know, I actually loved how the whole thing panned out. We talked about different ways of handling the reveal when we were writing the show. There was a version where we were going to reveal it at the end of Episode 2, and we were going to let the audience be ahead of the characters for a little while. And at the end of the day, we made the decision to hold the reveal, knowing that it would have occurred to people.
We are aware of how astute our viewers are, and I think that they're the smartest viewers on TV, personally. Stuff like when Helena was unable to turn on her monitor, we had no illusions that that wasn’t going to become part of the conversation. But at the end of the day, it ended up being exactly what we wanted, which is the sort of fun back and forth. I think, up until the very moment of the reveal, even going back to the moment around the fire where she's making fun of the Kier lore, my hope is that some people were like, “Well, maybe it is Helly”. But I didn't want to draw it out anymore. I thought to one or two more episodes of that and people are going to start to get sick of it.
This is a powerhouse episode for both Britt Lower and John Turturro. You talk in the behind the scenes vignette on Apple TV+ that Irving may have paid a price to do what he did. Surely, that can’t be theend of John Tuturro on this show, but it might be the end of Innie Irving on this show. Does the death of a character, or at least this version of this character, feel the same as killing off a character proper?
I've come to think of it that way. It's always interesting on the show when the writers and the audience and the characters all end up having the same conversation or the same debate. There's a question with, if you leave, or if you're an innie and you leave, does that mean that you're dead? And I think some people, some characters, especially towards the beginning of the show, would have gone with the Lumon company line on that and said, “Well, no, no, no, you're not dead. You're off on another adventure now, and you won't experience it. But it's okay, because you're still there”. But I think that Season 1 and, to an extent, Season 2, [we] see these characters coming to value their own lives and their own existence and say, “Well, no, I’m not my outie. I don’t benefit from what they get to go and do. I benefit from my life and my life has value. I’m not going to just surrender it or pretend that this is retirement when it is, in fact, a murder.”
Helena says in Episode 1 that Gemma isn’t Mark’s wife because his innie and outie are different people. That was when I personally thought, “This doesn’t feel like the ethos of Innie Helly." That was when I thought maybe this is Helena.
I mean, I think that it really is sort of the ongoing debate of the show. And I like that different characters have different experiences. It's interesting you say that because, to me, it does feel true to Helly. And I say Helly specifically to say, “Well, no, we're not the same as them. Because they are basically our oppressors." The line takes on a different context, where it’s like, “No, we’re not the same. Because innies aren’t my people, because innies aren’t real people."
It feels like you've been on a corporate retreat or two, based on how this episode, but have you been on a corporate retreat?
Not like a woodland retreat. I used to work at a camp that would host events like these. I worked at a YMCA camp in Washington state for five summers.
As a camp person myself, I think this explains a lot about the show. There is a lot of what it feels like to be at summer camp in the show.
We would talk all the time about how there is "camp you" versus "outside you" and how it’s a separate thing. As counselors, we would be up there for the whole summer. But really, it felt like being an innie, because you literally don’t leave. You sleep there.
Related: The Biggest Questions We Have After the Severance Season 2 Premiere
There is some theorizing about whether or not the whole retreat is real or not. So I will ask for the sake of asking: Is the retreat real?
Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really interesting theory. [Pause.] I think that's a really interesting theory.
I love the duality between professionalism and the weirdness of it in the show. I think everything has this sense of sounding legitimate and also absurd at the same time with things like ORTBO and Woe’s Hollow. Do you have a framework or guide for how these things get made into and put into the world of the show?
It's kind of just a gut check. We'll talk about stuff in the writers' room, and we'll kick around ideas. The good news is a lot of the people who have worked on the show as writers have also had a string of weird jobs, and so they pull from their own different experiences. ORTBO was just the difference between the word "occurrence" versus "experience." It’s an outdoor retreat: A team-building exercise. "Occurrence" just feels weird and a little bit wrong. It also feels like something that’s being done to them rather than them actively participating in it.
Again, I have worked a lot of jobs, including a lot of corporate jobs. I remember working for one company where they spent a lot of money sending representatives around to every office in the world. It was a global company. They gave us this unveiling of the seven new corporate principles and it was the most meaningless thing. You know, "It’s decency and intuition." And it was like, "Yeah, those are good words, I guess." But then they showed us a slideshow of a corporate retreat they did in Aruba to come up with the principles. I just wanted a working printer. The basics! But it’s that type of thing. I think anybody who’s had any kind of corporate job has a story like that they can pull upon.
And Woe’s Hollow? Where did that come from?
I wanted this to center around one of the four tempers, and woe seemed like the right one, given the story that we were telling. I also wanted to start to poke at the origin story of where Kier came up with this idea of the four tempers, and [it] would have been some kind of experience from his life. And then a hollow, there's something about it. It’s almost like you’re saying woe is hollow. I don't even know what that means, but there's something about the sound of it that I liked. I have been asked if it's a Gilmore Girls reference to Stars Hollow. And I will say it was not intentionally done that way, although maybe subconsciously.
A lot of people are digging really deep into the naming of things. Should fans continue to do that? Is there something there?
Absolutely, absolutely they should. I worry a little bit that they will be disappointed when the reference doesn't necessarily end up being what they think. I will say, I do put a lot of thoughts into the names of things, and often the names are references. But often I will forget what their references do. There was a file name that was a reference to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Ben [Stiller] asked me, "Was that on purpose?” And I said, "No, I don't think so." Then I looked it up, and I found out that it was. I found it an old email and I was like, "Oh yeah, it was on purpose, good to know".
Should they have eaten the seal?
I mean, look, hindsight is 20/20. We now know that there was food waiting for them at the Hollow. But knowing what they knew at that time, I think Irving had a very, very valid point.
Related: Six Questions We Need Answered in 'Severance' Season 2
