In the words of Separation‘s Seth Milchick, “Welcome back. It’s been a minute.”
Indeed, Mr. Milchick — and now fans are finding out exactly when workplace suspense will finally be back.
A month after releasing a new preview for Season 2 of Separation, Apple TV+ has revealed that viewers will finally be able to watch the new 10-episode season of Separation starting January 17, 2025 with the premiere episode. One episode will be released every Friday through March 21.
While details of the new season have been as closely guarded as the inner workings of Lumon Industries itself, Apple TV+ has summed up the upcoming season with a synopsis that reads: “In season two, Mark and his friends discover the dire consequences of messing with the separation barrier, which leads them down a path of even greater misfortune.”
With Ben Stiller serving as executive producer and director of five episodes and Dan Erickson as creator, writer and executive producer, the new season will return with Adam ScottBritt Lower, Tramell Tillman, Zach Cherry, Jen Tullock, Michael Chernus, Dichen Lachman, John Turturro, Christopher Walken and Patricia Arquette.
Apple TV+ also welcomed Sarah Bock as a series regular.
In a brief new teaser released to announce the premiere date, fans can see Separation newcomer Gwendoline Christie — whose character has not been revealed — delivers an ominous warning: “You should have left.”
It’s the latest sneak peek following an Apple TV+ preview video that dropped in June, featuring scenes of Scott’s Mark Scout being welcomed back by none other than Milchick (Tillman) carrying balloons — a moment that also served as a welcome back to the audience. In a teaser image also released at the time, Mark was shown carrying a bunch of similar blue balloons with his face on some of them.
In another clip from that shoot, Mark oscillated between his “inner” and “outer” selves while lying on the same conference table where Helly (Lower) woke up in season 1, before running down a hallway. The moment raised the question: Are the “cuts” defective?
In a third clip, Mark yelled “Wait!” as the elevator doors closed.
The footage was the latest update since January, when Scott took to Instagram to share a first look at the highly anticipated season of the Apple TV+ drama. In the photo, Scott was seen running through the halls of Lumon Industries. Parks and Recreation The alum, 51, tagged Stiller in the post and also showed off his chair, which was named after his character.
“It’s wonderful to be back in the office,” Scott captioned the dramatic post.
At that point, it had been about 15 months since the streaming platform first teased that season 2 was in the works, in October 2022. Around the same time, Scott once again took to his social media pages to tease a return to the microdata refining department.
The photo showed Scott with his eyes closed, apparently filming a scene where the change from “outside” to “inside” occurs inside the elevator in Lumon, where the series is set.
“Filming has begun on Severance season 2…” the actor wrote in a post on October 31, 2022. Shortly after, Puck News reported that the new season was delayed by script issues and rising budgets, among other problems. From there, the problems only got worse when the Writers Guild of America went on strike and the 118-day SAG-AFTRA strike soon followed.
Separation premiered in February 2022 and quickly took the world by storm, receiving 14 2022 Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, and a plethora of nominations for the series’ stars, including Scott, Arquette, Walken, and Turturro.
The show follows a series of coworkers who spend their days crunching numbers in a barren office space at the fictional Lumon Industries. The twist? The workers have been surgically “cut off” from their outside lives so that when they clock in, all they can focus on is work. What happens, though, is when an “innie” — a term referring to the severed personality who works in the office — decides he wants out. That’s when the show’s dramatic (and sometimes nauseating) plot unfolds.
At the end of Season 1, viewers saw Mark’s outie — who we learned earlier in the season had lost his wife in a car accident — discover that his wife, played by Lachman, is not only alive, but also working for Lumon. The discovery comes after Dylan (Cherry) sneaks into the building and manages to activate the “overtime contingency” that allows the innies to experience the outside world.
The show’s other main characters, Helly (Lower) and Irving (Turturro), are also activated and find themselves in peculiar situations as they see the outside world for the first time. Viewers learn that Helly — who spent the entire first season demanding to leave and even attempting suicide at one point to leave Lumon — is none other than Helena Egan, the daughter of Lumon CEO Jame Egan. Helly learns on the outside that her outie underwent the “indemnity” procedure as proof of the safety and efficacy of the process, which has been a topic of discussion among the outies’ friends and family throughout the season.
Irving — whose innie sparked an office romance with Burt (Walken) — finds himself in the real world painting the same dark, creepy hallway over and over again. However, it’s only after viewers see Lachman’s character, Mrs. Casey, reprimanded and sent down the sinister path inside the Lumon building that it becomes clear the hallway isn’t a good sign.
“This is a world we are just beginning to explore,” Erickson said. told ET in 2022 about the lives of the outsiders and the darker side of Lumon. “So it’s really exciting and humbling that we get to keep doing this for another season.”
You can watch the trailer for season 1 of Separation in the player below:
In April, Stiller spoke about the delays in a statement for TV line, saying, “We’re on the same very slow schedule that we’ve always had. Same air date that we’ve always had,” he said, reassuring fans that “we’re all just working to make the show the best it can be.”
The following month, Cherry I talked to ET about the upcoming season and revealed that while he couldn’t say much about the direction of the second season, he was pleased with the scripts he received.
“My reaction was the same as I had to the first script of the first season, which is, ‘This is good!'” said the 37-year-old actor.
Although it is not clear exactly in which direction Separation With season 2 coming soon, it’s almost certain that the series will be much bigger than its predecessor. In October 2022, Apple TV+ excitedly announced that several heavyweights would be joining the show for the new season, including The Game of Thrones former student Gwendoline Christie, Arrested DevelopmentAlia Shawkat, and Beautiful little things‘ Meritt Wever.
Following the announcement of the cast additions, Scott spoke out and said they couldn’t be happier to welcome the new players and kick off season two.
“We have Alia Shawkat, Gwendoline Christie, Bob Balaban and a lot of good people,” he said, referring to the eight new cast members brought into season 2. He also added that they are “just amazing people and they’re playing really interesting roles. And they bring so much to it, it’s great.”
Rounding out the new additions are Christopher Guest, Bob Balaban, Beauty and the Beast Voice star Robby Benson, Stefano Carannante (Mirabilia), Lord of the Rings actor John Noble and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of the Fire Saga).
Meanwhile, Turturro confirmed to ET in January that his co-star Christopher Walken — who plays love interest Burt Goodman — “is still there.”
In February 2023, Arquette — who enigmatically provoked that fans should be “very scared” about the new episodes — admitted to ET that the show’s creators felt “some pressure going into season two.” At the time, she said they “didn’t want to let[fans]down.”
For more information about SeparationCheck out the links below.
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