Severance

Apple TV+ delivered its strongest Emmy Awards performance to date Sunday night, taking home a personal record of 22 trophies across its original series lineup. The streaming service’s comedy hit The Studio dominated the evening at the 77th annual awards, becoming the most awarded show of the entire ceremony with 13 wins.

The Studio won so much that Seth Rogen said, after accepting the big Outstanding Comedy Series trophy, that he was “legitimately embarrassed” at how happy it made him. And from the stage, he thanked Apple CEO Tim Cook for Apple’s support. 

Apple TV+ dominated the first night of the 77th Creative Arts Emmy Awards over the weekend, securing a record-breaking 15 wins led by breakout performances from comedy The Studio and psychological drama Severance. Overall, the streamer’s staggering 81 nominations covered 14 original titles.

United Airlines passengers can now watch popular Apple TV+ originals including Severance, Ted Lasso and Slow Horses for free during flights, the airline said Tuesday. The partnership brings full seasons of award-winning Apple TV+ content to United’s 130,000-plus seatback screens and mobile app.

Severance, the dystopian workplace thriller that captivates Apple TV+ subscribers, makes the leap from screen to desk with a meticulously crafted replica of the show’s distinctive keyboard. Atomic Keyboards announced recently that its MDR Dasher Keyboard — inspired by the mysterious input device used by Mark S., Helly R., Dylan G., and Irving B. in Lumon Industries’ sterile offices — now heads to Kickstarter with reservations open for just $10.

Just remember, the retro keeb is three keyboards in one, but it features no Escape, Option or Control keys. And it’s steep pricing might make you lose hope altogether.

Apple TV+ secured a commanding position in the 2025 Emmy nominations announced Tuesday, with two of its flagship series earning the most nominations in their respective categories. The streaming service’s dystopian workplace drama Severance topped all shows with 27 nominations. And Hollywood satire The Studio led comedy series with 23 nominations, breaking Ted Lasso‘s record for a first-year comedy series.

Notably, Apple TV+’s hit spy thriller Slow Horses and comedy Shrinking also drew top nominations.

Apple TV+’s critically acclaimed series Severance will expand beyond its upcoming third season, possibly including two spinoffs and merchandise, according to recent revelations from director Ben Stiller and star Adam Scott in a new interview. That news alongside Severance season 3 progress should delight fans of the dystopian workplace drama as much as any “overtime contingency” could.

Apple TV+ brought Lumon Industries to life Saturday in a surprise, star-studded event — and it confirmed renewal of Severance for season three in the process.

The streamer surprised thousands of the show’s fans with a Lumon-style Outdoor Retreat Team-Building Occurrence, aka ORTBO. It featured a panel discussion moderated by Stephen Colbert at the surreal workplace thriller’s primary location, Bell Works in Holmdel, New Jersey.

In the week of its season 2 finale,  Severance stayed near the top of the lists of most-watched streaming series, according to a pair of companies that track ratings. Week after week, the weird workplace drama on Apple TV+ keeps beating almost everything on any streaming service.

Plus, the new comedy The Studio became one of the popular series on streaming last week.

In a fascinating new installment of its “Behind the Mac” series, Apple spotlights the pivotal role Mac computers play in editing acclaimed Apple TV+ series Severance. The 11-minute video posted Wednesday on the Apple YouTube channel and in a feature article on apple.com offers unprecedented insight into the creative process behind the thrilling season finale.

Note: Spoilers for season 2 of Severance, which recently concluded with its season finale on Apple TV+, lie below.

Also note: In a surprising little twist, Apple added a faux listing for Lumon Terminal Pro, just like the ones used in Lumon’s Macrodata Refinement Department, to Apple Store with a link to the video as well as Macs for sale. The Severance promos and tie-ins keep coming!

It’s season finale time! In our Severance season 2 episode 10 recap of “Cold Harbor,” we find Mark S. carrying out a wild plan with his allies while his tattered team makes a dangerous last stand against Lumon Industries. At 75 minutes, the episode’s a long one, directed by Ben Stiller. And with the hit show just renewed for a third season, the Severance season two finale actually asks more questions than it answers — before delivering a twist at the end.

Last week’s penultimate episode gave us a slower burn than expected on the way to Friday’s climactic season finale, but it did its job. As the macrodata refiners scattered while Mark and his sister Devon teamed up with company soldier Harmony Cobel to fight Lumon, it felt more like everything was coming apart than coming to a frenzied boil. But that groundwork set the stage for Friday’s outstanding final episode.

Apple TV+ renewed Severance for a third season Friday, delighting fans of the surreal drama series on the same day its season two finale aired. And Apple CEO Tim Cook and show executive producer and director Ben Stiller had some fun with an X.com post, below.

“What Ben, Dan, Adam and the talented cast and crew behind Severance have brought to the screen is undeniable magic,” said Matt Cherniss, head of Apple TV+ programming. “We’re so proud to be the home for this brilliant series and look forward to audiences experiencing what’s in store for Season 3.”

As Apple TV+’s subscriber base continues to grow and the streamer enjoys lots of attention on Friday’s Severance season 2 finale, a new report Thursday suggests the streaming service remains a financial loser for the iPhone giant — to the tune of $1 billion in losses annually. And yet it should come as no surprise Apple TV+ bleeds money.

A fat billion a year in the red sounds bad, but it’s pretty much in line with the plan for losses of up to $20 billion over a decade for the still-nascent streaming service.

In our Severance season 2 episode 9 recap of “The After Hours,” we find a bit of a letdown instead of the hoped-for hot rush to next week’s finale. Innie Dylan, having fallen for his outie’s wife, gets crushed emotionally and quits Lumon. Burt takes Irving for a ride — and seemingly permanent exile. Innie Helly gets Irving’s map to the mysterious Exports Hall, only to be interrupted by Jame Eagan. And Mark and Devon team with a former foe — former Lumon Industries loyalist Harmony Cobel — to enact a plan against the company. But we still don’t know the plan, with all the bickering going on.

It’s not like it’s a bad episode. It’s just kinda bad for a great show like Severance. It feels like everything is coming apart rather than coming to an explosive boil. Perhaps that’s the groundwork needed for a dramatic finale. We’ll see.

Last week’s episode gave us Lumon and Cobel backstories. Cobel returned to her dying hometown, site of a long-shuttered Lumon ether factory, and came away with proof she invented the Severance procedure. The return to Lumon and the other characters didn’t please me as much as I expected it would.

In our Severance season 2 episode 8 recap of “Sweet Vitriol,” we find a wavering Lumon loyalist — the terminated and nearly reinstated severed floor manager Harmony Cobel — facing old demons while searching for an important missing item. It seems to place her at the center of Lumon Industries’ mysterious technologies, and could be important to her return (or revenge).

Last week’s episode gave us the backstory of Mark S.’s wife Gemma, aka Lumon Industries’ Ms. Casey. With it came a deeper look at what’s really going at the company. This week we see some Lumon backstory, centered in Cobel’s dying hometown, site of a long-shuttered Lumon ether factory.

The Gorge is the most popular film on streaming for a second week, according to a ratings tracker. The romantic action thriller from Apple TV+ stars Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Sigourney Weaver… plus a lot of monsters.

And Severance held onto a large audience of innies and outies, just as it has since early January.

In our Severance season 2 episode 7 recap of the episode “Chikhai Bardo,” we finally get the backstory of Mark S.’s wife Gemma, aka Lumon Industries’ Ms. Casey. With it comes a deeper look at what’s really going at the company. And by the way, the visually stunning, intellectually challenging and jarringly unfamiliar episode takes its title from a transitional experience in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, referring to the “moment of death” prior to rebirth. But whose death and whose rebirth?

Oh, and guest stars this week come as fascinating surprises: Robby Benson as the scary Lumon dentist who whistles “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and Sandra Bernhard as a scary Lumon nurse.

Last week’s episode brought us strange liaisons inside and outside of Lumon Industries. Mark S. and Helly R. got busy in an unused Lumon office. Outie Irving attends a tense but ultimately rewarding dinner with Burt and his husband, Fields. Before the end, Mark S. took a reckless risk that looked life-threatening.

In our Severance season 2 episode 6 recap of the episode titled “Attila,” we see strange liaisons inside and outside of Lumon Industries. Mark S. and Helly R. get busy in an unused Lumon office. Outie Irving attends a tense but ultimately rewarding dinner with Burt and his husband, Fields. Before the end, Mark S. takes a reckless risk that could be life-threatening.

Last week’s episode 5 brought us back inside Lumon Industries hallways in the aftermath of the ORTBO team-building event out in the wintry woods — and a few steps closer to solving the sinister company’s mysteries.

There’s never been an Apple TV+ show with more viewers than Severance. The deeply weird workplace drama even surpassed the beloved Ted Lasso in viewers, Apple itself revealed on Wednesday.

And ratings charts concur — Severance is extremely popular.

In our Severance season 2 episode 5 recap, the maddeningly mysterious show delivers a somber and tense episode called “Trojan’s Horse.” It picks up the pieces after last week’s not-so-shocking revelation that Helena Eagan had been masquerading as innie Helly R., and Irving B. paid with his innie life to reveal it.

Last week’s episode 4 brought us into a wintry wilderness for the world’s weirdest team-building glamping trip. It turned a spotlight on Irving B. for the first time, but it also showed his likely demise as an innie as he took an uncharacteristically bold stand in the woods. Now he gets a Lumon-style funeral.

In our Severance season 2 episode 4 recap, we follow our friends from Lumon Industries’ Macradata Refinement (MDR) department into a wintry wilderness central to Kier Eagan’s lore. In the most bizarre corporate team-building event ever, two of them find forbidden love and one may never return. And it’s the first episode to take place completely outside of Lumon’s halls without visiting outies’ lives.

Last week’s episode 3 went further down innie rabbit holes in amusingly confounding ways. Ultimately, an improved-yet-still-dangerous outlaw reintegration procedure seemed like it might be outie Mark S’s path to returning to his beginnings at Lumon, cracking the sinister company’s mysteries and finding his wife. It made likely plot trajectories a little more clear. But episode 4 actually unravels some mysteries, and gives Irving B. (John Turturro) center stage for the first time.

Severance costars Patricia Arquette and Adam Scott faced off in a funny, face-melting hot chicken wing-eating contest Tuesday in a new video from the show Hot Ones Versus.

In the words of the show, “today, these co-stars will have two choices: Tell the truth, or suffer the wrath of the Last Dab. Whoever eats the most wings, loses!”

The wings are spicy enough for the show to call them “Wings of Death,” and their spicy pain showed in the actors’ suffering as well as the teeny, tiny little bites they took when they missed a question.

In our Severance season 2 episode 3 recap, I confess I felt my patience with the endlessly weird show might expire, as yet another maybe-just-weird-for-weird’s-sake thing happened. But then an intriguing puzzle piece appeared, dangled like a treat, and my rising impatience fell away. For now. In a good puzzle-box show, that’s how it works.

Last week’s episode 2 showed what it took, from outies’ perspectives, for Mr. Milchick, Helena Eagan and others to get the innie Macrodata Refinement crew back to work after the Overtime Contingency allowed them temporary freedom. This week’s episode goes further down innie rabbit holes, slowly luring us toward who the hell knows what. But at least there are a lot more goats, and an improved-yet-still-dangerous outlaw reintegration procedure might be outie Mark S’s path to cracking Lumon’s mysteries and finding his wife.

In other words, the whole season’s story arc became more clear in this episode.

Apple TV+ dropped a Severance promo video Friday with cast members reading and (mostly) debunking online fan ideas guessing at answers to the show’s mysteries. But at the end of the video, executive producer and director Ben Stiller offers a clue that “no one talks about.” Is it a real clue, or is he just trolling everybody?

You can view the new fan-theory video and an older one below. They mention many theories, though even more exist online. And some fans says these videos ignore the best theories that seem more likely to be true (take your pick from cloning, aliens and more).

In yet another promo for Apple TV+’s intriguing workplace thriller Severance, Apple CEO Tim Cook gets in on the action. Severance director and executive producer Ben Stiller dropped a video Friday morning on X.com starring the mild-mannered tech honcho. Cook reports for orientation as an innie on the severed floor of Lumon Industries.

The video is short, but Cook isn’t bad — especially in the elevator, where he shows his severed transformation in consciousness (with the help of some special effects). Then, near the end of the video, he made me laugh out loud.

In our Severance season 2 episode 2 recap, we discover the lengths to which Lumon Industries went to clean up after the Overtime Contingency (OTC) that enabled the rebelling innies to briefly escape to the outside world at the end of season one.

In last week’s season two debut, the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) crew came back to work on the severed floor. This week’s episode, “Goodbye, Mrs. Selvig,” doubles back to show what it took for Mr. Milchick, Helena Eagan and others to get them there. It doesn’t quite have the first episode’s high impact — it brought the show back to us after season one’s climactic cliffhangers three years ago — but it clarifies matters while introducing new questions.