Severance’s Original Script Would’ve Changed The Entire Show

If Severance pay hasn’t yet entangled your mind in the labyrinth of confusion and Lumon propaganda, then the recent revelations of his original script will. In the debut issue Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scottthe presenters say that our acquaintance with Severance pay The world was once very different from the one that ended up being broadcast on Apple TV. And it would completely change the entire series.

Show creator Dan Erickson’s original idea for the pilot from his 2015 script was that Mark (Adam Scott) was divorced rather than widowed, and actually had him interviewed at a video store called Crazy Eagle Video after he accidentally ran over a cat. When he returns to check if the cat is still there, he discovers that it is missing. So he knocks on the door of Lumon’s house and boss Ms. Kobel (Patricia Arquette). It was at this meeting that we would witness the element that would make this series very different.

“There’s an episode where she shows him her pet rat, which she then tortures. But it turns out that the rat is cut off. So she switches and suddenly the rat is now pinning her down. That’s how she explains to him what severance is,” Erickson says. After this meeting, Mark returns to Kobel’s house only to see that he has been replaced with a Porta Potty, which Mark informs Kobel about in some unspecified way.

Notably, this episode with the rats was meant to introduce viewers to the idea that animals could not only be cut off, but also instantly switch between the cut-off and conscious states. This would provide a little more explanation as to why goats appear on the severed floor at the end of the season, a mystery that is still one of the main unresolved questions for Severance pay fans.

Introducing Mark Auty to Kobelu as the Lumon employee who recruits him to get fired would have resolved one of the major tensions of the first season, as well as the upcoming second season. In the show as we know it, he goes through the process of ending a relationship to cope with the grief of his wife’s passing. This is a major factor in the entire series, creating a big twist: his wife is most likely not dead because she is health consultant Mrs. Casey (Dichen Lachman) on the torn floors. His Inny has this revelation and it is what sparked much of his awakening in upcoming second season.

Another change is that in the original version of the pilot script, Mark would wake up on a table in his Lumon orientation and then be “born”.[ed] from a giant sphincter in the ceiling,” according to Erickson. This episode was supposed to follow his first day at Lumon, where he was trained by Helly R. (Britt Lower), got lost in a never-ending closet, and saw a welcome video from Outie.

This is a stark change from the pilot episode we all know and love, in which Helly wakes up on a table and is trained by Mark. She doesn’t end up in an infinite closet, but repeatedly runs through an exit door that takes her back to the severed floor before seeing her Outie’s welcome video explaining her decision to go through the dismissal process. This change alone would change the dynamics of the main cast. Instead of Helly being the one who was willing to text her Outie in her hand or attempt suicide trying to leave the cut off floor, it could have been Mark.

There are eight more episodes of the podcast to be released before the second season premieres on January 17. If we only get such revelations in the first 20 minutes of the first episode, we may never see Severance pay exactly the same when we finish listening to all this.