Ben Stiller Wanted To Film One Of Severance's Best Episodes In One Take

Now that the Apple TV+ science-fiction thriller "Severance" has concluded its second genre-bending season, it's natural that people are continuing to breathlessly theorize and discuss each of the big twists from the sophomore set of episodes from creator Dan Erickson and director/executive producer Ben Stiller. (You can dig into our deep dive of the ending of "Severance" season 2 here.) The second season did answer a couple of questions, though plenty of mysteries remain. Throughout the season, the hapless Mark S. (Adam Scott) tried to gain some level of control as the "innie" version of a depressed man named Mark who had originally gone to work for the enigmatic Lumon Industries, which pioneered the strange, eponymous concept of "severance." Within the framework of this show, severance is a process in which a person's "innie" works at the massive conglomerate while their "outie" lives outside of work, and neither has any idea what the other one does during their part of a given day.

But while everyone marveled over the thrilling and unexpectedly violent second-season finale of "Severance," it's worth reminding ourselves that the first-season finale, which aired in 2022, continues to be one of the high watermarks of 2020s TV, in terms of crafting an immensely effective, wildly suspenseful, and shocking hour of television that made viewers fall even harder for the show. (We've helped explain that ending as well, if you need a refresher.) Stiller has already spoken about how he and Erickson worked to give away only so many details in the first-season finale, as much to tease audiences as to essentially coerce Apple TV+ into renewing the show instead of leaving things on a never-to-be-resolved cliffhanger. But that finale, titled "The We We Are," could have been a lot more insane, because Stiller originally wanted the episode to take place as a single, unbroken shot.

In a behind the scenes video for Variety after the episode aired, Stiller and the cast talked not only about the process of making "The We We Are," but mentioned what might have been in a one-shot version. "I knew from the very first shot of the episode on Mark," Stiller said, "that we wanted to keep it as continuous as possible." From that perspective, and from reflecting on how the second season both opens and closes on very similar mirror images of Mark running headlong through the hallways of the severed floor at Lumon to points unknown, it makes sense to keep the camera as close to the characters as they could. 

Admittedly, if the episode had unfolded as a single shot, it wouldn't have been quite the same as a single take. Although Stiller has said the show tries to eschew visual effects whenever possible, when he and Scott broke down the breathless opening of the second season at Vanity Fair, he noted that the motion-control technology used to allow the camera to make fluid movements around Mark as he makes a mad dash through the severed floor basically required extensive CGI. Visual trickery aside, "Severance" isn't above clever techniques to create a smoother flow, as was the case in "The We We Are." The show's editor, Geoffrey Richman, noted that although the finale was far from a single shot, the production team created "the fritz cut," in which it was "kind of functionally a way to bridge the scenes so that they were more seamless." 

Stiller quickly put the kibosh on "The We We Are" being a single-shot episode, implying that the idea died as quickly as it was initially brought up. Considering how intense and fast-paced the installment is, jumping between all four members of the team as they attempt to do their part in revealing Lumon's injustice to the outside world, any fan of the show would likely understand how unfeasible a single-shot finale would be. 

The morning after the second-season finale of "Severance" aired, it was confirmed that the series will be returning for a third season, and we've already established what's known so far about "Severance" season 3. Aside from the fact that the show's renewal isn't a very big surprise considering how buzzy and popular it continues to be, it now raises an obvious question: Will Stiller figure out a way to pull off what's proven to be impossible so far? Will we get a full-on episode in the third season that encompasses a single shot? With the four key characters, as well as the overly officious Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) and the ever-mysterious Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), relatively adrift, that may still be a challenge too difficult to overcome, unless we get a single episode focused on any one of these characters, or maybe on Mark's not-dead wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman).

Stiller and the other episode directors have proven an impressive willingness to create stunning visuals that leave a mark on the audience long after the show airs. A single-shot episode may seem wildly ambitious, but "Severance" has proven to be extremely daring across both of its seasons so far. While it's worth hoping that we don't have to wait three years for the third season of this thrilling show, we can also hope that Ben Stiller and the production team can pull off the unthinkable and present a full episode that takes place over the course of a single shot.