Severance
There’s some significant news about two of the best shows on television and their future, so I figured I’d just combine the news items here. That would be Severance, currently airing its second season, and Shogun, the hugely awarded miniseries that was instead renewed for two more seasons rather than ending when it was originally supposed to.
Severance season 3 – Ben Stiller (I still can’t believe he’s one of the masterminds being Severance) has just confirmed that the writers room is assembled and working on the season 3 script, where the stated goal is not to keep audiences waiting three years between seasons this time around. Writing season 3 as season 2 is airing is certainly a promising start.
For comparison’s sake, writing for Severance season 2 began after the show was renewed in April 2022, and filming did not begin until October 2022, and as we know, the show was not released until January of 2025. Writing reportedly took a very long time, and there was allegedly some amount of conflict behind the scenes, but that seems to be done now, and it may not take that long this time. Still, I would assume it will not be shorter than two years, which is still a hefty wait.
Shogun
Shogun season 2 – Similarly, it’s been confirmed that the writers room is working “so hard” on season 2 of Shogun, where season 1 took close to a decade to actually get made, and that was even with source material to work with, which the second and third seasons will not have.
Past that, star Hiroyuki Sanada says that that the show is aiming to start shooting this coming fall after the scripts are done with “half the cast remaining,” given all the deaths in season 1. If the show is shooting in the fall of 2025, we can compare that to Shogun season 1 which began shooting in September of 2021 before a February 2024 release date. That’s almost 2.5 years, but the hope would be that with what might be able to carry over from season 2, it wouldn’t take that long. But like Severance, I’d expect nothing less than this show to be two years away or more from here.
It’s just unfortunate that we’re in this new era where writing, filming and post-production on almost every streaming show takes 1.5-3+ years, with only few yearly exceptions like The Bear and Slow Horses. Hopefully both of these shows hew closer to two years rather than three, but even that, it’s still a bummer.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
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Paul Tassi