After THAT Finale, We Can't Stop Thinking About 'Severance' Season 3 — Here's Everything We Know So Far
Buuut, after the "Cold Harbor" finale last week, we certainly got some of the answers that we've been looking for after two whole seasons.
Just hours after airing, Tim Cook and Ben Stiller confirmed that Apple TV+ had ordered a third season of Severance. Praise Kier!
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Theories are running rampant online surrounding the direction of the show in the next season. But before we dive into what we know about season 3 of Severance, let's recap what we learned in the season finale.
Ms. Cobel finally reveals the sinister operations at Lumon and Mark's significance to the company. He has been instrumental in creating multiple consciousnesses for his wife, Gemma, who is alive and held captive as Ms. Casey. Mark's task, including the Cold Harbor file, involved refining data clusters that corresponded to these personas, effectively constructing new identities for use within Lumon's severance program.
And "Cold Harbor," the highly discussed file throughout the series, is finally revealed to be the final test in the Macrodata Refinement project that creates new consciousnesses for Gemma, Mark's wife, as part of Lumon's experiments to test the severance chip's ability to suppress core emotional responses. And seemingly, the end of Gemma Scout's existence as we knew it.
Calling back to "Chikhai Bardo," the baby crib in the Cold Harbor room serves as an emotional trigger related to Gemma's past miscarriage, and her dismantling of it without emotion demonstrates the chip's effectiveness in erasing deeply ingrained trauma.
Meanwhile, we got to see Innie Mark and Outie Mark share their first conversation together. While it was kind of heartwarming at first, it didn't take long for things to take a turn once Innie Mark realized that he, along with the rest of the Innies at Lumon, might not exist if Outie Mark had his way.
Of course, this episode took us through a serious and violent journey that saw Mark catching a body (I'm still wondering how a court would hold an innie accountable...), finally finding Gemma, and sadly, abandoning her at the last minute (as his Innie) so he could remain inside Lumon with Helly R.
Speaking of Helly R., as part of this plan to take down Lumon and save Gemma, she led the revolt on the severed floor that saw her and Dylan G. imprisoning Mr. Milchick in a bathroom. We also have to mention that creepy look on her face at the end of the episode that spurred theories that it was actually Helena Eagan.
The ending gave much more closure than the cliffhanger of season one (and a stellar marching band performance led by Tramell Tillman), yet there are still many more questions that need to be addressed.
Without further ado, here's everything we know about season 3 of Severance.
The good news: we probably won't be waiting another three years between seasons.
A few factors played into the delay between the first and second season including the writers and actors strikes in 2023. So it seems like everyone is hopeful that the next season of Severance will be back in the near future including both Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller.
"I would love to finish the show before I'm 70," Erickson told Entertainment Weekly.
"I would hope that season 3 comes sooner," he continued. "Certainly a big part of it was the fact that we had the strikes which shut us down for five or six months for production. And there was a difference between that and being shut down for Covid in season 1, because when we were shut down for Covid, I was still writing that whole time, and this time literally it was pencils down. I was making an effort to not even really look at or think about the scripts during that time."
He added, "... Having done it twice now, there is more of a sense of understanding procedurally what works and how to streamline it, so our goal is never to draw out people's pain for three years. And I hope that we don't have to do that again." Hopefully, 2026?
Even better, Ben Stiller already confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter in February that they were working on the new season in a writers' room, adding that he hoped that we wouldn't have to wait three years between seasons, again.
Speaking of writers' rooms, it appears that they've recruited new showrunners for the third season, according to Nexus Point News. Per the Writers Guild of America database, Eli Jorne (Walking Dead) and Mary Laws (Succession) will be joining Erickson for the third season, replacing Chris Black and Mark Friedman, who served as showrunners in seasons 1 and 2.
There isn't a whole lot of information surrounding the plot of the upcoming season or what might happen to Mark and the gang after breaking Gemma out of Lumon. However, as pointed out by Harper's Bazaar, the final shot of the season finale strongly indicates what's to come in season 3.
Apple TV+
"For me, that image was just in my head from the beginning — when we said, OK, we're going to go this far and this is where we're going to take it,' Stiller told Indie Wire. 'You don't see freeze-frames at the end of movies that often these days, but it used to be done a lot more. It's just kind of this moment in time where you're like, 'Oh, wow, this is the end of the movie, but it's going to keep going. We just don't know where it's going to go.'"
The most important question is, who will be making their return? Adam Scott suggested that we might see the whole crew back on screen again, which makes sense. After all, the last time we saw Dylan G., he rallied the Choreography and Merriment department against Milchick while Mark S. and Helly R. ran off.
Apple TV+
"I couldn't be more excited to get back to work with Ben, Dan, the incredible cast and crew, Apple and the whole 'Severance' team," Scott said in a statement announcing the show's renewal.
However, a key question surrounds the return of Irving, played by John Turturro. By the end of episode 9, Irving boards a train with his dog, Radar, after Burt (Christopher Walken) spares his life and tells him to never return to Kier again. It could be the end of Irving's story as we know it but there's a chance it might not be.
"When you're doing scenes at the end of the season, it's always tricky to find that sweet spot," he told The Wrap about that emotional scene at the train station with Burt. "Because you think it could be the end, but it maybe it's not the end."
What's a bit more promising is that Turturro said he's in "open" conversation with Stiller and Erickson about what could come next. "If there's stuff that's good and active and interesting to do, then I could see that, yeah,' Turturro said. 'If people wanted there to be [a third season], there could be, and there could be big, big surprises too. You know, Irving's left all those paintings behind. There's a reason why they went into his apartment, why they're looking around.'
Although details on the plot of Severance season 3 are still under wraps, the wait for answers is already unbearable. Does outie Mark reunite with Gemma in the outside world? Will Milchick survive the revolt of the innies at Lumon? And how deep does the rabbit hole go? Share your best theories below.
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Seinfeld Behind-The-Scenes-Facts
Seinfeld is one of the most popular TV sitcoms of all time, even today. For "a show about nothing," there sure is a lot of interesting behind-the-scenes information! Here are 45 facts about Seinfeld: Festivus wasn't invented for the show. It was actually the brainchild of Daniel O'Keefe, the father of Seinfeld writer Dan O'Keefe. Dan told Uproxx, "It is a fake holiday my dad made up in the '60s to celebrate the anniversary of his first date with my mother, and it was something that we celebrated as a family in a very peculiar way through the '70s, and then I never spoke of it again. I had actually forgotten about it because I had blotted it out of my mind." He continued, "My brother Mark mentioned it to Jeff Schaffer. Jeff told Alec and Dave [Mandel] and, as I recall, they had me meet at Swingers, this diner in Hollywood, and then one of them sat on the other side of me so I couldn't leave. They asked about Festivus, and I said I didn't really want to talk about it. They said, 'Well, Mark told us about it,' and I said, 'That fucker.' They said, 'We think it might be funny in the show,' and I said, 'I think it's a mistake and sort of a family shame.' No one had ever expressed any interest in it before, but I swear I thought it was going to be cut out in the edits." The O'Keefe family's Festivus celebrations weren't exactly like the ones on the show. Dan said, "At the time I was just a terrified staff writer hoping that this episode wouldn't let everyone in America know that my family suffers from mental illness. Each Festivus had a theme, which were always depressing. One was, 'Is there light at the end of the tunnel?' 'Are we too easily made glad?' was one, I believe. My grandmother died the next year, and it was 'A Festivus for the Rest of Us,' meaning the living and not the departed. It's pretty goddamn weird." At first, his dad thought his son was making fun of him, but he "completely embraced it, yes, in a matter of months." The "Soup Nazi" was based on Al Yeganeh, the owner of Soup Kitchen International. In 1989, he told the New Yorker, "I tell you, I hate to work with the public. They treat me like a slave. My philosophy is: The customer is always wrong, and I'm always right. I raised my prices to try to get rid of some of these people, but it didn't work." He reportedly hated the line "no soup for you," hated being called the "Soup Nazi," and didn't think his soup needed "that clown" [Jerry Seinfeld]. It wasn't originally a "show about nothing." In a Reddit AMA, Jerry said, "The pitch for the show, the real pitch, when Larry [David] and I went to NBC in 1988, was we want to show how a comedian gets his material. The show about nothing was just a joke in an episode many years later, and Larry and I to this day are surprised that it caught on as a way that people describe the show, because to us it's the opposite of that." Jason Alexander almost left the show over not appearing in "The Pen." He told Access Hollywood, "There was an episode — remember, Julia was not in the pilot, so there was no Elaine. And suddenly, Jerry had two best friends, one male, one female. And I went, 'Okay, well, how does this work? What's going on?' And very early on, Larry wrote an episode where Elaine and Jerry go to Florida, and Kramer and George are not in that episode. And when Seinfeld started, I had a very successful career in the theater in New York, which is what I thought I was gonna be doing all my life." He continued, "So when I was written out of an episode, I came back the next week, and I said to Larry, 'Look, I know. I get it. But if you do that again, do it permanently. If you don't need me to be here every week' — 'cause I didn't know Seinfeld was gonna be Seinfeld – I said, 'If you don't need me here every week, I'd just as soon go back home and do what I was doing.' ...And he freaked out [about writing for four people], and then he did it. And thank God he didn't say, 'Take a hike,' 'cause I would've had no life." There's a "lost" episode that was never filmed. "The Bet" was written by Larry Charles, who was inspired by fellow writer Elaine Pope. He told Screen Crush, "I can't remember if she was contemplating buying a gun or whether she had already bought a gun, but she felt very justified in buying the gun and would defend that position. And it was also at a time when that was a subject that was finding its way into the media: women buying guns. And I thought that was kind of fascinating. And I think it was as simple as me wondering, 'What if Elaine bought a gun?'" One line in particular didn't sit right with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Joking about shooting herself in the head, Elaine would mention "the Kennedy" in reference to JFK's assassination. The rest of the cast joined her in not wanting to film the episode. Director Tom Cherones told Screen Crush, "As I recall, there was some reference to make a joke called 'a Kennedy.' And that offended me. And I guess it offended the cast as well... I was told to go back to the stage and work on the episode, which is what normally happens. I went back to the stage, and the actors looked at me and said, 'We don't want to do this episode.' I said, 'I agree with you. Guns are not funny, no matter what you say.' I walked back before the network guys left, and I said, 'We don't want to do this episode. That cast and I do not want to do this.'" Writer Peter Mehlman told InsideHook, "We only ever did things out of what was best for the show and the story. I remember we got a call once from Paul McCartney's manager saying he loved the show and would love to be on, but I had to say to his manager, 'Look, Paul's a god to me, but we don't do stunt casting for the sake of stunt casting, it has to fit into the story.' Julia Louis-Dreyfus almost killed me for that." Elaine wasn't originally part of the main cast. However, after the pilot aired, NBC ordered four additional episodes on the caveat that they add a female lead. So, Larry decided to base her on an ex-girlfriend he'd stayed friends with. Monica Yates Shapiro, Larry's ex, told "[Larry] told me they wanted a woman in the show, and he thought of me and our friendship. He had written an episode about the time he met my father." Larry fought against NBC's push to have Jerry and Elaine end up together. Julia told the Sunday Times, "Oh, the network wanted it! They wanted a will-they, won't-they, all that crap. But Larry was just immovable on that point. The show was built on doing things that were outside the norm, so doing something stereotypical would have been atypical of the show." Writer Larry Charles told CBS Mornings, "Julia came into the office one day crying because we were not writing for her; we weren't really giving her great stuff. And it's like, 'Well, how do you fix that?' And Larry had the idea: 'Let's take this George story and just give it to Elaine and see what happens.' And that exploded Elaine, because we'd never written women before, honestly. And so now, we had a way to write a woman that was kind of like the guys. She was as dark, as untrustworthy, as vain as the guys were, and that made her fun – fun to write for and expanded her character." Before Julia auditioned to play Elaine, Megan Mullally, Rosie O'Donnell, and Patricia Heaton read for the role. Kramer was inspired by Larry's real-life neighbor, Kenny Kramer. In 1996, Kenny launched Kramer's Reality Tour, which he told the New York Times was "a shameless attempt to capitalize on [his] illustrious name and branded identity." He and Larry really did leave their doors unlocked and visit each other unnanounced. Larry said, "Kenny was always coming up with these oddball schemes that sounded like they were made up for a television show. He'd talk you into doing something with him, and it would invariably turn out bad for you. He'd do something like disappear and leave you waiting in the car for an hour. This new idea, the Reality Tour, is something that the television Kramer would do. I hope it works out for Kenny better than most of Kramer's ideas on the show." At first, Kenny Kramer — who's a former stand-up comedian — tried to get the role of Kramer on the show. He told the New York Times, "If I'd played Kramer, it never would have flown the way it has with Michael [Richards]. He's the one who came up with the weird clothes and the physical antics that have nothing to do with me. He has to figure a new way to walk in the door every week. It takes amazing preparation, minute detail and a lot of work." On The Howard Stern Show, Jason revealed that Danny DeVito was offered the role of George Costanza. Theorizing why he turned it down, Jason said, "His career, when we started Seinfeld, would've been at its apex. So, he probably didn't wanna do a sidekick role." Jason also said that Chris Rock turned down the role of George. He said, "Why Chris wouldn't do it, I don't know. Maybe it didn't get to an offer stage. I don't know." Jason based George on Woody Allen until he finally realized the character was actually based on Larry David. On All Things Comedy, Jason said, "I go into the series with Woody Allen in my head. There was an episode, and I can't remember what it was, but when we did the table read, I thought the George storyline was a little preposterous. I just thought it was this weird thing, never gonna happen, and they've got me reacting to it in this strange way. So after the table read, I went up to Larry, and I said, 'Larry, you gotta help me with this, because we both know this would never happen in life, and if it did, nobody would react like this. So what are you thinking?' And Larry said, 'I don't know what you're talking about. This happened to me. It's exactly what I did.' And in my head, I went, ' is Larry. Larry is George.'" "I started really looking at Larry and trying to incorporate his tics and his rhythms and some of his personality quirks into George. And I think he knew. We never talked about it, but I think he knew that I finally knew that he knew that I knew. And it made the whole journey much easier, because anytime I didn't understand something on the page, I'd go, 'Oh, but Larry,'" he said. Jason told Foundation Interviews, "What was interesting about our process was — and this is not to diminish the contributions of any of our directors; they were considerable — but our directors didn't stage the show. They didn't come up with business, which was really interesting, because the dynamic of the four of us – Julia and I were classically trained, but Julia's career had been more in sketch. Michael was a stand-up. He had some formal training, but he was a stand-up and sketch and improv. Jerry had a little bit of training, but he was a stand-up. I had no improv, no sketch, but theater. Theater, theater, theater, theater, theater. So we have a lot of different disciplines colliding, and we would all approach material in a slightly different way with slightly different priorities." He continued, "And the four of us would get up, and we would go — because there was no, for the most part, there was no behavior indicated on the page, just dialogue. And we would go, 'Okay, well, what are we doing? What's going on? We can't just stand and talk. What are we doing?' And it was very challenging because, much like Jerry's real life, the sets were minimal. His apartment set, you would never, if you knew you were doing a series for nine years, you would never build that set. First of all, it was tiny, and there was nothing there. There was a couch and a table and a chair and a countertop and a desk way over there in kind of an inaccessible cover of the set and then a bathroom door way up front and a front door. No tchotchkes." He said, "There was nothing there. Nothing to make you go, 'I'm gonna go over there and do this. I'm gonna go over here and play with this. I'm gonna move here. I'm gonna sit here, and now I'm gonna sit here. I'm gonna stand.' So we would actually have to concoct reasons to be there and things to do. And the four of us would get up there, and we'd start reading lines to each other and go, 'Well, we can't just stand here. What are we gonna do?' So I'd say, 'Alright, I just came in off the street. I'm gonna get something out of your refrigerator.' And Jerry [would say], 'You're just gonna go in my refrigerator?' I'd go, 'Yeah, that's what people do. They just, if you're friends, they go in the refrigerator.' 'Okay.' 'And then you go turn on the TV set for no reason, and you...'" "And the four of us started kind of moving each other around and finding ways to use the space and use each other. And I think people talk about the four of us as a unique ensemble, and I agree, I think we were a very unique and chemically perfect ensemble. And I think it grew out of this, 'Alright, you're stuck. Let me help you. If you go over there, I can do this, and if I go over here, you can do that.' That quickly became, 'You know what? This wouldn't be as funny on me as it would be on Julia. Let Elaine do it.' Or her going, 'Well actually, it's a Kramer move. Why doesn't he just [do it]?' SO instead of just worrying so much about, 'What am I gonna do?", our emphasis was on, 'What are we gonna do?' because the four of us can't just stand here and say this stuff. And in trying to figure out as a unit how we were going to make this thing live and breathe like people instead of a radio play, " he concluded. Seinfeld added several now-common words and phrases to our lexicon, such as "yada yada yada," "regifting," "double dipper," and "Not that there's anything wrong with that." According to the New York Times, Jerry's address on the show — 129 West 81st Street — is actually his real former address in New York City. While writing "The Parking Garage," Larry didn't think about shooting the episode. In a behind-the-scenes featurette, he said, "I really didn't think about the execution... I never think about execution, I just think about the show and let somebody else worry about the execution." This led to massive challenges for the production team, who tried and tried to find a real parking garage where they could film, but it just wasn't financially or practically feasible. So, they ultimately decided to strike the permanent sets in their entirety and build a parking garage on the soundstage. To make it look more realistic, they put mirrors on the walls. Production designer Tom Azzari said, "One element that made that entire set work was the ceiling grid. So, I built a ceiling grid, which was only 7'6" high, over the entire stage, and that was 140 feet. Then what we did is build wild columns that would fit underneath the ceiling grid so we could rearrange it to make it different sections. Michael had the props department put a real air conditioner in the box Kramer carried during "The Parking Garage" because he "wanted the real weight" of it. Even during rehearsals, he held it to tire himself out. In the featurette, he said, "When I threw the box into the trunk of the car, banged my face, which was good for the comedy, but I had a bit of a bump... I never broke character. And the ending of "The Parking Garage," where the car doesn't start, wasn't planned at all! Jason said, "Tom Cherones, who was directing, has chewed us out already because we've had the giggles, and nobody's into any of this. [And he goes], 'We don't stop for anything! Goddammit, this is the last take. I don't care what the hell we get.'" After a long, late-night shoot, they were supposed to get into the car and pull out of the garage, but when Michael turned the key in the ignition, the car — which Larry called a "pile of junk" — wouldn't start. Michael said, "When that car didn't start, I knew instantly we had a blow... It was perfect, and we all felt like the show was blessed." Jennifer Coolidge lied to get her role as Jerry's girlfriend on "The Masseuse." She told GQ, "It was a weird day. I booked Seinfeld the same day that I booked this very short-lived series called She TV, which was an all-women sketch show on ABC. I didn't really have any jobs before that. I only had lies on my resume. I'd gone to a school called American Academy of Dramatic Arts up in Pasadena, and I'd just named all these shows and all these different theaters at the school as if they played there. You have to do that if you have a blank resume until you start getting jobs. Then you can slowly erase the lies. I'd love to get my hands on that resume now." However, the role was a big boon for her career. She said, "After my episode aired, all these people, all these casting directors that would never let me through the doorwell, it kind of changed a lot for me. Seinfeld and American Pie really opened the doors. Years later, I was up for a pilot, and it was between me and another girl, and I think they were leaning toward the other girl. But then the producer told me a rerun of my Seinfeld episode had aired that night, and everyone had seen it, and it had gotten me the job." The main cast wasn't always great to work with. Sarah Silverman had a terrible time guest-starring on "The Money." On a 2021 episode of her podcast, she said, "I was in an episode of Seinfeld. I was Kramer's girlfriend, and I will tell you this: Everyone was really nice, but I had a bad experience with Michael Richards. The first scene I shot, I'm in bed with Kramer, and he's scared because he hears noises. He says something like, 'What was that noise?' Then my line is, 'It's probably the wind.'" However, she flubbed her line and said, "It's probably the rain." Sarah continued, "This guy, Michael Richards, breaks character and just starts ripping me a new asshole... He points to the window and he goes, 'Do you see rain in that window? Do you see rain in that window?' and I go, 'No,' and he says, 'Then why did you say rain? It's not rain. There's no rain in that window! The line is wind!" She felt a "lump in [her] throat" and was upset he got away with treating her that way. The next day, while shooting a diner scene, he acted polite and tried to talk to her. She recalled, "And finally, I just cut him off, and I say, 'I don't give a fuck!'... And he's kind of stunned, and it's like he snapped out of it a little. He understood what I was saying was, 'You don't talk like that and act like nothing happened. I'm not going to be one of those people that joins in and acts like nothing happened. That was shitty behavior." Afterwards, he was more gracious. Guest star Armin Shimerman "hated" the Seinfeld cast. At the 2017 Florida Supercon, he said, "Hated them. They were non-communicative, ugly, I was the guest star. The episode's called 'The Caddy.' I played a caddy. I played the caddy. I was on that show for six days, five days. Every day, nobody said a word to me except cues. Nobody came up and started a conversation. I was already on Deep Space Nine. I was a series regular on a... TV show. That's not acceptable... If you have a guest star, if you have a day player, if you have an extra, you do not avoid them. You speak to them. We're all human beings together... And those four people on Seinfeld never said boo to me." He also alleged that, once, when the gaffers had to redo the lighting, he was sitting between Jerry and Julia while they waited for half an hour. They talked to each other the entire time, never once acknowledging him. He said, "It was as though I wasn't there. So, I'm not very fond of them." On The Skinny Confidential, Kathy Griffin said, "I had never met [Jerry] until I was on the show, and he was such a dick that I then went and told a story about him in my special. He actually, to his credit, thought it was funny. He didn't clutch his pearls and go, 'How dare you? I'm a star!' So they wrote the second episode where my character becomes a stand-up comic whose whole act is making fun of Jerry Seinfeld. And that was amazing." Heidi Swedberg's character Susan was killed off because the rest of the cast thought she was "impossible" to play off of. On the Howard Stern Show, Jason Alexander said, "Her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was, and mine were always misfiring... Julia actually said, 'Don't you want to just kill her?' And Larry went, 'Ka-bang!'" However, Jason later apologized for how he told that story, tweeting, "OK, folks, I feel officially awful. The impetus for telling this story was that Howard said, 'Julia Louis-Dreyfus told me you all wanted to kill her.' So I told the story to try and clarify that no one wanted to kill Heidi... [She] was generous and gracious, and I am so mad at myself for retelling this story in any way that would diminish her. If I had had more maturity or more security in my own work, I surely would have taken her query and possibly tried to adjust the scenes with her. She surely offered. But, I didn't have that maturity or security." Lawrence Tierney, who played Elaine's father on one episode, was never brought back because the rest of the cast found him intimidating and scary. In a Season 2 DVD extra, Julia said, "It's too bad he was so cuckoo because I'm sure he would've been back otherwise." Jason said, "There was every reason in the world to have that be an ongoing character because there was just so much tension between him and every other character. It was brilliant." However, the cast went on to describe an incident where Lawrence allegedly stole one of Jerry's knives from the set and hid it in his jacket. After Jerry called him out on it, Lawrence tried to make a joke then pulled the knife out, made the Psycho sound, and advanced on Jerry a bit. Jason added, "Lawrence Tierney, I think, scared the living crap out of all of us." On her podcast Wiser Than Me, Julia revealed one of the strangest places a Seinfeld fan has ever recognized her — the maternity ward! She said, "I was giving birth, and, when you're in labor, they put that monitor around your tummy. And I was in the bathroom, and I was naked, and I had the thing around my tummy, and I was massive, by the way. I gained like 50 pounds when I was pregnant. And I was standing there, and my water broke, and all of a sudden a nurse came into the room, and I went, 'My water broke!' Okay, reminding you [I'm] naked. And she goes, 'Elaine!' ...It was so awful. Isn't that crazy?" To Jerry, the funniest moment they ever filmed was when George saved a whale by pulling Kramer's lost golfball out of its blowhole "The Marine Biologist." At the 2017 New Yorker Festival, Jerry said, "The hardest thing in comedy is to have the biggest laugh at the end, and it's the most satisfying thing... We got very lucky. Larry and I came up with it the night before we were shooting. We wrote it late at night, and Jason memorized the whole speech in one day." "The Revenge" was partially based on Larry's experience quitting his job as a writer for Saturday Night Live — and the immediate regret that followed. On The David Letterman Show, Larry said, "I decided, that's it. They're fooling with the wrong guy. I walked up to the producer, it was like five minutes before the show was about to begin, I walked up and I said, 'That's it. I'm done! I've had it! Take your show! Shove it." However, his real-life neighbor, Kevin Kramer, advised him, "Why don't you just go back on Monday and pretend it never happened?" So, that's exactly what Larry did. "The Junior Mint" was not an instance of paid product placement. Andy Robin, who wrote the episode, told the Hollywood Reporter, "I knew I wanted Kramer to think of watching the operation like going to see a movie. At first, I thought maybe a piece of popcorn falls into the patient. I ran that by my brother, and he said, 'No, Junior Mints are just funnier.'" Julia came up with Elaine's iconic terrible dancing from "The Little Kicks" herself. She told Vanity Fair, "The night before the table read, I had the script, and frankly, I just stood in front of a mirror and tried to do movements that looked incredibly bad. I had a few of them, and I remember my mom was staying with us at the time, and I came downstairs, and I sort of auditioned these different movements for my mom and my husband — and they all voted on the one that I did." In an essay for Parade, writer Peter Mehlman explained that the sheer amount of Superman references wasn't planned. He said, "Much like the infant who fell from the sky into small-town America, Superman simply dropped into the orbit of Seinfeld. Contrary to rumor, it was never planned to make the Man of Steel a recurring theme, and the writing staff, on which I worked for six seasons, never got an edict dictating regular mentions of him. He just magically appeared early in the series and evolved into a go-to guy for humor — another superpower for a being faster than a speeding bullet." "That happy accident made it doubly amazing that, in the hopelessly earthbound, self-absorbed, conniving world of Seinfeld, Superman was not merely a comic-book hero — he was a role model. Great Caesar's Ghost … so much comedy gold arose from that berserk dynamic. Just consider: Superman was devoted to truth, justice, and the American way:" the Seinfeld characters were devoted to lying, cheating, and getting their own way," he said. "The Bizarro Jerry" was born from writer David Mandel and Jerry's shared love of Superman. David told Cracked, "When I pitched the concept of the Bizarro Jerry, Jerry was all over it. He knew what it was and loved it and he saw why that would be funny. I always give him credit because he was the one to say 'take it further.' It's because of Jerry that there's that ending scene of the show where they actually talk in Bizarro-speak. That was Jerry saying, 'Go for it.' That happened a lot in those final two seasons, Jerry encouraged the writers to go further." In the same episode, the "Man Hands" storyline was "loosely" inspired by David's wife. He told Cracked, "She has entirely normal-sized hands, but she grew up on a farm, and she always said her hands were 'farmy,' so that story grew out of that." Julia was able to bring her kids to work. Guest star Jami Gertz told GQ, "[She] had just had a baby, and she had a little nursery on set. So I brought my son, and our kids were able to play together on set." Originally, the show was reportedly titled The Seinfeld Chronicles. However, it had to change its name because of The Marshall Chronicles, another sitcom that was airing at the time. Production designer Thomas Azzari told the Santa Fe New Mexican, "My philosophy is that you should never be aware of the sets. You want to make sure they're appropriate, but you don't want to take anything away from what's going on. That's why Jerry's apartment is gray. … The color is the actors." By Season 9, the show was reportedly "the most expensive sitcom to produce in TV history." Each episode cost $3-3.5 million to make, and Jerry was paid $1 million per episode! The show made an estimated $1.1 billion in revenue in just the second round of syndication. After filming ended for the final season, Jerry took home a pretty big piece of memorabilia — his apartment's front wall! The rest of the set went into storage at Warner Bros. The Season 9 episode "The Puerto Rican Day" was pulled after criticism from the National Puerto Rican Coalition, who called out the show for — among other depictions of harmful stereotypes — joking that rioting and vandalizing were part of "everyday" in Puerto Rico. The scene where Kramer accidentally catches a Puerto Rican flag on fire was particularly called into question. Manuel Mirabal, president of the National Puerto Rican Coalition, told the New York Times, "It is unacceptable that the Puerto Rican flag be used by 'Seinfeld' as a stage prop under any circumstances." In a statement, NBC said, "We do not feel that the show lends itself to damaging ethnic stereotypes, because the audience for Seinfeld knows the humor is derived from watching the core group of characters get themselves into difficult situations." However, the episode was put back on air in 2002. In hindsight, Jerry would "absolutely" like to redo a few episodes differently. In 2021, he told People, "There's a number of them that I would love to have a crack at, but I don't really believe, philosophically, in changing or even thinking about the past. My philosophy of life is that just happened the way it happened, and we're going to go from here. And that's the best way to ... live. I think regret is a philosophical position that I disagree with. It kind of assumes you could have changed the past, so I wouldn't even think of that. But if you forced me or you gave me a time machine, yeah, there's a few [where] I would fix some things." One episode Jerry might like to change — the controversial finale. At the 2017 New Yorker Festival, he said, "I sometimes think we really shouldn't have even done it. There was a lot of pressure on us at that time to do one big last show, but big is always bad in comedy." The poor audience reactions to the finale changed the way Larry approached TV. He told Grantland, "Well, you know, I got so much grief from the Seinfeld finale, which a lot of people intensely disliked, that I no longer feel a need to wrap things up... I wouldn't say I'm mad about it, but it taught me a lesson that if I ever did another show, I wasn't going to wrap it up." However, he stood by the episode, saying, "No, I was not interested in an emotional ride, and neither was Jerry. No wonder why they would dislike it, yeah. But let me toot my own horn for a second. I thought it was clever to bring back all those characters in a courtroom and testify against them for what they did, and then show those clips, and also for why they even got arrested in the first place. And then to wind up — forget the self-aggrandizement here... I thought it was clever." And finally, ending the show was a mutual decision among the four leads. Jerry told People, "I do remember when I was in the ninth season, and I was thinking, maybe it's time to wrap this up. I remember inviting Michael and Julia and Jason to my dressing room, and we all just sat there and we stared at each other. And I went, 'You know, I was thinking maybe this is our moment to make a good exit. We've had a lot of good fortune here. Maybe we shouldn't push our luck too far.' And we all agreed that this was the right moment." Do you love all things TV and movies? 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Digital Trends
9 hours ago
- Digital Trends
Alien: Earth is one of my five must-see TV shows in August
August is, famously, when the summer movie season starts to draw to a close. Thankfully, TV doesn't have those same lull periods, meaning that there's plenty to look forward to on the small screen in the month of August. I'm particularly excited about Alien: Earth, which will be the first TV show in the Alien franchise and also the first thing in this universe to be set on Earth. Alien: Earth is far from the only thing to be excited about in August, though. Here are five shows I'm particularly looking forward to watching. Chief of War (August 1) This Apple TV+ original is another partnership between Jason Momoa and the studio. This time, Momoa plays a Hawaiian war chief tasked with uniting the tribes of the disparate islands so that they can face off with the colonizers who are threatening their way of life. Recommended Videos The show's cast is composed almost entirely of native Hawaiian actors, and it could be a fascinating look at a part of America that many Americans don't spend much time thinking about. Hopefully, it's a little bit better than See. Chief of War will be available on Apple TV+. Wednesday season 2, Part 1 (August 6) Wednesday was a phenomenon following its first season, and this follow-up is will try to recapture that same enthusiasm. The show, a twist on The Addams Family, primarily follows their daughter, Wednesday, as she is shipped off to boarding school and must make her way through regular teenage life. The show made a star out of Jenna Ortega, and season 2 promises to be even bigger and more star-studded than the first installment. Whether that means it will be better is anyone's guess. Wednesday will be available on Netflix. Alien: Earth (August 12) One of the great mysteries this summer is Alien: Earth, which brings the xenomorph to Earth for the very first time. Plus, the Alien franchise makes its debut on television. While it seems impossible to live up to the best of what this franchise can offer, Alien: Earth will follow a young woman who joins up with a group of tactical soldiers to investigate the crash of a space vessel onto Earth. What they find (which is probably an alien) is left a mystery, but Alien: Earth could expand on the world of the Alien movies in fascinating ways, even if it's not quite as good as that first movie. Alien: Earth will be available on Hulu. Peacemaker season 2 (August 21) Following the success of Supermanin theaters, interest in the new DCU has never been higher. Peacemaker season 2 may reveal more about where this universe is headed, but just as importantly, it will hopefully be an excellent continuation of the show's remarkable first season. The brilliance of John Cena's central performance is worth plenty of praise, but James Gunn managed to find exactly the right supporting cast to put around him. Here's hoping the lore of the DCU doesn't overwhelm a character that's at his best when he's ignoring the rules altogether. Peacemaker will be available on HBO Max. Eyes of Wakanda (August 27) While the DCU might emerge as a real threat to Marvel's supremacy, Eyes of Wakanda could be proof that Marvel still has a few cards left to play. This animated series seems like it will be largely disconnected from the rest of the MCU, as it tells the story of Wakandan warriors who travel around the world to recover vibranium artifacts. The animation looks beautiful, and Ryan Coogler's involvement is a good sign that this show will be a reflection of the Wakanda we've fallen in love with on the big screen. Eyes of Wakanda will be available on Disney+.
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Yahoo
'We're not in Richmond anymore': What we know about 'Ted Lasso' Season 4
Believe it — Season 4 of Ted Lasso has officially begun production, Apple TV+ announced this week. That's right, Coach Lasso, the show's beloved mustachioed and mild-mannered namesake, who helped guide audiences through a global pandemic with optimism and humanity, is back on the football pitch. Well, this calls for biscuits. Filming has officially kicked off in star Jason Sudeikis's (Ted Lasso) hometown of Kansas City, Mo. Mayor Quinton Lucas called it 'another major victory for the city's rapidly expanding film industry,' in a post on X, in which he appears to be sporting a blue Ted Lasso hat. Additional filming is also set to take place across the pond in London. Apple TV posted a video on Instagram of Jeremy Swift (Leslie Higgins), Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca Welton), Juno Temple (Keeley Jones) and Sudeikis are sitting in what appears to be a booth at a traditional American restaurant as some of the key members of AFC Richmond get ready to film a scene. The caption reads: 'We're not in Richmond anymore. Ted Lasso Season 4 is now in production.' The streaming service confirmed back in March that there would be a fourth season. The show has won 13 Emmy Awards and has received a total of 61 Emmy nominations. Barbecue sauce. What can fans expect in Season 4? At the end of Season 3, Ted ends up returning to the U.S. after coaching the fictional AFC Richmond soccer team in London in order to be closer to his son, Henry. The streaming service indicates on its website what fans can expect in the highly anticipated new season: 'Ted returns to Richmond, taking on his biggest challenge yet: coaching a second division women's football team. Throughout the course of the season, Ted and the team learn to leap before they look, taking chances they never thought they would.' Do we know when Season 4 will be released or if there's an official trailer? So far, Apple TV+ says a release date for Season 4 is coming soon. No official trailer has been released yet, aside from this week's teaser. Which characters will return? Even though they're not pictured in the promo image, the wise Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) and Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) will be back. Grant Feely will replace Gus Turner as Ted's son, Henry. Other newcomers to join the cast in roles that have yet to be revealed include: Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey and Abbie Hern. Who is not returning? Fan favorites like Nick Mohammed (Nate Shelley) and Phil Dunster (Jamie Tartt) along with Sarah Niles (Dr. Sharon Fieldstone), Anthony Head (Rupert Mannion), Toheeb Jimoh (Sam Obisanya), James Lance (Trent Crimm), Cristo Fernández (Dani Rojas), Kola Bokinni (Isaac McAdoo) and Billy Harris (Colin Hughes) weren't named as regular returning characters in Season 4. Solve the daily Crossword
