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Helly unconscious on a boardroom table in Severance Season 1, Episode 1

Severance’s Original, Unfilmed Pilot Script Would’ve Killed the Apple TV+ Series

Apple TV+ sci-fi thriller Severance boasts one of the most delightfully disorienting premieres in recent memory. But even more mind-melting is just how different series creator/showrunner Dan Erickson’s original Severance pilot script was from the debut episode we ultimately got.

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Erickson, star Adam Scott, and director Ben Stiller recently broke down the unfilmed pilot’s teleplay in the new Severance-themed podcast. The divergence between it and Severance Season 1, Episode 1, “Good News About Hell” was real. The surreal aspects of the series are ratcheted up even further in the original pilot script. At the same time, it also supplies concrete answers to aspects of the Severance mythos not revealed until much later on (if at all). Meanwhile, backstories are different, dynamics are inverted, subplots are erased, and arcs are altered (and possibly even reassigned).

And honestly? This version of Severance still sounds pretty cool – as a standalone installment. As a first chapter in Season 1’s wider narrative, it would’ve killed the show in its tracks.

What Was Different About Severance’s Original Pilot Script?

Mark and Helly sitting at a boardroom table in Severance Season 1, Episode 1

I won’t go into every discrepancy between Severance Season 1, Episode 1 as initially conceived by Erickson versus what he and Stiller finally settled on. I’m just going to focus on the big stuff. (The pilot script is available online if you’re keen to conduct a forensic review.)

First and foremost, the original pilot script differentiates itself from Episode 1 through its focus. While Scott’s Mark Scout is very much the protagonist of Severance Season 1, Britt Lower’s Helly Riggs is a key player. Notably, her initiation into the bizarre world of Lumon Industries – with Mark as her mentor – is our on-ramp to Severance‘s core concept of employees “severed” from their out-of-work selves. None of that applies to the pilot, which depicts Mark’s first day at Lumon, and Helly as his head of department. As such, Mark effectively has the character arc Erickson assigned Helly in Season 1, and the pair’s relationship is flipped around.

Related: Severance: When Does the Apple TV+ Series Take Place?

Similarly, Mark’s dynamic with his senior manager at Lumon, Harmony Cobel, is markedly different in the pilot. Whereas Mark spends Severance Season 1 unaware that Cobel is meddling in his “outie” life by posing as his well-meaning neighbor, Mrs. Selvig, in the pilot, Cobel freely outs herself as a Lumon staffer. The reveal comes as part of a scene in which Cobel tortures a rat to demonstrate how the severance procedure works. In the episode as filmed, Mark relates this information to Helly, without resorting to rodent abuse and while both are in their “innie” state.

Lastly, Mark’s backstory in the pilot is subtly – yet materially – out of sync with his personal history in Severance Season 1. In the latter, he’s a grieving widower; in the former, he’s a divorcee. Mark’s wife, Gemma, explicitly being alive would’ve had major repercussions for the first season’s story had it gone ahead. It changes Mark’s rationale for undergoing the severance procedure, while simultaneously scuppering one of Season 1’s big payoffs. How would Mark discovering Gemma is secretly fellow severed Lumon employee Ms. Casey work, if we already know Gemma’s not dead?

The Original Pilot Script Had Some Great Ideas

Helly and Milchick dancing in Severance Season 1

If you’ve detected a disapproving air to the above synopsis, you’re not wrong. I’m not disappointed that Erickson overhauled the Severance pilot script, and I’m convinced Episode 1 is the best possible introduction to the sci-fi thriller’s twisty narrative. That said, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s some neat stuff in the pilot that I almost wish we got to see on screen.

For starters, there’s the rat torture scene. Like most people, I’m not a fan of animal cruelty. However, Erickson’s idea of having Cobel demonstrate severance by instantly switching her pet’s attitude towards her from fearful to loving is undeniably powerful. What’s more, it’s visual; strip away Cobel’s expository dialogue and it’s still instantly clear what severance is and what it’s used for. It also seemingly fills in the blanks regarding the goats inexplicably wandering around Lumon’s corridors in Season 1 (animal testing is apparently the company’s bag).

Then there’s the surreal content I alluded to earlier. In the podcast, Erickson recalls how Mark’s orientation (unlike Helly’s) would’ve culminated in his “birth out of a giant sphincter in the ceiling.” In the context of Severance as we know it now, such overt craziness doesn’t work. But in isolation? That’s a pretty striking image that would’ve sucked viewers in. The same goes for a sequence where Mark accepts Cobel’s job offer via a speaker-equipped port-a-potty; it’s too strange for Severance proper, but it’s inspired all the same.

Related: Severance Captures the Work/Life Imbalance

The Original Pilot Script Shuts Down Some of Season 1’s Best Storylines

Harmony Cobel sitting at her desk in Severance Season 1

Yet, in the end, the Severance pilot’s highlights are just that: concepts and scenarios that are compelling in a vacuum. They lack the cohesion that makes Season 1’s nine-episode run so satisfying. More importantly, the pilot script doesn’t even provide a platform to support said run.

What is Severance Season 1 without the tension of wondering when (or if) Mark will ever figure out that Cobel and Selvig are one and the same? How much heart does it have without his widower’s grief, or intrigue when the Gemma/Casey mystery is stripped away? And what about Helly; does her journey (and Episode 9’s big twist) hit half as hard if her and Mark swap places?

My guess is no. On the contrary, the above discrepancies sketch out a version of Severance far less likely to become one of the most acclaimed shows in recent times. That’s not a reality most of us even want to contemplate, so what say we follow the Lumon playbook and put the original Severance pilot out of our minds – forever.

Severance Season 1 is currently streaming on Apple TV+. Season 2 premieres on Jan. 17, 2025.


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Leon Miller
Contributing Writer
Leon is a freelance contributor at The Escapist, covering movies, TV, video games, and comics. Active in the industry since 2016, Leon's previous by-lines include articles for Polygon, Popverse, Screen Rant, CBR, Dexerto, Cultured Vultures, PanelxPanel, Taste of Cinema, and more.