'Severance' Season 2 credit sequence, explained by the animator

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One of the first images that title credits designer Oliver Latta received for the second season of “Severance” was of Mark S., played by Adam Scott, carrying a bunch of balloons. Ben Stiller, executive producer and frequent director of the series, captioned it: “Credits became real.”

The hypnotic sequence, animated from three dimensional scans of Scott, became one of the series’ calling cards when it first premiered in early 2022 on Apple TV+. It earned Latta, a 3-D artist based in Berlin, an Emmy for main title design in 2022. For the second season, Latta started designing an entirely new version. Set to the same eerily catchy tune by composer Theodore Shapiro, the Season 2 incarnation of the credits — seen for the first time in Episode 2, now streaming — are even more haunting, diving into the surreal world of Mark’s brain and introducing other characters and landscapes.

This time, Latta visited the New York set, but despite being given key plot points, he still hadn’t seen any of the episodes by the time he spoke to The Times just days before the premiere on Jan. 17. In fact, he prefers to work with as little information as possible so he can create something original. Still, there are secrets within the brief but entrancing clip. Latta walked us through some of those.

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Balloons

The image of balloons has been part of the “Severance” credits from Season 1, but, in fact, they were a part of Latta’s work even before he was aligned with the show. An earlier piece he made featured a woman dragging a group of human balloons behind her. For Season 1, he gave Mark S. that burden, except Mark is holding a group of other Marks, limbs akimbo.

In the Season 2 credits, however, Latta shifts the balloon motif. Instead of humans as balloons, Mark’s head is inflated into a series of balloons. Balloons are a potent metaphor for the series, according to Latta. “A balloon is something made out of air, nothing real, same as memories or stuff which is not physical but happens in the head,” he says. “Everything centered on the human brain.”

There’s also a more literal way in which the balloons connect to Mark’s journey this season, but Latta is cautious about spoiling anything.

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A darker adventure

A man in a red onesie holding a flashlight looking at a green brain.

In the first season, the credits illustrated a surreal version of the basic concept of the show: Mark goes to work; Mark comes home. The two sides of him are divided. This year, Latta wanted to take the viewer into Mark’s brain, which is represented by green matter. “It’s a little bit darker,” Latta says. “I also had a feeling the whole series would be darker.” To illustrate this, Latta thought about what it would look like to walk around inside of a brain: This is his version.

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Babies

A man in a red onesie sitting on a white bed as a baby with a man's head crawls near his feet.

Stiller gave Latta a directive: “Let’s add babies.” The initial idea that Latta had was to flood the screen with versions of Mark, but Stiller suggested adding babies. Thus, there’s now a scene where Mark is surrounded by crawling, faceless babies in his bed. “I asked him, ‘Why babies?’ ” Latta recalls. “Because for me it’s important why we want to do something, what is the aim, what we are trying to achieve. He just said, ‘I like babies.’ ” The babies also came in handy when Latta was trying to think of something to put near the end of the sequence. He’s pretty sure it’s Stiller who suggested a version of Lumon founder Kier Eagan as a crawling babe. Latta has no idea what it exactly means. “I have my own metaphor, but I don’t know the actual answer,” he says. “We will see when everything is out fully.”

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More characters

Heads of people strewn on a green field.

In the Season 1 intro, the only figure occupying the landscape is Mark. Many versions of Mark, but just Mark. Here, Latta knew he wanted to include more people. Those include Ms. Cobel, played by Patricia Arquette, who is represented as a looming figure with a void instead of a face, reading a book that was previously a green landscape filled with Marks and Mark heads. Also present: Helly R. (Britt Lower), Mark’s colleague and love interest, and Gemma (Dichen Lachman), Mark’s dead wife (or is she?) who is also Lumon employee Ms. Casey. When Mark is searching through his brain with a flashlight, he pauses. Two reflections emerge from a body of water beneath him. One is dressed like Helly. The other like Ms. Casey. Later, a female figure appears in the elevator. Is it Helly or Gemma? Both. “They’re both there,” Latta says.

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A painting of goats

A man seen from behind looking at a large painting of goats.

One of the most evocatively bizarre images from the first season’s credits, involved Mark working at a desk made of his own head. Here he does the same thing, but it transforms into an oil painting, first of Mark and then of a goat. As any “Severance” fan knows, the goats roaming Lumon are a huge mystery. But why the painterly elements? “The show was always about art and artworks, the black painting is really important,” Latta says.

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Tiny details

A man's inflated head rests on a desk with a small vial spilled over next to him.

Latta included tons of tiny details he wants audiences to catch. For instance, you see Mark’s shadow on an elevator door. When it opens, the shadow splits in two. Latta sees that as a representation of the division between innies and outies. In another beat, Mark looks in a mirror, his face in the reflection is obscured, a reference to a plot point. And you might want to pay attention to the bottle that spills when Mark’s head inflates on a table. A tiny Mark is trapped in there. Latta hopes viewers will spend time dissecting everything. “I’m really looking forward to what they see in all these images,” he says. “I’m being not so direct to leave room for interpretation.”

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New landscapes

Some of the landscapes that appear in the new credits sequence will become recognizable to viewers when they see forthcoming episodes. When Latta learned about these, he knew he wanted to incorporate them. “For me, in an intro, it’s great to have contrast in terms of colors and light and also different environments,” he says. In fact, he originally had even more new spaces in the intro, but Stiller told him they were spoiling too much.

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The ending

The final shot before the screen goes black is downright terrifying. Mark’s hands try to pry open the back of his head, his eyes peering out from his skull. “This image is something I always had in mind and I think it’s visually and story-wise really striking and provoking,” Latta says. It’s also a jump scare, a pretty horrifying way to introduce you to each episode.