A startling lack of media literacy

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This week, I took a look at two television shows that were new to me, although one of them has been driving its fanbase steadily insane over the last three years. They’re good examples of two sides of the coin of the rise in fan “theories,” which seems to perfectly coincide with a steep decline in media literacy among fanbases. It’s almost like the two things are directly related!

First off, I finally got around to watching Severance, since its second season just started, and it’s a brisk watch with only nine episodes in its first season and only two episodes of the second released as of this writing. It’s one of those shows that I had heard exclusively good things about, but just never made it to the top of things to watch. (I have an extremely deep list, and I tend to alternate years of “I’m gonna watch all these movies” and “I’m gonna watch all these TV shows.” It’s a good thing 2025 was already earmarked to be a TV show year, not only because it means I finally got to watch Severance, but because I may be undertaking a pretty big project dealing with a past television show. More on that in the months to come, hopefully!)

Severance is indeed one hell of a show, and one that I immediately recognized as being phenomenal. But I’ll be honest with you: I am thrilled that I didn’t start watching it until now, largely because the odd nine-episode first season ended on an extreme cliffhanger, and the gap between that and the second season premiere was three entire years.

And during that three years, it seems like a large chunk of the Severance fan community has driven itself completely insane.

Friends, you don’t have to live like this.

This is the state of being a fan of prestige television that contains any nuance or subtext whatsoever in 2025: any wading into online discourse about it whatsoever risks the reader being dragged into a QAnon-level miasma of fan theory, armchair analysis, basement-level hypothesizing, and a marked lack of media literacy from almost everyone involved.

Paid subscribers get to read about the other show we’re discussing this week, Hulu’s new series “Paradise.”