Allegedly, the creator of Severance has an overall plan for where the show is going and how it will end. The best-laid plans and all that, of course, but at least that gives some hope that it won’t turn out to be another first-season-is-amazeballs-then-it-all-turns-to-shit type show, cf. Heroes, Westworld, or BSG. Plus, it’s another reason for vislor to subscribe to Apple TV+.
Season two begins January 17!
And they lost the top-billed star to mental health problems at the end of season 1, forcing them to create a new captain who was also destined to be a Messiah, and wrap up their first Messiah’s story arc in a two-parter in the third season.
Audiences have gotten more sophisticated, auteur show creators have bigger stories they want to tell, premium channels and streaming services aren’t beholden to old school viewership retention concepts, the rise of binge watching.
Those are a few reasons.
Best as I can tell, at first they thought they wouldn’t even get a 4th season. I can’t confirm it, but I suspect they begged the network to give them 6 episodes to wrap up the Shadow War - the most important plotline - and only then were they given the rest of the season to to finish the main B-plots (the Earth rebellion and Minbari civil war).
Bab5 is in my top three shows, maybe top one. I have read about it and followed a lot of it. The writer/creator JMS, has said that he had plans on how to write out any character and still tell his story. He had worked on TV the previous decade and knew how production went. He had contingencies for a lot of things, it seems. Season three is still the only season in television written by one person, JMS. As it was 24 episodes, I don’t see that being beaten anytime soon. It is also amazing! The way it wraps up several story lines is still great.
Whether season five did as well, is tough to say, but rewatching it recently, it was better than I remembered.
They had a rough time getting season two but then got through season four. It was season five when renewals came up again. It took long enough to get season five, that they lost Claudia Christian. The others were willing to wait a bit longer but she wasn’t.
If JMS had known he would get season five, I read he would have had the Shadow War go into season five, possibly ending s4 with Intersections in Real Time but I don’t know what else he would have done.
JMS is no saint but Bab5 is a testament to what someone who knows TV can do with a five year plan. We might get shows with references to other seasons but nothing as well done as Babylon 5.
/gets off soapbox
Well, as one Doper put it;
Pfft, what does that guy know!
Actually, 
I’m not surprised as he did a lot of fan interaction on BBSs back when Bab5 was on the air.
Thanks for that!
Battlestar may not be rewatchable, I did love it the first time and i have failed to complete subsequent rewatch attempts… However, it has given me the term Nuggets for the two youngest kitties in my house, they are almost four so, definitely not newbie warriors, but Rin and Toast will always be Nuggets and that adorable nickname comes out of BSG.
“Nugget” is pretty standard military slang for a newbie officer. BSG got it from the real world.