“I WAS RIGHT!!!!”–-A text that my friends have been seeing in their inboxes more often than they would normally expect. But as I’ve worked my way through “Severance” over the past few weeks, and as more and more of my predictions for the show have proven to be scarily accurate, the desire to gloat at my sheer genius has increased to the point where I simply need to tell everybody when I hit it right on the money. That may sound sickeningly pretentious (c’mon, Sarah, get a grip, honestly), but give me a second to explain before you roll your eyes and go look for the crossword. 

The main thing is that it’s all in the methodology, the particular way you go about trying to dissect a show. Since I’m now done with “Severance” and am looking for things to do with myself now that I don’t have a hyperfixation, I’ve decided that the best course of action is to try and empower others to discover that same slightly self-absorbed contentment, the gleeful gloat that comes from being undoubtedly, indubitably, 100% right. Think of this article as a guide, a collection of tools that, when used correctly, will hopefully help you to predict all of the twists in “Severance” (and any other TV show or movie for that matter).

I’ve spent the past few post-”Severance” days really dissecting my approach, thinking critically about how I try to see a twist coming. What I’ve settled on is a seven point system (a seven-erance system, one might say, if they were feeling especially pun-y) that encompasses all of the major things I try to do:

Tip #1: Pay attention to what the camera shows you (and what it doesn’t)

The craziest and most shocking twists are often hiding in plain sight, or rather, just out of sight. The camera will often show you everything you need to know for the sake of the immediate story points, but will leave out information in such a way that you won’t even realize you’re missing anything to begin with. Maybe there’s a subtle time jump or a moment seemingly skipped between scenes. It might not seem like a particularly crucial moment, but sometimes that nixed context can mean the difference between two completely different interpretations.

If a character feels weirdly less-fleshed out than everyone else, for example, or if we seem to know way less about their backstory, that’s usually there to build mystery and intrigue. The director and writer are showing you that something is missing and inviting you to fill in the gap with your own hypotheses.

For any individual whose face is never seen or whose voice is obviously modified, that is ALWAYS a sign that there will be a twist, specifically meaning that the secret character’s identity will be revealed to be one of the already established main characters. If someone is always wearing a mask, then there’s going to be a twist. If someone is always cloaked in shadow, then there’s going to be a twist. If you only ever see someone from behind, then there’s going to be a twist. Once you’ve realized that, then the only thing left to do is figure out which already established character would introduce the most shock value if/when they were revealed to be the mysterious stranger, and then boom, odds are you’ve figured out the twist well ahead of schedule. 

Tip #2: Anything is possible

Ok, I know that sounds incredibly vague, but I really do mean it. In a TV show or movie, this is a fictional world that we’re dealing with. Even if the plot is set in the modern day, and even if it’s supposed to be shockingly true-to-life, it’s still a work of fiction. Don’t downplay a theory because you think it’s simply not plausible. The often fractious world of writing can sometimes mean that what once seemed improbable maybe isn’t that insane after a certain point. You still want to try and stay true to what you think the creator’s vision is, but don’t feel limited by what the perceived rules of the world are. Those rules can change, new forces can be introduced, often not all at once and usually not ridiculously drastically, but even small shifts in the established canon will eventually add up big time.

Tip #3: Watch the opening credits (and closing credits, when applicable)

Especially with modern streaming shows, the opening and closing credits will often contain massive hints for the major twists. Usually, the hints won’t be obvious, but the imagery in the credits will clue you into what certain objects might symbolize, what characters are key or in what direction the plot will eventually turn.

Tip #4: Don’t binge-watch

This one really shouldn’t need that much of an explanation. When we binge-watch a show, our brains kind of go into a more relaxed state. We might not be as attuned to specific plot points or character beats, and we don’t really give ourselves the time to digest anything or linger on potential threads. Like I said, I watched “Severance” over a period of a few weeks, normally one episode per day. I’m not saying that you need to stick to that schedule exactly, but if you want to cook up some cool theories, you need to give the content some time to sink in.

Tip #5: Focus on making character predictions over plot predictions

From my experience, the twists that are usually the craziest are the twists related to character identity. The plot itself is generally easier to tease out, though of course, you likely won’t know all of the finer details. With a show like “Severance,” for example, you can easily reason that eventually the characters will figure out that something majorly fishy is going on at Lumon and that they’ll band together to get to the bottom of it. Whether they’re successful or not, or how they go about accomplishing said task might not be immediately clear, but your middle school English classes will likely have already taught you that the narrative has to go somewhere once the world is established. The show can’t just stay in a perpetual world of exposition; otherwise, there’d be no show.

That’s why I would avoid making plot-specific predictions, because oftentimes the resolution, even if you’re right, isn’t as satisfying. In “Star Wars”, for example, sure, it’s cool if you predict that Luke will use the force to blow up the Death Star in the end, but that’s set up very early on as the inevitable end to the story. Imagine, though, if you predicted that Darth Vader was Luke’s father before the reveal in “The Empire Strikes Back.” That would be much, much cooler and far more impressive.

I’m not saying that “Severance” necessarily has anything on that exact level, but the principle still holds: Character predictions are just more interesting to focus on while taking more effort to crack—making them all the more satisfying.

Tip #6: Learn to recognize big vs. small cliffhangers

This is one that I used to fall victim to all the time. Specifically in TV shows, an episode will tend to end in a cliffhanger that feels huge and completely world-shattering at first, only to be resolved relatively quickly and painlessly in the first five minutes of the next episode. Writers do this to reel you in, to keep you glued to the screen week to week, waiting to find out exactly what’s going to happen next. But after a certain point, these twists not only start to feel cheap but also tiresome, and eventually you get good at spotting them. There’s no need to spend hours theorizing about something that will end up having no impact on the narrative at all; that’s just a waste of time and energy, and in the end will leave you feeling cheapened and less motivated to focus on the show going forward.

My general cheat code for determining whether a twist falls into the “big” or “small” category is quite simple: I ask myself whether this twist was built up to all along, or whether it was introduced out of nowhere in the last few minutes of an episode. If it falls into the former category, then that likely means that the resolution will take more time to come to fruition, or at the very least that the resolution will still leave a sizable impression. If the twist belongs in the latter group, however, then it likely won’t end up meaning anything, and you’re better off not waiting with baited breath for the next episode to resolve it.

Tip #7: Never forget Chekov’s Gun

Ending on another pretty self-explanatory one. This tip, although seemingly obvious, can sometimes get lost in the clutter of everything else going on. When in doubt, though, you always want to remember Chekov’s Gun. Chekov’s Gun is a principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary. If something is introduced, it will have significance later on. The classic example (and the namesake) is that if a gun appears in the first act of a play, it will go off before the curtain call.

If the camera lingers on a table, or a glass (or a gun) for a substantial period of time, it means that the filmmakers really want to make sure that you pay attention to it. Although the significance might not be obvious at first glance (in fact, the significance probably won’t be obvious at first glance), when all is said and done, you’ll be happy that you made note of its presence.

Now let me be clear. I’m not an A+ predictor by any means. I’ve been bamboozled by shows many times before. I never suspected the twist on “The Good Place;” “True Blood” threw me for a loop more times than I can count; “Person of Interest” had a lot of excellent tricks up its sleeve; and most recently, I didn’t see the killer in “The Perfect Couple” coming until they were practically staring me right in the face. Sometimes I point the finger at the wrong person or am caught completely off guard by something that I hadn’t even begun to consider, or I just sap up a season so quickly that my brain doesn’t even bother processing anything on a deep level. 

But even despite my more checkered track record, I still always love hypothesizing as I go. I like coming up with hairbrained schemes, ridiculous explanations and needlessly complicated endings while watching a show or movie. It makes everything more fun, and hey, sometimes I get to be right and rub it in everyone else’s faces. It doesn’t happen all the time, and I’ve made a fool of myself more times than I can count by completely missing the mark, but it’s oh so worth it when everything works out exactly like I thought it would. And when that does happen—like it happened with ”Severance”—it’s because I followed this list to a tee.

Happy hunting!