The premise of Dan Erickson’s corporate dystopia series “Severance” is tantalizing and easy to grasp. A large and mysterious company called Lumon has developed a revolutionary brain implant that allows it to “sever” its employees’ minds. While an employee is at the office, they have no memories of their outside lives, and when they leave the office, they have no memories of their work day. It’s the ultimate work/life balance. Of course, an unintended consequence of the severance process is that Lumon employees begin to develop new personalities while on the inside. These “Innies” and “outies” even start to see themselves as separate people.
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As “Severance” has progressed, however, Lumon has only become more mysterious. No one is quite sure what it does. The lead characters (played by Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, and John Turturro) work in the company’s “macrodata refinement” department, and the results of their work is unknown. Lumon is also raising goats (!), and insists that its employees worship the company’s dead founder, Kier Eagan, as if he were a Christ-like semi-deity. Lumon doesn’t merely have corporate secrets; it seems to be leading a cult.
It’s eventually revealed that the city where Lumon is baed … is also called Kier. Everything is town is overseen by Lumon, and Lumon spies seem to be keeping an eye on everyone in town, especially the Outies. The company is not relegated to a single, horrifying office but appears to be engaging in a social experiment that spreads across the whole city. In season 2, Lumon manager Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette) leaves town and drives over 200 miles to a snowy town called Salt Neck, a remote fishing village. “Severance” is filmed in New York, but the actual location of Kier remains obscure.
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Of course, if the town of Kier is enclosed as a hermetic social experiment, then the actual time period of “Severance” could also be obscure. Only a few clues on the series point to when it takes place.
Severance takes place in the ‘now-ish’
The first clue comes from Erickson himself. In an interview with The Wrap (via Forbes), the showrunner once said “Severance” more or less takes place in the present day. “We’re not going for something where this is 10 years in the future, where severance has been invented and already exists,” he explained. “It’s sort of an alternate, vaguely now-ish timeline.”
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This statement was backed up by some clever Redditors who were able to snap a screenshot of Mark Scout’s (Scott) driver’s license. The license says that Mark was born on April 3, 1978. April 3 happens to be actor Adam Scott’s birthday, although he was born in 1973, making Mark five years younger.
The license was said to have been issued in 2020, which was about when the first season of “Severance” was being filmed. Thanks to delays in production, the first episodes of “Severance” didn’t drop until February of 2022. The license, then, only further lines up with the present. Erickson, however, did want to add that the time is also meant to be a little ambiguous. Indeed, there is a retro-futurist aesthetic to a lot of Lumon, and much of its tech seems to have been designed in the 1960s. There is more analog about Lumon than digital. Even the carpets are a shade of green more commonly seen during the Kennedy administration. “Severance” is the present, but it’s also the past.
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Of course, some sharp-eyed viewers noticed, in the above screencaps, that the card behind Mark’s license is a New York driver’s license from the year 1973. It says, in very small lettering, “Vincent L. Tofany, Commissioner of Motor Vehicles.” The real-life Tofany served as the New York State Commissioner of Motor Vehicles from 1967 to 1973.
Technically, Severance could take place at any time
The 1970s driver’s license indicates a little further that “Severance” takes place out of joint with regular time. The past and the present are kind of chummy. Of course, the weird anachronisms and retro technologies are more likely a design choice than a clue as to the show’s wonky timeline.
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Plus, one might assume that Erickson and executive producer Ben Stiller aren’t merely setting up the same twist used in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2004 thriller “The Village.” That film was set in a remote wooded village, wherein the clothing and technology seemed to indicate that it took place in the 19th century. Eventually, though, the movie revealed the titular village was actually a cloistered community of 21st century individuals who had, years before, constructed an Amish-like enclave of retro-living citizens. They walled themselves off in a remote wood in Pennsylvania and eschewed modern technology, preferring to live like it was the 1800s. However, the community’s leaders never told its younger citizens, who were born there, what year it really was.
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Will it ultimately be revealed that “Severance” actually takes place in the distant future but only play-acts like it’s the 2020s due to the actions of some unseen Lumon social experimenters? I suppose that’s possible, and some fans online have posited that such a twist may be coming in the now-confirmed “Severance” season 3. But then, given that such a twist was already famously used in “The Village,” one might assume that it wouldn’t be repeated in “Severance.” So, despite some clues, it’s currently safe to assume that Erickson is being a straight-shooter. “Severance” does, in fact, take place “now-ish.”
