Severance: When Does the Apple TV+ Series Take Place?

Apple TV+ series Severance keeps viewers guessing about pretty much every aspect of its sci-fi thriller story – including its time period. So, when does Severance take place, exactly?

What Time Period Is Severance Set In?

Severance takes place in the present day – if not in 2022 (when Season 1 came out) then sometime around then. This isn’t explicitly stated in Season 1 itself; however, astute viewers will catch small clues to the narrative’s contemporary milieu. Notably, a shot of protagonist Mark Scout’s driver’s license lists his birth year as 1978. As Mark (like actor Adam Scott during filming) is visibly in his 40s, this seemingly rules out Severance‘s narrative sliding too far forward (or backward) on the timeline. The same shot also indicates that Mark’s license will expire in 2020, which again points to the show’s events shaking down relatively recently.

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Not sold on the above detective work? Then maybe you’ll believe Severance creator and showrunner Dan Erickson. In a February 2022 interview with The Wrap, Erickson confirmed that Season 1 takes place in the 2020s. “[Severance is set] around now, it’s like vaguely now-ish,” he said. “We’re not going for something where this is 10 years in the future where severance has been invented and already exists. It’s sort of an alternate, vaguely now-ish timeline.” But don’t feel bad if you got Severance‘s time period wrong; Erickson also noted that the crew “intentionally kept a lot of ambiguity to the time and place” in Season 1.

Severance Showrunner Explains the Series’ Anachronistic Aesthetic

Erickson unpacked this aspect of Severance‘s production design in greater detail in a 2022 Reddit AMA session. Specifically, the showrunner covered how and why the retro aesthetic of Lumon Industries’ offices carries over to Season 1’s other major locale: Lumon-subsidized town, Kier.

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“[W]e used cars from a lot of different time periods to give a slight sense of disorientation,” Erickson explained. “At Lumon, the Innies are intentionally made to feel unmoored from time and space, and that bleeds into the town a bit too. We wanted the town to feel like an extension of Lumon in a way.”

Severance Season 1 is currently streaming on Apple TV+. Season 2 premieres on Jan. 17, 2025.