Apple TV+’s hit series Severance has become one of the biggest streaming hits of the moment thanks to its gripping narrative and creepy, unsettling world, one in which employees at Lumon Industries undergo a mysterious surgical procedure that separates their work and personal selves.
Like previous cult-favorite shows like Lost, Severance is also jam-packed with tons of oddities, Easter Eggs, mysteries, and assorted curiosities — one of the most popular arguably having to do with its timeline. So many viewers keep asking the same question: When does the story in the show actually take place?
You can find several Reddit threads along these lines (include here, here, and here), all underscoring that this is one of the most frequently asked questions about Severance. I’d argue that it’s partly because of the show’s retro-futuristic aesthetic keeping you off-balance and disoriented in terms of your sense of timing. The office technology at Lumon, for example, feels clearly dated, with clunky computers and old-school telephones, while the world outside the company appears at least sort of modern.
In an interview with The Wrap, Severance creator Dan Erickson provided a definitive answer. Or, at least, the most definitive answer that we’re likely to get: The show, Erickson said, takes place “around now, it’s like vaguely now-ish. 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.”
That clarification presents the show’s timeline as intentionally ambiguous, something that aligns with Severance’s generally surreal overall tone. Erickson’s vision has created a world that feels simultaneously otherworldly but also relatable, a reflection of how Lumon’s severance procedure isolates workers from their own realities. By avoiding a specific time period, the show emphasizes the universality of its commentary on corporate culture and personal identity.
Quite frankly, it’s also more visually interesting to look at the show by doing things that way. Modern technology is small, sleek, and thin, with so much of the office work that’s done these days saved to or taking place in the cloud. The retro look and feel of Severance, on the other hand, in addition to keep the timeline a little confusing also adheres to one of the oldest rules in the book of storytelling: Show, don’t tell.
