Newer Severance fans are realizing that all the cars are old, with no newer models in sight.
The world of Severance is already otherworldly with the Lumon with its existentially horrifying series-namesake procedure and its almost fantastical (and no doubt fabricated) history of its founder.
Mysteries litter the series, like the still unexplained goats, but one of the oldest that has persisted is the oddity of its aesthetics—more specifically, all the outdated cars.
Why Haven't Cars Moved Past the 90s in Severance?
Shortly after last season's finale, Dan Erickson, the creator and executive producer of Severance, held an AMA in April 2022 on r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus, the show's unofficial subreddit.
One of the many questions fans asked Erickson was, "What is going on with all the cars?" After humorously answering, "They're for transporting the characters from one place to another," Erickson gave a more serious explanation.
He said the crew "used cars from a lot of different time periods to give a slight sense of disorientation." It also made the Innies "feel unmoored from time and space," which extended to the fictional town of Kier, "an extension of Lumon:"
"Bet seriously, we used cars from a lot of different time periods to give a slight sense of disorientation. 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."
Additionally, in May 2022, u/djkmannn, a Reddit user, paraphrased a Q&A held with Erickson during a live stream of the Vancouver Film Festival.
Erickson briefly explained why the town's aesthetic and some characters' vernacular, like Ms. Cobel and Mr. Milcheck, felt so antiquated. During the 1930s, the town of Kier was insulated from the rest of the world for an undisclosed period of time, thus explaining why it's behind on modern trends.
This falling behind the trends would also apply to the citizens of Kier and their taste in cars, which are no newer than the 90s.
Kier's Death Caused the Stagnation of His Town
Creator Erickson hasn't kept it a secret when Severance takes place, explicitly stating to The Wrap that the show takes place in "an alternate, vaguely now-ish timeline." Despite its anachronistic aesthetics, the series supports this assertion, with Mark Scout's driver's license being issued to him in 2020.
However, it's obvious that Lumon and its founder, Kier Eagan, caused the timeline to veer away from our own as far back as 1841, when he was born. Interestingly, Erickson mentioned how the town of Kier became cut off from the rest of the world in the 1930s, around the same period in which the CEO would die in 1939.
So, shortly before or just after his death, the town of his namesake cut itself off from the world for undisclosed reasons. Not only causing the local tastes in cars to stagnate but mannerisms, too.
On the surface, it's obviously an aesthetic preference from the creator to have a more timeless show, but the timing of Kier's death and when the town cut itself off from the world can't be a coincidence.
With six more episodes, there's plenty more time to explore the history of this town and the dysfunctional and emotionally manipulative Eagan family.
New episodes of Severance stream on Apple TV+ every Friday.
