Where exactly does the separation take place?

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The world of “indemnification” is very similar to our own in many ways. The general level of technology (separation procedure excluded, of course) is comparable, life looks almost the same for most people, and although there is some distinctive style in terms of fashion and decoration, the series is designed to reflect the modern day on most roads. That relatability extends to the city in which the show takes place, but where exactly is that supposed to be? The answer is a bit complicated.

Details in Season 1 of “Severance” identify the city as Kier, named for the founder of Lumon Industries. Specifically, the clips from news sites and the city name as Kier, PE, the second part is an abbreviation of the state. Of course, anyone who lives in the United States will tell you that there is no real-world state in the United States that uses the abbreviation PE. Like the city, the state is completely fictional. That said, there are some clues in both the show and the production that suggest where it should continually be placed.

In “Severance” Season 2, Episode 1, new MDR employee Gwendolyn Y. (Alia Shawkat) asks Mark (Adam Scott) if he knows where the office is located, and she mentions that three of them put on “Wyoming” in your input survey. That refers to the series of questions posed to new cut hires, including “What state or territory were you born in?” and “Name any state or territory.” In Season 1, when Helly (Britt Lower) takes the survey, she can’t say where she was born, but names Delaware when asked to identify any state. That’s probably the question Gwendolyn answered “Wyoming” to, meaning it doesn’t really indicate anything new about the show’s location.

The new MDR employees briefly introduced at the beginning of Season 2 of “Severance” are brought in from other branches, at least one of which Mark W. (Bob Balaban) was shut down. That means that Gwendolyn would have taken her survey input on another branch, which would further emphasize the importance of the “Wyoming” answer.

While what we see of the town is certainly cold enough to be Wyoming, it’s more likely destined to exist somewhere in the American Northeast. The whole atmosphere of the company town, with corporate-sponsored housing and a large percentage of the population working for Lumon, evokes an earlier era of Industrial America. In Season 1, we were told that Mark’s first completed file in MDR, which is commemorated with some decoration on his desk, was called “Allentown,” the same thing the Pennsylvania town became famous for as a symbol of class. hardworking thanks to Billy Joel’s 1982 Anthem. In Season 2, there is an MDR file labeled “Cold Harbor”, which could be a reference to the Battle of Cold Harbor, which took place during the American Civil War just six years before Lumon was founded, or possibly in Cold Spring Harbor, a town in New York State, was also the name of Billy Joel’s first album. Of course, it’s not clear if the filenames have any deeper meaning.

Much of “Severance” is filmed in New York’s Hudson Valley, specifically the city of Kingston. Mark also says that he used to be a professor at a university in a town called Ganz, which is very similar to Gans, a real community in western Pennsylvania.

Since “Indemnification” takes place in a city named after the founder of Lumon Industries, it would make sense for it to be the original headquarters, or at least the main one. That idea is supported by the Eagan family spending so much time there in season 1, and by a comment from Mark W. in season 2, episode 1 about the perpetuity wing at the Kier branch being larger than his old office However, in the same episode, Kier’s office is known as Branch 501.

The city of Kier adds an interesting wrinkle to the whole mystery. Since the company was founded in the wake of the Civil War, a period of greater westward expansion, it would make more sense for Kier to have founded a city a little further west, as the northeast was already filled with established communities. That said, we don’t even know when the city was called Kier, and it could have been longer after the company was actually founded. In “Severance” Season 2, Episode 2, Mark W. says he broke a lease in Grand Rapids for his job at Lumon, meaning he moved from Michigan. Of course, since one of MDR’s other new hires is Italian, this doesn’t say much about Kier’s proximity to Grand Rapids.

While it’s fun to speculate, the fictional nature of the “breakup” world makes it impossible to say for sure where the show takes place. Many of these clues are likely intentional red herring to stir up the discourse, and the larger point is to evoke a specific type of Americana as a backdrop for sinister corporate stories.