Inside the eye-opening Reddit theories about why all the cars in Severance are so old

This is freaking me out


Ahh, Severance. Simply put, the best show on TV. Apart from The Traitors of course, but Severance is so great because it doesn’t actually need a camp retired opera singer and the presence of Claudia Winkleman to get your jaws hitting the ground. Severance has a billion and one things to unpack every episode, and season two has just increased that tenfold. Sometimes, there is so much going on it’s hard to sit back and observe the unsettling and intriguing things going on just in the world itself. Thank the lord then for Reddit, filled with viewers clocking on to things that I’ve never spared much thought for before. And one of these things is why on earth the cars we see throughout Severance are so bizarrely old?

We see a lot of cars in Severance. Ones the characters drive are old bangers – notably Cobel’s haggard car and ALL the ones we see in the monstrously big carpark of Lumon. But in a show that in many ways seems very modern – it is a sci-fi about a cutting edge procedure after all – do the ancient cars take us out of a modern time place?

One great response to why this might be comes right from Reddit, and it speaks for itself. “It’s a ‘timelessness’ aesthetic that film/tv sometimes uses to create a world that isn’t old, or modern, or futuristic. It simply is. It’s to stop people from asking “when does this take place” because the answer is, it doesn’t matter. The series takes place in a world that doesn’t exist.

“The use of both new and old tech means that the series won’t be aged by the passing of time (meaning your children’s children could probably still enjoy it one day) because it doesn’t take place in time.”

One great example of a film that does this similar choice to great success is the horror film It Follows. That film features modern phones, but old tech – old TVs, a 90s grungy feel to it all, and characters engaging with old media. The timelessness builds atmosphere.

One argument from Reddit though says these cars aren’t timeless, they’re of a very specific time and obviously make people think of that era. “That’s like saying putting people in disco collars and bell bottoms would be timeless, when in fact it would strongly evoke the 1970s. Those cars are from a very specific time in the early 80s. Same with the computer tech.

It doesn’t render anything timeless, it just makes us think it’s all happening in the 80s. Maybe you’re too young to remember those cars and that time period, but many of us have strong associations with them.”

Whilst the Reddit theories are great, here’s a quote from the Severance creator about the real reason the cars are so old. “We used cars from a lot of different time periods to give a slight sense of disorientation,” Erickson said. “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.”

Give me episode three NOW.

Season two of Severance is on AppleTV. For more like this, and the latest pop culture updates, like The Tab on Facebook.

 

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