What year does Severance take place in? Timeline of Lumon's retrofuturist workstation, explored 

Severance on Apple TV+ has a way of getting under viewers' skin, and not just because of its dark workplace mind-splitting experiment. The show's setting, which is hard to pin down, contributes drastically to its atmosphere.

Employees at Lumon Industries are chained to bulky CRT monitors and awkward keyboards as they get around fluorescent corridors that seem endless.

But from the outside, everything appears to be as normal as it can be: modern homes that could be built today, cars in suburban driveways, and smartphones in hand. What year does Severance take place in, then? It's complicated.

You won't find a neat answer if you're still searching for one. The timeline is purposely unclear, taking into account artifacts (monitors, cars, newspapers) that keep viewers and characters adrift while hanging just enough real-world markers (a 2020 license, modern smartphones) to feel familiar.

2020, perhaps. It might be 2035. Maybe the year Severance is set in is entirely irrelevant. Because time isn't linear at Lumon, it's a trap.

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Clues about Severance's “now-ish” timeline

Small but essential props make the strongest argument for Severance being a modern story. In Season 1, viewers noticed a 2020 date on Mark Scout's driver's license. This places the story within our decade, as Mark was born in 1978.

Also, Severance doesn't feel like a dystopia of the future. Instead, it feels frighteningly close. This is more true given that the series was scheduled to premiere in 2020 --- before the pandemic forced production into 2021.

Dan Erickson, the creator of the series, has been open about this. He clarified in a 2022 interview with The Wrap: "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."

Translation: Lumon's world is meant to be a mirror, not a prophecy, that is slightly out of balance with our own.

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The 2035 theory and the cryptic newspaper clue

Severance fans continue to do their own calculations in spite of this.

Mr. Milchick shows Mark a copy of The Kier Chronicle in the Season 2 premiere, which is a fake newspaper to manipulate him. However, the masthead indicates that the paper started in 1893, and the front page conceals a geeky Easter egg: it is titled issue number 51,903.

In that case, the issue in hand would have been dated around 2035 if you did the math and assumed a usual print run!

Which is it, 2035 or 2020? Many pointed out the disconnect, but Dan Erickson says that the show takes place in a "vaguely now-ish" timeline, which might mean that Lumon is using the paper's dating system as part of his psychological warfare. The aim is unease rather than accuracy, much like the "backrooms" aesthetic that served as the inspiration for Lumon's halls.

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Retrofuturism can be a psychological weapon

The show's brilliance lies in its feel, not in the time it takes place. The office makes us "feel like [we're] severed when [we're] down there with them," according to Jeremy Hindle, the production designer, who spoke to The Verge. Why? To point out the difference between Outies and Innies.

Because of this, the Macrodata Refinement team works on dinosaur-era terminals while sophisticated implants test their minds. Thus, in one scene, Devon is seen scrolling on a touchscreen, while in another, Irving is using a phone booth. That's why the MDR team gazes at green text from the 1980s, while Lumon's security uses monitors that seem to be from the late 2000s.

Here, retrofuturism is about control rather than nostalgia. Lumon creates the ultimate psychological severance by keeping its employees in a setting that is neither past nor future. The prison is the vagueness.

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The first two seasons are streaming on Apple TV+, with the production for Season 3 currently underway.