What's With the Old Cars Everyone Drives on Severance? The Show's Creator Weighs In – Comic Book Resources

The work the macrodata refiners do on the severed floor in the Apple TV+ series Severance may be mysterious and important, but the vehicles the characters drive also fall into that category. In the series, technology plays a huge role, specifically in the development of a procedure called severance that enables a person to split their work lives and home lives by placing a chip into their brain. Characters are also seen using smartphones, but notably, they drive cars that are decades old.

In an interview with BuzzFeed, Severance creator and showrunner Dan Erickson answered the question of why characters like Mark (Adam Scott), Harmony (Patricia Arquette), and Irving (John Turturro) drive such retro cars. For instance, Harmony drives a white Volkswagen Rabbit, which could be a reference to Alice in Wonderland, in addition to being a car from the 1980s. Per Medium, the model that Harmony drives dates to 1982. Mark’s Volvo 960 is a classic from 1997 and Irving drives a Chevy Nova from the 1970s.

Severance Showrunner: “It Looks Cool”

“I don’t want to say too much,” Erickson told BuzzFeed. “I will say that I do think it looks cool, whether there’s another layer behind that…There’s always a sense of being a little bit out of time and space,” he continued.

“And that starts on the severed floor, because down there, the technology is intentionally kind of older – in part because you can’t really have anything down there that would give a cell phone signal or an internet signal. But also there is a sense of wanting to unmoor workers and have them not necessarily know what year it is outside, or where they live outside,” Erickson said.

Severance Vehicles (per Medium.com)

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The Retro Cars Lend Themselves to the “Ambiguity” of the Show

The creator of the sci-fi thriller series added that the retro cars lend a bit of “ambiguity” to the series. “And so we wanted to extend some of that ambiguity to the outside from the viewer’s perspective. I know people do ask the question, like, well, where is the town of Kier, and also what year is it? Because you have smartphones, but then you have these old cars. So whether it’s stylistic, or whether there’s a practical reason behind it, it’s all very intentional,” Erickson said.

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Showrunner on What Severance is About

With such a detailed series, it seems like everything in Severance has a purpose. Erickson explained in a previous interview with Esquire what he thinks is the heart of the show. “It really is both (issues of identity and capitalism) together, and I think they go more hand-in-hand than you might initially think,” he began.

“People who work in a corporate environment where they’re part of a greater whole – they are often encouraged to diminish their humanity,” Erickson said. “Those of us who can’t feel like we’re being productive, we end up feeling like we’re useless. I think that’s heartbreaking because it is tempting to diminish ourselves because it’s hard to accept all parts of yourself. It’s easier to just be one thing. But then that also lessens you and makes you more susceptible to being used by these powerful entities. And so it’s about the challenge of being fully human in a world that often discourages you,” he concluded.

The first two seasons of Severance are streaming on Apple TV+. The series was recently renewed for a third season.

Source: BuzzFeed, Medium

Severance

Release Date

February 18, 2022

Showrunner

Dan Erickson, Mark Friedman

Writers

Dan Erickson