Where exactly does the gap occur?

Mild spoilers for The Rift Season 2 follow.

world of the rift in many ways similar to ours. The overall level of technology (barring the rupture procedure, of course) is comparable, most people’s lives look about the same, and while there are some distinctive styles in terms of fashion and decor, the series is designed to reflect the modern day in most ways. This connection extends to the city in which the show takes place, but where exactly should it be? The answer is a bit complicated.

Details in Season 1 of The Rupture. identify the city as Kir, named after the founder of Lumon Industries. Specifically, in news site clips and mail, the town is called Kier, PE, the second part being the state abbreviation. Of course, anyone who lives in the US will tell you that there is no real state in America that uses the abbreviation PE. Like the city, the state is completely fictitious. However, both in the show and around the production, there are some clues that indicate where on the continent it should be located.

In the 1st episode of the 2nd season of “The Breakup”, the new MDR employee Gwendolyn Yu. (Alia Shaukat) asks Mark (Adam Scott) if he knows where the office is, and she mentions that the three of them marked “Wyoming” on their survey. . It refers to a series of questions asked of newly laid-off employees, including “What state or territory were you born in?” and “Name any state or territory.” In Season 1, when Healy (Brit Lauer) takes a poll, she can’t say where she was born, but she says Delaware when asked to name any state. It’s likely that this is the question Gwendolyn answered with Wyoming, which means it doesn’t signal anything new about the show’s location.

The new MDR staff, briefly introduced at the beginning of season 2 of The Rupture, are all brought in from other departments, at least one of which, we’re told by Mark W. (Bob Balaban), was closed. This means that Gwendolyn would have conducted the survey in a different department, further diminishing the importance of the “Wyoming” answer.

Although the city we see is cold enough to be Wyoming, it’s more likely that it should exist somewhere in the American Northeast. The atmosphere of an entire company town, with company-financed housing and a huge percentage of the population working for Lumon, is reminiscent of an earlier era of industrial America. In Season 1, we were told that Mark’s first completed case at MDR, marked by a small decoration on his desk, was called “Allentown,” after the Pennsylvania town made famous as a symbol of the working class by Billy Joel’s 1982 Anthem. Season 2 has 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 to Cold Spring Harbor, a town in the state New York was the name of Billy Joel’s first album. Of course, it’s not clear if the file names have any deeper meaning.

Most of the film “The Gap” is filmed in New York’s Hudson Valley, specifically in 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 Ganz, a real-life community in western Pennsylvania.

Since Severance is set in a city named after the founder of Lumon Industries, it would make sense for it to be the original or at least the main headquarters. This idea is supported by the Egan family spending so much time there in Season 1 and Mark W’s commentary. in Season 2, Episode 1, that the Perpetuity Wing in Cyrus’ branch is older than the one in his old office. However, in the same episode, Kira’s office is referred to as Section 501.

The city of Cyrus itself adds an interesting point to the whole mystery. Since the company was founded after the Civil War—a period of significant westward expansion—it would have made more sense for Cyrus to establish the city a little further west, since there were already many established communities in the northeast. However, we do not even know when the city was named Kier, and it could have been longer after the company was founded. U “The Gap” season 2episode 2, mark w. says he broke his lease in Grand Rapids to work at Lumon, meaning he moved from Michigan. Of course, given that one of MDR’s new hires is Italian, that doesn’t speak to Kier’s affinity for Grand Rapids.

While it’s fun to speculate about, the fictional nature of the world of The Rift makes it impossible to say exactly where the show takes place. Many of these cues are likely deliberate herrings to stir up discussion, and more important is the evocation of a certain type of American woman as a backdrop for sinister corporate storylines.