Mild spoilers for "The Season" Season 2 ahead.

The world of "Separation" is very much like ours in many ways. The general level of technology (minus the cropping process, of course) is comparable, life seems the same for most people, and while there is some distinct style in terms of fashion and decor, the series is designed to mirror the modern day in most ways. . That relativity extends to the city in which the play takes place, but where exactly is that supposed to be? The answer is a bit complicated.

The Detachment Season 1 Details Identify the city as Kier, named after the founder of Lumon Industries. Specifically, clips on news and mail sites name the city as Kier, JP, the second part being the state abbreviation. Of course, anyone who lives in the US will tell you that there is no real-world state in America that uses the abbreviation PE. Like the city, the state is entirely fictional. That said, there are some clues both in the show and around the production that suggest where it's intended to be continentally located.

In Season 2 Episode 1 Episode 1, new MDR employee Gwendolyn J. (Alia Shawkat) asks Mark (Adam Scott) if he knows where the office is, and she mentions that the three of them put "Wyoming" on their entry research. This refers to a series of questions asked of new hires, which include "Which state or territory were you born in?" and "Name each state or territory." In Season 1, when Haley (Britt Dolna) takes the survey, she can't say where she was born, but she names Delaware when asked to identify any state. It's likely that's the question to which Gwendolyn answered "Wyoming," meaning it doesn't really signal anything new about the show's location.

The new MDR employees briefly introduced at the beginning of the "Northern" season are brought in from other branches, at least one of which we are told by Mark W. (Bob Balaban) was imprisoned. This means that Gwendolyn would take her research into entering another branch, further considering the importance of the "Wyoming" answer.

While what we see of the city is certainly cool enough to be Wyoming, it's more likely meant to exist somewhere in the American Northeast. The entire urban vibe, with corporate-sponsored housing and a huge percentage of the population working for Lumon, evokes an earlier era of industrial America. In Season 1, we're told that Mark's first completed file in MDR, which is marked by a little decoration on his desk, was called "Allentown", the same as the Pennsylvania town known as a symbol of the working class thanks to Billy Ewell's Anthem in 1982. In Season 2, there is an MDR file marked "Cold Harbor," which could be either 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 Cold Spring Harbor, A A. a town in upstate New York was also the name of Billy Joel's first album. Of course, it's not clear if the filenames have any deeper meaning at all.

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

Since The Separation takes place in a city named after the founder of Lumon Industries, it would make sense for it to be the original, or at least primary, headquarters. That idea is supported by the Egan family spending so much time there in Season 1, and by commentary from Mark W. in Season 2 Episode 1 about the eternity wing in the Kier branch is older than the one in his old office. However, in the same episode, the Kier office is referred to as Branch 501.

The town of Kier itself adds an interesting wrinkle to the whole mystery. Since the company was founded on the eve of the Civil War—a period of great westward expansion—it would have made more sense for Kier to establish a town a little further west, since the Northeast was already full of established communities. That said, we don't even know when the town got the name Kier, and it could have been longer since the company was founded. In "Season" Season 2Episode 2, Mark W. says he broke a lease in Grand Rapids for his Lumon job, meaning he moved from Michigan. Of course, given that one of MDR's other new hires is Italian, that doesn't say much about Kier's proximity to Grand Rapids.

While it's fun to speculate, the fictional nature of the cutaway world makes it impossible to say for sure where the show is going. Many of these clues are likely deliberate red herrings to provoke discourse, and the larger point is to evoke a specific kind of America as a backdrop for nefarious corporate stories.