I Took The New Hyundai Sonata To Lumon HQ To Get As Close To Living ‘Severance’ As Possible

Every now and then, you get invited to something so cool that you have to drop everything and do it. For me, as someone obsessed with the cars of Apple TV’s Severance, an invite from Lumon Industries to visit their main campus was an event I couldn’t miss. This was as close to visiting the TV show I appreciate without having to split my brain in two. Also, since almost the entire cast and the show’s creators were going to be there, maybe I’d get an answer to some questions.

Friends, it was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen and, because of the timing, I got to bring my mom. She has never seen an episode of the show, so all the goats were a little weird for her, as was the woman trying to talk her into exploring something called ethical non-monogamy.

As luck would have it, I also had a Hyundai Sonata N-Line to drive this week. Could I possibly try to shove a mini review of a car into a story about me going to a wild party? Of course I will! The Autopian is slightly less militant about the work-life balance than Lumon.

[Full disclosure: Hyundai lent me a Sonata N-Line and Apple TV invited me, as a member of the Writers Guild Of America, to a strange and wonderful Q&A experience with the cast and creators of the show.]

If you don’t know anything about Apple TV’s Severance and have any expectation that you might watch it soon, I would highly suggest you don’t read the rest of this article. If you’ve seen the show or don’t really care about it being spoiled, come with me on this journey.

A ‘Mysterious And Important’ Invite

“You and your Outie guest are invited to Lumon Industries Administrative Building (Branch 501) to experience Severance” is how the invite starts, which is how I knew immediately that I couldn’t miss this event. The Administrative Building is the actual Bell Labs building in Holmdel, New Jersey, where most of the show is set, which I’ve wanted to visit..

To further sweeten the pot, the show’s creators and almost the entire cast would be in attendance. There would be “nourishment & merriment to follow.”

The original plan was to bring my wife, who watched both seasons with me.

I called her first to see if I’d forgotten about any overlapping events, but she dispatched a quick text to me before I even got to her voicemail that pointedly asked: “Is this an emergency?” I wasn’t sure, so I left her alone and RSVP’d just to be safe. When I later told her what I was calling about, she said that, of course, this would qualify as an emergency.

A few hours later, we remembered that my wife was leading a camping trip for my daughter, so she was out. Which other superfan could I possibly bring? I fretted over the decision for a few days. I considered different friends, although most of them are in couples, and it would inevitably make one half jealous and forever mad at me.

I needed to bring someone who would make no one upset, was available on short notice, and loves the show. My mom was perfect. No one could get mad at me for bringing my mom, she’s retired, and she’s never seen an episode of the show in her life. Well… two-out-of-three ain’t bad.

If You Want A Hug, Go To New Jersey And Bring Your Mother

The show exists outside of time and space, which it partially accomplishes by filling the parking lots with mostly debadged and unidentifiable vague Malaise Era cars. No car is capable of more temporal dislocation than the Plymouth version of K-Car.

A new Hyundai Sonata would not fit into this world. The new Sonata is all style, with a single bright DRL strip running around the nose of the car that loudly screams “THIS IS 2025!” You can’t not notice it, both because it’s 25-feet of style on 16-feet of car and because no one else makes this kind of sporty and quasi-affordable sedan in the United States anymore. Maybe we’ll get a TRD Hybrid Camry at some point again, but until then, this is it.

Driving the 90 minutes or so to Bell Labs, the N-Line Sonata impressed me both with its premium-feeling appointments and its ability to whip up power in almost every kind of merging/passing situation. While “N-Line” is there to differentiate it from the pure N vehicles like the Elantra N, this sled has 290 horsepower and 311 lb-ft of torque being pumped to the front wheels through an eight-speed dual clutch transmission. Even with all that power, the car returned 35 mpg on the highway.

Fully loaded, with the $1,000 Aero Silver Matte paint option, this thing is only $37,610 delivered. You can’t even get a new BMW 2-Series GranCoupe for that kind of money, and this thing seems like a lot more car, albeit it’s only available in FWD.

Whatever Humans Can Imagine, They Can Usually Create

I’m a sucker for television. While I know that the fictional world of Kier is just that, fictional, I’ve been so immersed in the world of the show that I was legitimately surprised when I pulled up to the Eero Saarinen–designed, ultra-modernist building and it wasn’t surrounded by mountains. The water tower was there, as were a series of cookie-cutter homes thoughtlessly nuzzled up right to the edge of the property.

Where were the mountains? My brain suffered from a bit of reintegration sickness just trying to make it make sense. Other than the absence of Kier’s snowy peaks, the magnificent building complex was just as impressive as on television.

Never meet your heroes, unless your hero is a building. Then it’s fine. Buildings almost never get cancelled. I’m glad I got to see the old Bell Labs building, which has been repurposed into a clever mixed-use development centered around the massive atrium. As a fan of urban development and the TV show this was kind of a double win.

After spinning around the oval drive, my mother and I parked and stood in the growing line outside the doors. In the world of Severance, the show seems to be in a perpetual winter. It wasn’t quite snow, but the cold rain snapping against our faces did set the mood a bit. As did the giant Lumon barrier at the entrance.

How much money does Apple have? A lot. Upon entering, we were given blue Lumon badges, a light blue afterparty wristband, and a bright green invite to an afterparty that asked us to pick music for our Music Dance Experience.

I’m a “Wholesome Big Band” or “Effusive Ska” kinda guy, though the lobby was mostly filled with “Defiant Jazz.” The vibe, though, very much called for “Spooky Ambient” as the lobby was full of actors pretending to be Lumon employees (I think).

That’s a terrible picture, but they were all taking notes on us as we walked around. Here’s a great video created by Apple that gives you the whole vibe:

The space was amazing, including a massive stage and a Keir engraving on the wall.

There was also a bright green turf under the seats in the lobby, reminiscent of the ground underneath MDR.

I am an extreme nerd and rarely know how to be cool at any of these events, so I basically don’t even try. Because this is an event for a show about people in an office, I dressed as my “innie,” as did my mom. My plan was to just play it off as being professional if anyone asked, but plenty of people were also dressed as innies, and even more had Lumon-specific shirts. It was a nerd paradise.

This wasn’t my first screening, though no screening I’ve ever been to has ever been like this. If you’re lucky, you get a writer/director in a small screening theater who will sit in tall stools on a stage after seeing their latest film. This was something entirely different.

The Grim Barbarity Of Optics And Design

As the designated driver, I politely declined the champagne that was on offer. My mom did not. In fact, before I knew it, she was having a second glass. Mom’s a bit of a lightweight, and I knew it was my duty as her son to make sure she ate enough food to counteract the bubbly.

Thankfully, shrimp of enormous girth and length were being foisted on us at every turn. I ate a bunch. My mom, quickly forgetting about the afterparty, ate more. She was having a ball, and I wasn’t going to stop her. We also devoured the many watermelon-and-feta bites, little steak bites, and anything else they offered (well, not so much the olive-cheddar cheese-cocktail onion concoction).

Eventually, it was time to sit down, which is where it got super weird. First, a man came out to play piano for a few minutes before being taken away by a Lumon employee. Then he came back out, only to be quickly removed again. This was followed by the show’s composer Theodore Shapiro appearing to play the haunting main theme and then, too, disappearing.

My mom took this as her cue to also disappear, returning with another glass of champagne and another round of shrimp.

This was followed by a very loud bleat from a goat.

It was at this moment that the front wall of what I thought was a stage disappeared, and behind it a smaller version of Mammalians Nurturable appeared, complete with Gwendoline Christie.

After a couple of minutes of stage business, including putting fake droppings on a desk, Christie disappeared, and the entire cast and crew appeared. I didn’t record the whole event, so I’m grateful someone sitting closer to the stage did and put it on YouTube:

Oh, right, all the Lumon actors showed up to bring mics and bottles of water, followed by moderator Stephen Colbert, who used the goat bell to dismiss them. His preamble summed up the event quite well:

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to… whatever the hell this is.”

Ok, so it’s not just me.

“Like the show, what you’re going to see tonight is strangely familiar; it’s starkly beautiful; and completely insane. And like the show, it looks extremely expensive.”

You can watch the video above if you’d like to hear about the show. I think Colbert did a great job of moderating, but if you listen to the podcast, you’ll know much of what was already said. The biggest highlight was the actor who plays Dr. Ricken Hale acknowledging that people think he’s a goat, and co-creator Ben Stiller quietly admitting that one of the fan theories (maybe the goat one) is correct.

I felt good about not sharing any of the show with my mom. She actually had some time to watch an episode or two, but it seemed like seeing nothing at all would be way worse than seeing a little.

Surely, Beer And Juleps Cannot Fill The Void Left By Love. Indeed, Only Wine Can Achieve This.

There was a long line to get downstairs to the afterparty, so we chatted with a couple of people in line behind us. One of them was a TV producer who shared a first name with my mom, and the other was her friend. The friend, like me, was fixated on getting food.

As we approached the dining hall/event space, we found even more actors and sets, including a recreation of MDR’s famous desks, an area where you could record a video to your innie, and even a woman on a conference table. This definitely felt like an event planned pre-tariffs.

The event was so loud I could barely hear what my mom was talking about with the producer, but me and the friend snagged every plate of food that passed. By the time we got to the first carving station, my mom had a lemon drop in one hand and a lobster roll in the other. She was laughing about something, which turned out to be the producer’s insistence that she and my father should open up their relationship. My mom, ever the sport, rolled with it.

I think I had an even better time because the friend proudly proclaimed herself “Just a +1” and used that excuse to disappear into the crowd and return, like a magical creature, with plates of food I’m not even sure they were serving at the party. Little steaks, quiches, rolls, pastas, and something called a Green Tea Shot.

We spent most of the night with these two and only had to depart when they started to shut down the party.

In case you were concerned that they didn’t give the full 100%, there were both a melon bar and a waffle bar on the way out:

The Sonata, right. The Sonata is great, though I sort of wish I’d have grabbed the bus if only for the Green Tea Shots:

Now that I’m thinking about it. Ben Stiller did say that the actor who provided the voice for the animitronic Kier Eagan at the end of the season 2 finale… was the voice of the actor who plays Kier. What does that mean?