'Emergence' Takes Place on Long Island, but That's Not Where It's Filmed

ABC's newest Tuesday night slot addition is quickly proving to be appointment viewing. Emergence begins when Jo Evans (Allison Tolman), a police chief, takes in a young girl, Piper (Alexa Swinton), who she finds at the site of a mysterious accident.

But fans who've watched the show's pilot have one question in mind. Where does Emergence take place? Keep reading for everything we know.

Following a mysterious accident in which a plane crashes on a beach, police chief Jo Evans comes across a young girl who calls herself Piper, who has no scratches on her body, or any memory of what happened. "I found a kid on the crash site I'm being told wasn't even on the plane," Jo explains.

According to ABC, "the investigation draws her into a conspiracy larger than she ever imagined, and the child's identity is at the center of it all."

This all takes place on Long Island's Peconic Bay, or the area between the North Fork and South Fork of Long Island.

In fact, Jo is supposed to be the Southold Town Police Chief, and the Long Island Press is already calling Emergence a "Long Island-linked paranormal conspiracy thriller." Supposedly the site where the mysterious experiment that led to Piper's arrival is Plum Island, which is also a real place that has some eery connotations of its own.

According to Connecticut Magazine, Plum Island is where "the U.S. government studies the world's most dangerous animal diseases in order to protect the U.S. food supply. It is the only lab in the U.S. that works with active strains of the incredibly contagious and animal-ravaging foot-and-mouth disease."

Emergence isn't even the first time Plum Island has been featured in popular culture. In Silence of the Lambs, it's where Hannibal Lecter is offered visits in exchange for cooperation. And several conspiracy theorists blame the island for "the 1975 surge of Lyme disease ... which led to the diagnosis of the disease" (which is wrong), and also claim that the island was founded by a Nazi scientist (also wrong).

The takeaway here is that Plum Island has had an eery ring about it for ages, so it makes sense that ABC would capitalize on its wrap for their latest show.

As Newsday reports, Emergence wasn't filmed on Long Island, instead it was filmed in Passaic, N.J. 

The reason? "New York State had run out of tax [credits] and we were lucky that New Jersey had brought theirs back," co-creator and executive Tara Butters said, stating that filming on Long Island was the showrunners' initial intention.

However, she says it's "our hope" to shoot at least some scenes on Long Island. "On the last day of shooting the pilot, we got out to Greenpoint," she told Newsday. "The opening sequence in the pilot was all shot there, including the shots of Claudio's. Our hope is to shoot a couple scenes here and there. It's always hard, having to bring a crew all the way out there, but I'm hopeful. It adds so much to the look of the show."

Watch Emergence on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on ABC.