La Brea is mid-way through its third and final season, but just where is this wild NBC sci-fi series really filmed? Here's what we know!
Premiering in 2021, La Brea had a crazy opening as a massive sinkhole opened up in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. It swallowed up hundreds of people, supposedly to their deaths. In reality, they were transported tens of thousands of years in the past.
The series has since balanced some time travel exploits and a battle for survival with those stuck in the past meeting a society living there and dealing with more misadventures. It’s continued to amp things up with the current six episode third season trying to tie up all these loose ends into a thrilling finale.
With so many subplots, time travel adventures and huge special effects, it takes a special location to bring La Brea’s adventures to life. So just where is the series really filmed?
Just where is La Brea really filmed?
While the present parts of the show are supposed to be in Los Angeles (and the pilot was filmed there), the entire series is really filmed in Australia. It’s both for cost measures and the fact the lush forests and plains fit the primordial setting for the series.
For the first two seasons, the series was filmed in Melbourne, using the weather and building layout that matches L.A. Per Distractfy, the second season also used areas from schools in Melbourne to several spots across Victoria.
For the third season, production moved to Queensland as part of the Australian Government’s Location Incentive, injecting almost $8 million into the local economy. It appears the producers decided the shortened season required a new location, even though it still uses some of the same sets for the forest areas used in Melbourne.
There haven’t been as many details on where some scenes are filmed in the city, although it looks like Brisbane stands in for Los Angeles, which makes sense given its coastal proximity. So it appears for the final season, La Brea used a different spot Down Under to make its fantastic sci-fi story work.
La Brea season 3 airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on NBC and streaming on Peacock.