culture Where The Strain‘s fourth season was shot in Toronto (Part One)

Guillermo del Toro's horror drama returns to Toronto for one last season.

Toronto’s extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.

‘Tis the season for finales and here we have the final season of The Strain, wrapping four seasons of increasingly dramatic and icky storytelling by Chuck Hogan, Guillermo del Toro, and Carlton Cuse.

After last season’s nuclear bomb, our action mostly shifts from New York City to Philadelphia.

We find Eph coming down some stairs and out of this alley…

…and onto Widmer Street, behind one of our city’s many buildings named after Scotiabank.

Then we visit the Freedom Centre…

…actually way across town, at the bottom of Logan Avenue.

Based on the Distillery District towers in the back (and the cell tower)…

…this bus appears to be going boom in the portlands…

…on Villiers Street.

As Episode 2 opens, we’re coming out on Adelaide Street West.

Then Dutch gets into a rooftop chase…

…a little further west…

…across from Canoe Landing.

Then she meets up with Abraham Setrakian at the old abattoir by the Coffin Factory lofts, in Liberty Village.

When they get off this bus, and find themselves in a concentration camp environment…

…they’re back east…

…at the old Unilever factory.

This high school ain’t actually in Pennsylvania…

…we’re actually outside Jarvis Collegiate.

You know, we’re only on Episode 3 and we’re on our third bus! Our expert dark-street spotter Sean Marshall recognized this is as Keele Street…

…putting these consecutive shots…

…on Hirons Street.

Zach has a friendly encounter back downtown…

…at Duncan and Pearl.

Then this is pretty obviously…

…the second floor of the ROM.

The fourth episode opens with this fancy restaurant…

…actually this old bank building on Queen East.

Remember how we said we figured out that high school was Jarvis C.I., even in that darkly lit scene?

Yeah…

…we’re pretty clever and adept at reading signs.

Here we go across this little bridge…

…and into this little town…

…ostensibly in Pennsylvania. But we’re really in the Pickering hamlet of Whitevale.

And then we’re into flashbackland, across the pond and a century ago…

…but you can tell pretty quickly…

…this is the quad at University College.

We end the first half of the season in this old house…

…still allegedly in London.

It’s not any of our usual heritage home suspects and, hey, we’re not actually sure where it is! But that’s okay, by the time you read this the final episode will have aired and we will be hard at work getting the rest of this ready for you to read, so maybe we’ll know by then.