Silo has alwas been a complicated, Lost–like series, with multiple timelines being explored, but near the end of the second season, creator Graham Yost and his writers introduced a while other wrinkle to the show: A look at what the world was like before the silos were drilled. That timeline continues in Season 3, along with the events that happened after Juliette Nichols returned to Silo 18.
SILO SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: We see a closeup of two capsules and a glass of water is being filled. “Here are your vitamins,” a nurse says to Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson).
The Gist: Juliette is back from her sojourn to the mostly empty Silo 17, and her battle in the tunnel between them with Silo 18’s mayor, Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins). Her return quelled the rebellion that had been at a fever pitch, which would have set off the Safeguard Procedure and killed everyone in the silo. Because of her heroics, Juliette has been selected as the new mayor.
But all is not well. Juliette struggles with her memory, barely knowing who she is. She has no recollection of anyone in the silo, including her close colleagues in engineering, including her old boss Knox (Shane McRae) and best friend Shirley (Remmie Milner). For the most part, she’s a figurehead, with Robert Sims (Common), the head of Judicial, and his wife Camille (Alexandria Riley) pulling the strings.
Juliette’s memories aren’t completely gone, as she sees things while she sleeps, like what happened to Bernard in the tunnel between silos. The more that she recalls, though, the more nervous that Robert and Camille get, as they want Juliette to be convinced the version of how she got back to the silo that they made up for her is the truth.
In Washington, DC in the “Before Times,” Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman), surruptiously meets with his sister Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay), a fighter pilot who goes on top secret missions. She encourages him to ask Senator Thurman (Laura Innes) to be on the committee she chairs to look into the dirty bomb attack that was attributed to Iran so he can be clued in on what she’s doing.
He manages to convince Thurman to add him, due to his connection to his sister, but when she returns as the only survivor from a mission that went horribly wrong — the fighter jets got infiltrated by a strange mercury-like ooze — he finds that her memory has been affected.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We compare a lot of post-apocalyptic series to Silo, created by Graham Yost, but the show itself definitely has Snowpiercer vibes, but it can be compared to any number of dystopian, post-apocalyptic dramas. This season has more of a Paradise feel than anything else.
Our Take: One of the big changes to Silo in its third season is that the Before Times timeline continues full-time, with Daniel Keene and reporter Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick) being the focal point. He’s not just a congressman with a sister who was a high-security-clearance fighter pilot, but he invented a drill that — we think, anyway — probably will be used to create the silos at some point.
But it’s not a stretch to think that this timeline is going to explore the extinction event that led to the silos being built. Given that these silos are thousands of feet deep and very intricate, that process will take years, so even getting to the point where they start being considered holds a lot of story possibilities.
What we’re not sure about is what’s going on in Juliette’s timeline. We don’t love the idea that Juliette’s memory is so addled — and that’s not by accident, it turns out — that she’s more or less helpless, wandering the silo in what looks like a bathrobe. She’s been the show’s central source of strength, along with the stoic sheriff Paul Billings (Chinaza Uche), and to see her weakened like this makes us feel uneasy.
Her curiosity with the visions she’s having will help Juliette fight through it, despite the efforts of the Simses and whatever the server room entity known as The Algorithm. Luckily, there are others in the silo, like Shirley and Orla Kent (Quelin Sepulveda), the very curious shadow to the head of Supply.
But what we do appreciate about where Season 3 starts out is that it feels like somewhat of a reset, where past events are absolutely in play but, at least in Silo 18, the decks are cleared enough to generate whole new conspiracies to go with the ones that have already been revealed. We also appreciate the Before Times storyline, because anything that gives us some context as to how these silos came to be will go a long way to filling in some of the questions about the show’s mythology that we know viewers have.
Performance Worth Watching: Rebecca Ferguson has to play a new dimension of Juliette this season, one whose mental and emotional strength has been stripped away along with her memories. She does a good job of playing a vulnerable Juliette, though we hope Juliette goes back to the kick-ass version of herself eventually.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Juliette is passed a note in her soup to meet someone who will tell her the truth. She burns the note according to its instructions.
Sleeper Star: We haven’t seen Laura Innes act in a number of years; most of us who have loved her work since at least the ER days are happy to see her in front of the camera again.
Most Pilot-y Line: While Keene and Thurman are supposed to be from Georgia, their accents vary a bit. Also, we’re not sure why all of them are pronouncing Iran as “EYE-ran,” which we though people stopped doing in the 1980s.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Silo is going in a somewhat new direction in Season 3, and we’re here for it, mainly because it sets up a few new conspiracies while answering some of our questions about the show’s mythology.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
