Silo is nearing the end of its second season on Apple TV+, and it just keeps getting better and better. The latest episode of the sci-fi series, "The Dive," saw Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) go on a dangerous underwater mission in hopes of draining some of the water from Silo 17. In return, the paranoid man named Solo (Steve Zahn) agreed to return her environment suit so that she can get back to her own Silo before a bloody rebellion gets everyone there killed.
I've enjoyed every episode of Silo's second season, but "The Dive" was a notch above. I spent a good portion of Ferguson's scenes with my jaw on the floor, because I've rarely seen an underwater sequence executed so well on either the small or big screen. The sets look like real flooded environments, and Ferguson's character uses equipment that looks authentic to the world of Silo — that is to say, it doesn't look like comfortable, modern Scuba gear, but something pieced together from spare parts.
As it turns out, that "regulator" was just as arduous to use as it looked. “The regulator isn’t a normal regulator breather,” Ferguson told Variety. “It shoots air directly into your lungs, so you have to practice breathing with it before you ever film. It is a really odd device, and a mental fuck-up. It’s like you bite onto something, and when you bite it shoots air...But you can’t just breathe in like we are used to breathing, you have to just bite and wait until your lungs have automatically filled up."
This was demanding, both physically and mentally. It's been over a year since Ferguson filmed those underwater scenes, and Variety notes that she "still struggles" to put the experience into words. "Sometimes, it messed with my head," Ferguson recalled. "Then, when we were underwater, there was a moment where I had to take everything off and just shoot up, which you shouldn’t really do. It was all very tricky.”
It's interesting to hear Ferguson talk about shooting up to the top of the water when filming, something "you shouldn't really do," because that was also a plot point in the episode itself. In "The Dive," Solo warns Juliette about "the bends," a common danger in Scuba diving where a person rises from the heavy pressure of underwater depths to the surface too quickly, causing a painful build-up of bubbles inside their body which can lead to immense joint pain and paralysis. Thankfully, Ferguson did not have that happen to her while filming, and neither did Juliette in the episode.
How Silo filmed "The Dive"
If you enjoyed "The Dive" as much as I did, you may have been wondering how exactly the show filmed those extensive underwater sequences. According to Variety, the team behind Silo built a huge water tank on their London set for this sequence. However, Juliette descends eight stories down, and obviously the show's set was not that deep. Variety says the "crew used inventive camera movements and cuts to make it seem as if Juliette is descending further underwater."
That's pretty cool; I do love a good bit of filmmaking magic. But for Ferguson, it meant more time in the tank, working to get different angles to give the illusion of Juliette's multi-story dive. She said she's "grateful" for the team that helped her pull it all off. It's very easy to imagine how it would take a village to film something like that without anyone getting hurt in the process, and with archaic dive equipment no less.
Ferguson and her co-star Steve Zahn also talked about some of the scenes leading up to the dive itself. The set up for this episode twisted the heart strings: Solo is essentially blackmailing Juliette to go on this very dangerous mission, which is awful. But at the same time, he knows that it is something he would not be able to do himself. Juliette is his only hope of survival.
The highlight of their back-and-forth is the aforementioned scene where Solo warns Juliette about the bends, she tries to back out of the dive, and then he has a breakdown, sobbing and begging her for help since he knows he's incapable of doing it himself. Ferguson called this scene one of her favorites from the episode.
“I remember acting , it was just so good,” she said. “Steve did such a brilliant, vulnerable exposè of Solo’s fear and his complete lack of knowledge in that moment. He can’t do it and he understands that she is needed. But she also needs him if she is going to do it. It is like this domino effect. But who is going to start?”
According to Variety, the team behind Silo specifically sought out Zahn to play the role of Solo. And seeing his performance on the show, it's easy to understand why. Zahn has a long list of acting credits behind him at this point in his career, but his turn as Solo is remarkable. It's even better because so far every scene he's had in the show has been opposite Ferguson. Juliette and Solo are two people forced together by circumstances who have no choice but to bury the hatchet each time they have an issue if they want to survive. If they can't go their separate ways, they have to accept all the good and the bad of their begrudging friendship.
“When you work through stuff with your friend, when you share stuff, you become closer,” Zahn said. “You can say something like, ‘Hey, this is what I don’t like about you.’ You don’t do that unless you are there to work on it and make it better. They become friends. It is simple and beautiful.”
“It is a constant bloody table-tennis relationship between two human beings who just want to survive,” Ferguson added. “She just wants to get the heck out of there, and he needs her to stay and help. They are constantly compromising each other’s needs, and this big dive was the last straw that needed to happen for him to get what he wanted and for her to get what she wants. But a third factor that they haven’t taken into consideration just punches them both in the face.”
That "third factor" is the twist at the very end of "The Dive," where Juliette resurfaces after her oxygen was abruptly cut off, only to discover that someone had seemingly attacked and kidnapped Solo. Up until that point, we'd only seen the two of them in Silo 17. So who is this third party, and what do they want? What does it mean for Solo and Juliette?
Variety says Ferguson is "tight-lipped" about it, but promises some good scenes ahead for Juliette and Solo. “If we met in a bar, we would probably never even exchange a hello,” she said with a laugh. “That makes it more interesting, which makes it so lovable as well. I don’t want to spoil what comes next, but it will be a necessity. Their relationship is built on necessity.”
Only three more episodes remain in Silo season 2. The eighth episode, "The Book of Quinn," premieres this Friday on Apple TV+. After that, the show will film two more seasons to finish out the story of the Silo book trilogy by Hugh Howey.
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