It's been a quite a journey for Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) and the rest of the characters on Apple TV+'s Silo, but at long last we've arrived at the season finale. In last week's penultimate episode, "The Safeguard," we finally learned the real identity of Juliette's companion Solo (Steve Zahn). Meanwhile, the conflict in Silo 18 reached a boiling point, while new IT shadow Lukas Kyle (Avi Nash) made a discovery deep in the bowels of the structure. What information did Lukas get from his strange encounter? And will Juliette make it home in time to stop the people she loves from dying in a bloody rebellion?
Silo has built up questions all season, and here at the finish line we finally get some answers...as well even more questions. As always, there will be SPOILERS beyond this point.
Silo Episode 210 review: "Into the Fire"
At a solid hour run-time, the season finale of Silo is a big episode of television where a lot happens — which is just right. It'll be a while before we see more, after all. It should be no surprise that this episode features pretty much every single character in the series, and just about all of them get their moment in the spotlight.
The main event of the episode is the rebellion in Silo 18. There are a few different plays back and forth, as the Mechanicals plot to blow up the generator and get subsequently captured...only to later reveal that getting captured was their plan all along. When Mayor Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) sends all his enforcers down to the bottom levels to secure the bomb, the Mechanicals blow up the stairs instead, trapping the guards on the lower floors while the rebels escape their captivity on the upper floors and secure IT. Except by that point, the crowd is so riled up that they don't just want IT — they want to go outside and see the beautiful world they think still exists up top.
The narrative fakeouts generally worked pretty well, although I will say I never fully bought Martha Walker (Harriet Walter) as a traitor. Silo sold it decently by having Martha's ex-wife Carla (Clare Perkins) not be in the loop, but on the whole the coded exchange was exactly whaty I thought (and hoped) it was. I have to give a shoutout to Tim Robbins' performance in the scene where it became clear he'd been outfoxed. As a fun fact, if you go back and watch the previous episode, you can actually see Martha and Knox (Shane McRae) exchanging the hand signals she mentions to keep their conversation hidden from Bernard.
The biggest emotional gut punch of the episode comes from Juliette's father, Dr. Pete Nichols (Iain Glen). Glen has had an outsized presence on Silo, stealing the scene whenever he pops up as a guest star thanks to his moving performance and material which centers his character's grief as a father who wishes he had more time with his daughter. "Into the Fire" begins with Pete Nichols being brought into the rebellion's plan to blow up the stairs, which goes sideways halfway through the finale when it's revealed that the timer for the bomb fell off during the rebels' hasty ascent.
With no other option, Pete decides to stay and detonate the bomb himself, giving his watch (which was Juliette's watch) to Deputy Hank (Billy Postlethwaite) so that he can pass it on to Juliette should she ever return. Glen once more crushes it. Postlethwaite does a great job as well, conveying how torn Hank is at leaving Pete to certain death. As sad as it was, it's probably one of my favorite scenes of the entire season, up there with Juliette's dive and the reveal of Solo's past.
Glen's final scene stands out even in an episode with a lot of standout moments. I also enjoyed Lukas Kyle's haunted return to the top floors, where he lets Bernard in on the secret he discovered at the door at the bottom of the Silo. The action when the initial enforcer attack kicks off is also brutal and well-shot. And Tim Robbins has a great episode as Bernard, who becomes a shell of a man after his encounter with Lukas. He subsequently locks himself alone at the top of the Silo.
But of course, we can't talk about how things resolve in Silo 18 without jumping to 17. Yes, at long last, these stories converge!
Juliette lives!
While all hell is breaking loose in Silo 18, Juliette and Solo prepare for her departure. Before she can make it out the door, Solo — who I'm going to refer to from here on by his real name, Jimmy — remembers that his parents had discovered what "the Safeguard Procedure" was before they were killed in the uprising in their silo. On a lower level of the silo there is a pipe which is capable of pumping in enough poison to kill all 10,000 residents. Jimmy's mother — who worked on that same floor — came up with a way to cap the pipe and stop the poison.
This, combined with hearing the explosion that kills Pete Nichols all the way in another silo, lights a fire under Juliette to get home. Ferguson delivers another great performance here, with a special shoutout to her passionate speech to Audrey (Georgina Sadler).
Ultimately, Juliette is able to return to her silo using the repurposed firefighters suit she found earlier in the season, which Jimmy risks his life to test for her to get her on her way quicker. Julitte arrives just in the nick of time, cleaning the silo camera on 18 just as everyone's preparing to go out and holding up a piece of cloth warning those inside that it's not safe to go above ground.
In Juliette's final scene of the season, Bernard opens the doorway to the silo and meets her on the stairs that lead above ground. This is a tense, all-around solid exchange where Bernard and Juliette level with each other, realizing they each know about the Safeguard and what it means for those inside the silo. Bernard just wants to go above ground to feel some modicum of control in his life. But before he gets the chance, the door that leads into the silo begins to shut, and Juliette lunges through. Bernard tries to stop her and goes in with her, warning her they're both about to be burned alive.
Our last shot is Juliette and Bernard hitting the deck as flames fill the airlock. Did either of them survive? Tune in in a year-and-a-half! If there's one thing I didn't love about the Silo finale, it's how much of a ridiculous cliffhanger it left off on, to an extent that it was almost jarring. This is different than season 1, which ended with Juliette going outside, resolving the main mystery of the season by showing the actual landscape of the surface. Here we see her return and then just...don't find out if she survived (even though we already know Rebecca Ferguson is appearing as Juliette in season 3, so obviously she does).
Back to the future
But wait, there's more! Silo isn't done with the mind-bending twists quite yet. The final final scene of the season brings us back in time to Washington D.C., where we meet a couple of new characters: Donald, a freshman congressman from Georgia played by Succession's Ashley Zukerman; and Helen, a reporter played by Game of Thrones alum Jessica Henwick. These two have an awkward date filled with a lot of cryptic hints about what's going on. There was an incident in New Orleans involving a "dirty bomb" which is believed to have been deployed by Iran. The bouncer for the restaurant scans people for radioactivity. We don't learn a lot here, but it's clear that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that iceberg contains a lot of answers to long-standing questions about Silo's biggest mysteries.
If you aren't familiar with the Silo book series by Hugh Howey, this ending might feel extremely random. It comes a little out of left field, and no matter how enjoyable it was to watch Henwick and Zukerman, I couldn't shake the feeling that this scene, combined with Juliette's massive cliffhanger, made for a kind of weird ending to an otherwise excellent season.
But a bit of digging online (or reading the books) makes the intent clearer. Silo's first two seasons have mostly covered events from Wool, the first book in Hugh Howey's trilogy. The second book, Shift, is a prequel which explores how the silos were created in the first place, while the third book, Dust, returns to Juliette and her friends to resolve their story in the present. Donald and Helen are important characters from Shift, so this scene is setting up that we'll see more of them in season 3 and beyond.
This scene also gives us a little hint that puts the timelines in perspective. As he departs, Donald gives Helen a cheap gift he bought for her: a duck PEZ dispenser, in honor of the fact that the duck was her university mascot. Yes, that's the same PEZ dispenser we saw in Silo 18 that was dirty and time-worn.
What journey did that PEZ have to go on to get to Silo 18? We'll have to wait for season 3 to find out the fate of Juliette and PEZ alike!
Silo bullet points
- It's not entirely clear what year it is in the ending scene with Donald and Helen. While it's obviously the past relative to the silos, is it our future? It's hard to be certain, but it is worth noting that they reference modern technology like internet searches and refer to terms like "date" as archaic. So my money's on the future.
- When the bomb goes off in Silo 18, Juliette and Solo feel the vibration through the ground over in Silo 17. It's a good reminder that even though Juliette's been cut off from home this whole season, these two silos are actually very close together.
- We find out "Eater's" actual name here: it's Hope. A fitting name for a post-apocalypse kid!
- Robert Sims (Common) finally gets what he wants in this episode: access to the vault, which makes him feel like the true IT shadow he always wanted to be. Except even at that late stage, the voice pulling the strings in the vault rejects him, telling him to take his son and leave — while inviting his wife Camille (Alexandria Riley), who has proven time and again this season that she is a canny manipulator, to stay. Ouch.
- Lukas has had a great arc this season and this episode was one of my favorites for him. His good-natured resignation when he realizes that everyone in the silo is probably about to die from poison is extremely compelling to watch, as he goes to spend time with his mother after delivering the fatal news to Bernard.
- Speaking of Lukas, I'm very curious to see how he will come into play in season 3 now that Juliette is back. I really hope they team up.
- I also hope we haven't seen the last of Jimmy and the other Silo 17 residents. This season left off in a way that made their story feel pretty complete, but it'd be a shame not to get them back into the mix somehow.
Verdict
Silo season 2 ended as it began: with a banger of an episode. I've thoroughly enjoyed this season of Silo and had very few complaints about it. The acting, sets, music, writing...it's all been pretty solid from where I'm sitting, with very few low points to speak of. The one thing that did knock this episode down a bit for me was the ending, which leaned very heavily on cliffhangers — one of which is pretty much artificial, since we know Juliette isn't going to die off-screen. A stellar episode that's marred just a little by its final moments.
Episode Grade: A-
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