Review: Silo season 2 kicks off with a haunting premiere in "The Engineer"

A year and a half after its mind-bending season 1 finale, Silo has returned for its second season on Apple TV+. Based on the novel series of the same name by Hugh Howey, Silo tells the story of the last 10,000 people on Earth, who've been living in a massive underground bunker for so many generations that no one can remember how or why they ended up there in the first place.

We learned a lot about the mysteries of the Silo during the show's first season, but even more questions linger. Fortunately, Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) is on a journey of discovery to get those answers for her fellow Silo residents and viewers alike. The first season ended with Juliette leaving the Silo, expecting to find that the powers that be in the Silo were concealing a verdant world outside. Except when Juliette left, the landscape outside was barren...and filled with the distant shapes of other entrances to other Silos nearby.

Now we finally get to see what happens next. Read on for our full review of "The Engineer." There will be SPOILERS.

Silo Episode 201 review: "The Engineer"

The second season of Silo opens with an absolutely haunting sequence that might be one of my favorite parts of the entire series to date: a flashback showing an uprising at another Silo, which leads immediately into Juliette arriving there years later. The uprising itself is interesting, showing how that Silo's sheriff led his people to attack IT and then open the doors to the outside world and lead the entire populace to the surface. Except the surface is a toxic wasteland. By the time Juliette arrives in the present, the Silo is surrounded by thousands of decaying skeletons. They litter the ground all around the entrance, even clogging the doorway as people presumably tried to get back in.

This intro is an insane gut punch, and it's only a prelude of things to come. After getting into the Silo, Juliette's environment suit begins to run out of oxygen. In desperation, she smashes in the helmet then cuts her way out of the suit. But now she's got a different problem: she can no longer go outside. She's stuck in this empty, dark Silo filled with the grisly remains of the uprising which destroyed it.

"The Engineer" is all about Juliette; we don't even see the rest of the cast who remained behind in her Silo. Instead, we watch as Juliette has to once more adopt the role of an engineer, solving problem after problem with her smarts as she tries to get to the sealed door of a surveillance room — a substantial task, since IT presumably destroyed the bridge during the uprising. Ferguson is riveting, especially considering that she barely has any dialogue. Her performance, the production values, and the sharp writing manage to carry the present-day scenes in a way that's hard to look away from.

The rest of "The Engineer" is dedicated to flashbacks, where we see how young Juliette (Amelie Child Villiers) first befriend young Shirley (Ida Brooke) when they were kids, and how Juliette first started becoming an engineer. This serves two purposes: it gives us a break from the mostly silent sections where Juliette is trying to problem solve her way over the bridge to IT, and it shows us how Juliette started down the path that led her to becoming a stubborn survivor who can find her way out of most any situation.

The flashbacks are great, and I was glad to see Villiers back as Juliette's younger self. But even more, I loved seeing Ferguson's older Juliette back in the role of an engineer. Silo's first season largely revolved around Juliette being thrust into the role of sheriff, a job she didn't want and was woefully under-qualified for. But engineering is where Jules is in her element, and this episode, literally named "The Engineer," reminds us of that in a big way. It made me even more excited to see what's ahead for Juliette now that she's trapped in a Silo all by herself.

But by the end of "The Engineer," we find out that isn't entirely true. Once Juliette finally manages to get across the broken bridge into the IT section of the Silo, she's eventually drawn by the eerie sound of the song "Moon River" to a vault door. This is the door to the surveillance room, which we saw back in Juliette's Silo during the first season.

As she tries to figure out why the music started, a peep hole opens in the door and we get our first glimpse at Silo newcomer Steve Zahn, who book-readers will recognize as a character named Solo. We only see his eyes here, but his quirky performance already leaves an impression as he threatens Juliette by telling her that if she tries to get inside his vault door, he will kill her.

Silo leaves us there, with even more questions than we started with. "The Engineer" runs a brusque 44 minutes, which I found pretty refreshing. Many television shows in our current era of TV have gone for the bloated, "10-hour movie" type style, with episode lengths at times ballooning to well over an hour. I kind of love that Silo is sticking to tight episodes, and since this one focused entirely on Juliette, we can safely say that future episodes will feel quite different as the rest of the cast becomes more involved. "The Engineer" firmly hooked me back into the show, but left me wanting more, just like a good premiere should.

Silo bullet points

• The bridge which Juliette puts into place at the end of the episode is the same one that the uprising used to attack IT during the flashback. Also, shoutout for the ridiculously cool way she moves that heavy piece of metal using a bunch of barrels as wheels.
• The flashbacks of young Juliette are presumably set not long after she decides to go live in engineering in the lower levels of her Silo. In case you forgot, she had a falling out with her father after her mother killed herself, which Juliette blamed him for up until near the end of season 1 when she found out that he wasn't involved in the event which led to her mom's death.
• We get a brief glimpse of Martha Walker (Harriet Walter) in this episode during the flashback. Walter's weird American accent was a sticking point for me in the first season, but it sounds a little more even here.

Verdict

Silo is back, and it's opening strong! Even though this episode went by fast and focused only on Juliette, it's a testament to how well done it was that I didn't even miss the rest of the cast. I'm confident Silo will get to them, and I'm happy to wait a week considering how enjoyable this premiere was and how fun Ferguson is to watch. I loved her as Lady Jessica in Dune, but Juliette Nichols might be my favorite role Ferguson has yet played. It's great to be back in this world, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

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