Silo season 2 is at an end, and now our wait begins for season 3. In this case, that wait is going to be even more excruciating than usual, because the Silo finale ended on some serious cliffhangers. "Into the Fire" saw the rebellion in Silo 18 reach a breaking point, with the uprising storming the gate in an attempt to go outside in the belief that the surface world is actually beautiful and green, and that they've been lied to all their lives.
They're right about the lies, but not about the surface being habitable. At the last minute, Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) returns and warns her friends that it isn't safe to go outside. As she goes to enter the silo, she has a final showdown with Mayor Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins), where they level with each other in a way they never have before. But then the door to the airlock starts to close and Juliette lunges inside; Bernard tries to stop her and is dragged in with her, shouting all the while that they'll be burned to a crisp if they try to go back into the airlock.
When last we see Juliette and Bernard, they're diving for the floor as a torrent of flames spews from the walls of the tiny airlock. Did the either of them survive?
If you're wondering about the future of these two characters, you're in the right place. Looking at the Silo book series by Hugh Howey, as well as some interviews related to the TV show, we have a pretty solid answer to this question. Beware SPOILERS beyond this point.
Did Juliette die in the Silo finale?
Let's start with Juliette. We can say with some certainty that Juliette Nichols did not die in the final moments of "Into the Fire." There are a few ways we know this. The first is that Juliette continues to be a main character through the rest of the Silo books; there's still a lot more story left to cover for her. It would be a massive deviation if the show killed her off.
The other way we know she survived is from a pre-finale interview with showrunner Graham Yost, who referenced the fact that that Ferguson will be appearing in the third season of the show. "In the book Shift, Juliette doesn’t appear until like the last page, right?" Yost said. "It’s about this silo [No. 18], but it’s also the origin story of the whole silo project. I would say that we have Rebecca Ferguson playing Juliette, and she is not just going to be in the last scene of the season."
Shift is the second Silo book, and a prequel to the events we saw in seasons 1 and 2. That novel explores the origins of the silos before the third book, Dust, catches back up with Juliette and her friends in the present. So from Yost's comments, it's safe to assume Ferguson will be in season 3, and therefore that Juliette wasn't killed off. (Ferguson herself is also a producer on Silo, and has referenced planning for seasons 3 and 4.)
But how did she survive? We'll be waiting until the third season to get the exact answer, but smart money is on her unique environment suit. In season 2, Juliette constructed a makeshift environment suit to get back to her original silo, using a firefighter's suit with an environment suit helmet attached to it. That seemed like a small detail at first, but now that red firefighter's suit she's wearing could provide her with the protection she needs to survive her ordeal in the airlock.
Did Bernard Holland die in the Silo finale?
While Juliette will almost certainly make it out of the cleansing fire of the airlock, Silo 18's mayor Bernard Holland probably won't be so lucky. In the novel Wool, Bernard is put out to clean by Sheriff Billings for his crimes against the silo. But Bernard refuses to go out fully, and instead ends up dying in the fires of the airlock despite Juliette's attempts to save him. Following his death, Juliette is elected mayor in his place.
The show changed the details of how Bernard went outside, removing the cleaning aspect and instead making it more of a moment of tortured clarity for the mayor, who feels betrayed by the powers that control the silo project from the shadows after being told about the poisonous Safeguard procedure. He ends up debating Juliette on the stairs of the silo before they both end up in the airlock.
So while the show may have changed some of the details surrounding Bernard's exit from Silo 18, the end result is the same. In the books he dies in that airlock — and from a narrative perspective, he needs to die there in order for Juliette's story to move forward the same way it does in the novels. In all likelihood, Bernard is going to die from those cleansing fires.
Silo season 3 is already filming
Silo season 2 is now available in its entirety to stream on Apple TV+. According to Screen Daily, season 3 already began filming in October 2024. In an interview with Collider from around the same time, Ferguson confirmed season 3 is expected to film back-to-back with the fourth and final season. I'd expect to be watching season 3 in 2026 at the earliest, with season 4 following not long after.
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