The third season of Silo has come to an end, and days later, I'm still reeling from its harrowing finale. After an explosive cliffhanger in its penultimate episode, the show jumped forward in time to reveal that Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) had been all but brainwashed to become a cold-blooded fixer for Silo 1, pulled out of his frozen sleep whenever a crisis arose that brought the dystopian bunker system to the brink of collapse. Hundreds of years had passed, and in that time the powers that controlled the silos worked to make sure Daniel forgot everything of his life before — including his partner, Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick).
When the bomb dropped that forced Daniel and Helen below ground, they were pulled into separate silos. Daniel took shelter in Silo 1 — the command silo — while Helen ended up in Silo 18, the silo which would one day be home to Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson). This moment stands as one of the biggest gut punches of the entire series. No matter what happens from here on, that bomb severed our time with Daniel and Helen for good.
Part of what made Daniel and Helen's final scene hit so hard is just how well Silo built up their slow-burn relationship over the course of season 3. This was no shoe-horned in romance, forced into the series to make the plot work. Instead, the show took its time to vastly expand on Hugh Howey's source material, giving us a front row seat as Daniel and Helen slowly fell in love while unraveling the mystery of the silos' creation, with the world teetering on the brink of an apocalypse around them. As much as I love Rebecca Ferguson and all the rest of the main cast of Silo, this storyline stole the season for me.
None of that would have worked without exceptional performances from the actors at its heart. I was already familiar with Ashley Zukerman from his time as Nate Sofrelli on Succession, and he fills a similar type-cast here at first as a politician. That changes by the time of the finale, where Zukerman's character plunges to depths that really let him flex his range as an actor.
As for Jessica Henwick, I'm sad to say the main way I knew her before Silo was from Game of Thrones, where she played the Dornish bastard Nymeria Sand in seasons 5 through 7. And while I've since discovered she has a far more robust and impressive catalog of work than what we saw on Thrones, this season of Silo really drove home just how badly HBO's fantasy series wasted Henwick's talents.
The Sand Sankes deserved better from Game of Thrones
Yes, we all love to rib on Dorne, arguably the single worst storyline of the entire show which utterly butchered the source material from A Song of Ice and Fire, turning characters like Nymeria and her bastard sisters Obara and Tyene from a group of intriguing rogues into a bad joke. This isn't news. But Henwick's absolutely riveting performance in Silo illustrates just what was left on the table. Given material with the sort of ambition and scope that she got in Apple TV's sci-fi hit, Henwick was able to go toe-to-toe with the best actors of the series, turning in my favorite performance of season 3 — and that's no small feat, considering the show's cast includes giants like Ferguson and Tim Robbins.
Game of Thrones was an ensemble show with many different characters to service, and there's no real argument to be made that Nymeria Sand should have gotten a larger spotlight than any of the many, many more important figures the show had to explore. But there's something to be said for a series which can make even smaller parts sing on screen — this is something that Thrones often managed to do quite well early in its run. Unfortunately, Dorne and the Sand Snakes were not one of those instances where the series pulled it off, representing a sad turning point for the show's relatively flawless storytelling up until that point.
Obviously, Henwick has likely grown quite a bit as an actor in the nine years since she made her debut on Game of Thrones. I'm not saying that she necessarily would have delivered a completely comparable turn in that series to her work on Silo, because the latter feels like one of those perfect storm moments where an actor at the top of their game is given the chance and material to really show off the full extent of their craft. But surely she could have done quite a bit more with Nymeria than Thrones allowed, if the show had spent more time bringing Dorne to life in the same three-dimensional way as Martin's novels.
I suppose hindsight is 20/20. Without Game of Thrones, we don't know where Henwick's career may have ended up, and we never will. But after seeing how incredible she was in Silo season 3, I'm officially mad about Game of Thrones season 5 all over again, imagining what it could have been like if Henwick, Rosabell Laurenti Sellers (Tyene Sand), and their Oscar-nominated co-star Keisha Castle-Hughes (Obara Sand) had been given a better chance to make the Sand Snakes the standout characters they should have been.
Silo season 3 is streaming now on Apple TV. We'll see more of Jessica Henwick as Helen in the show's fourth and final season, which is set to premiere on July 9, 2027. If you want to rewatch Game of Thrones season 5 so you can be mad about Dorne with me one more time, it's available to stream on HBO Max.
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