‘Silo’ Season 2 Says A Sad Goodbye to Someone In Episode 3

After a nearly-silent premiere focused entirely on Juliette and then a more contained episode where she didn’t feature at all, we’re starting to split our time pretty evenly in Silo Season 2 between Silos 17 and 18. Juliette gets to know the man behind the vault door, the titular “Solo”, while rebellion continues to foment back home, to fatal results.

This remains a show operating at the peak of its powers, and I think that’s more obvious in its dueling structure, as tension develops in both narrative tracts and each seemingly separate scenario informs the other. It’s very much a “middle” chapter in the sense of largely setting up things for later, but that’s fine, and nobody told the cast – the performances are exquisite, as ever.

Juliette Meets Solo

We haven’t seen Juliette since the premiere, and we catch up with her only moments after we left her. Her tentative introduction to Solo reveals some things she didn’t know – there are 50 silos, for instance – and Solo’s backstory, which might become a cautionary tale sooner rather than later.

There are a lot of parallels. Here, some guy went out to clean, wrote “Lies” on the lens, and left. Chaos – very much of the kind we see bubbling up in Silo 18 – erupted shortly after. Solo was stuffed into the vault by the Head of IT, whom he shadowed, and was instructed not to open the door under any circumstances. Thus far, he hasn’t.

But Juliette – and Rebecca Ferguson performs this beautifully, as ever – sees the signs. This is the future of Silo 18, almost inevitably. Her own departure will stir rebellion, as we’ve seen it doing already. The people will rise up, believing there’s safety to be found outdoors. They’ll leave, and then they’ll die. But since Juliette no longer has a functioning suit to protect her, she can’t get back to warn them.

Rebellion Is Brewing

Silo Season 2, Episode 3 shows this coming to fruition back in Silo 18. Teddy is arrested for daubing the “Juliette Lives” graffiti on the Down Deep walls, and it’s clear that someone from Mechanical needs to be made an example of to quell the fomenting rebellion.

Bernard knows Juliette is heading to Silo 17 and that it’s unlikely she survived, but he’s still trying to keep details under wraps. Stamping out the brewing sentiment that she’s some kind of folk hero is part of that. Her departure challenges orthodoxy, the status quo. Meadows isn’t buying it, but Meadows wants out too, so she has to keep Bernard on-side.

But it’s hard to kill an idea. Robert wants to drug people into silence, but that might work with someone like Patrick, who helped Juliette escape in the Season 1 finale and is languishing in grief over his late wife in Judicial seclusion, but it won’t work for everyone. There’s a suggestion through Paul’s Syndrome diagnosis – the theory that Meadows discusses that it’s a natural outgrowth of an unnatural situation —  that people eventually breaking out of the Silos is inevitable. The species isn’t meant to be trapped underground and kept under heel.

Breaking Bread

Juliette and Solo bond over a meal. I was worried that the chicken stew Solo leaves out for her was poisoned, and we’re clearly supposed to think that, but Solo needed her to eat the meal for another reason – to prove she’s really there. Solo has been cooped up alone for a long time and is clearly going stir-crazy.

It’s weird to contrast this notion of “freedom” with the idea of leaving the Silo that those trapped within have. Juliette discusses this openly, in fact; the illusion of the blue skies and birds projected inside the suit helmets, compelling the Cleaning under false pretenses. The fallacies run so deep that both life in the Silos and outside of the Silos is a complete fabrication. The truth is largely death, or at best, like Solo, complete isolation.

And still, Juliette remains trapped, suitless. The floors she needs to find the right materials are flooded.

Remmie Milner in Silo | Image via Apple TV+

RIP Cooper

Speaking of trapped, it all kicks off in the Down Deep when Shirley and her crew storm the deputy’s station to demand Teddy’s freedom. Thanks to Patrick’s earlier agreement with Robert, he hurls a firebomb at the station, prompting a shot in response that ricochets off a pipe and hits both Patrick and, sadly, Cooper.

The bullet punctures the fracas and leaves behind an eerie aftermath, in which Cooper dies right in front of Shirley and Knox. Despite them having disagreed earlier, this is a unifying moment for the two of them; after an exchange of frustrated blows in the tunnel after, Knox reiterates that he’s on Shirley’s side and wants answers too. He asks if she recalls what they explored as kids and tells her that he now knows what the wall of names means.

The Balance of Power

The worsening situation in the Down Deep prevents Bernard from keeping up his pretenses around Meadows. She’s willing to let him take her measurements so she can get a suit that’ll allow her to leave unmolested, but she’s not buying his claims of Teddy’s release, his insistence he wasn’t behind the firebombing or his earlier suggestion that Juliette wanted to leave the Silo. He’s stirring up anti-Mechanical sentiment, as per The Order, and Meadows sees right through him.

Despite Meadows ordering Bernard around and telling him not to return until he has her suit, I worry for her safety. She knows too much and can’t be manipulated so easily. She’s a problem for Bernard.

An Unlikely Alliance

Silo Season 2, Episode 3 ends with Solo finally venturing out from the vault, compelled by Juliette’s determination to craft a new suit and return home. But to do that, she needs his help to run an air pump apparatus that’ll allow her to swim into the sunken Level 23 and retrieve the materials.

Solo’s first hesitant steps out of the vault are fraught with stress; he has been alone a long time and lost everyone he ever knew. He can barely venture further than the vault doors in his terror. But through Juliette’s support, he realizes, probably for the very first time, that she is indeed real. He’s not imagining her. And she might represent some kind of hope for him if he can get over his fears.

But can Juliette put her life in his hands? I expect the next episode to reveal how that goes. An extended underwater sequence with Silo’s current form should be dread-inducing. I’ll see you there.