Summary
Silo raises the Season 2 stakes with aplomb in Episode 4, killing off a key character unexpectedly early.
In most shows, Rebecca Ferguson doing an extended high-pressure underwater sequence like it’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation all over again would be the standout of an episode. But not in Silo. Season 2 of Apple TV+’s slow-burning and – dare I say it – sophisticated sci-fi series saves the real tension in Episode 4, “The Harmonium”, for moments of conversation, brewing civil unrest, and the demise of a major character much earlier than anyone expected.
We’re approaching the midpoint of this sophomore outing, and everything we’ve seen thus far – from the near-wordless premiere to the brewing rebellion in Silo 18 across Episode 2, “Order”, and Episode 3, “Solo” – suggests that it will amount to a better season of TV than even its excellent predecessor. The worst-case scenario is that it’ll be just as great, and really, is that a worst-case scenario at all?
Juliette and Solo Make An Oddball Team In “The Harmonium”
As with the third episode, this one is split more or less evenly in half, with a slice devoted to Silo 18 and another devoted to the slightly comedic misadventures of Juliette and her new best mate Solo.
Solo cuts an interesting figure. He’s kind of a comic relief sidekick, kind of sympathetic, kind of plot-convenient given his intelligence and outside-the-box thinking; he’s a bit like Eugene from The Walking Dead if he wasn’t written like a robot swallowed The Complete Works of Shakespeare. But there’s a darker tint to him, too. When Juliette asks about his eye scar he clams up, and the obsession he has with ensuring the vault is secure (and that he’s safely inside it) strikes me as someone protecting a few secrets beyond their own.
A lot of this can be attributed to Solo’s long solitude exaggerating his eccentricities. But I’m sure there’s something else afoot. I don’t think he’s a bad guy, per se, but I reckon there’s something crucial that he’s keeping from Juliette that all his stories about elephants and ingenuity in crafting breathing tubes can’t account for. That’s just my gut instinct, anyway.
But on the other hand, Juliette couldn’t have explored the Silo’s flooded levels without him, and even though she almost drowned in the process, it wasn’t Solo’s fault. He was a staunch ally right until her head gasped through the water’s surface and he booked it back to the vault, almost locking it for good when his panic caused him to misremember the code a couple of times.
Solo’s frightened, for sure, and his reflexive accusations toward Juliette speak to that. But he also sees something of a savior in her, which is why he’s compelled to emerge, once again, when she decides to leave. Whatever he’s hiding, and whatever his true motivations are, I don’t exactly fancy his chances in a setting this harsh.
Rebecca Ferguson in ‘Silo’ | Image via Apple TV+
Straight to the Top
Back in Silo 18, rebellion continues to brew, and the carefully cultivated lies keeping the whole place together are beginning to crumble. The status quo has been sustained through manipulation, scapegoating, and corruption for far too long, and the cracks are starting to show.
Knox lays out this theory to Shirley based on the wall of names in the Down Deep. There’s a long history of revolutions that have all been blamed on Mechanical. They’re the easy marks. Judicial and privileged citizens fear change, fear the loss of control and the comfier aspects of their lives, whereas the Mechanical workers have it bad enough to want something different – and to fight for it, if needs be.
Knox and Shirley decide that the best way to raise their concerns, then, is to do so lawfully, directly to Judge Meadows. The second the idea is floated you can see the mechanisms of power immediately kick into gear. Sims is alarmed that Meadows even accepts the request and begins to influence public sentiment against her when Mayor Holland takes her side. The small group of Knox, Shirley, Martha, and Carla is framed as a mob, requiring a sheriff’s escort just to make it up the stairs.
We’ll see what a real mob looks like at the end of the episode after a few more careful ploys play out, but it’s fascinating to see how the levers of power are pulled when the establishment is threatened, even relatively innocuously. Silo is an extremely good TV show.
RIP Judge Meadows
Tanya Moodie in Silo | Image via Apple TV+
In a pretty shocking development, Silo Season 2, Episode 4 kills off Judge Meadows. And while I had already suggested that this moment was coming, I didn’t imagine it’d come quite so soon. As far as Mayor Holland is concerned, Sims turning the public against Meadows forced his hand, but that sounds like a convenient excuse to me.
Either way, Meadows lays the blame for the sudden demand for her impeachment at the feet of Holland, and while he’s not to blame, he is a bit victim-blamey about it. He asks Meadows what else she expected by accepting meetings with people like Knox and Lukas Kyle, whose request for a hearing review she honors just to abruptly reduce his sentence and dismiss him. From her perspective, she’s just creating the illusion of fairness, but to Holland, even that is too terrifying for the privileged and the leadership. You can tell he’s scared.
Holland is so scared that he invites Meadows to dinner with the promise of giving her an environmental suit and then slips a fast-acting, undetectable poison into her mushrooms. It’s a brutally callous scene, and Holland’s adherence to the Order rings hollow, especially when Meadows uses her scant remaining time to tell him that she resigned as his shadow because she knew he’d never love her as much as he loved the Order. She was right.
Meadows doesn’t share the contents of a coded letter from Salvador Quinn, the head of IT during the previous rebellion, which was on the hard drive Juliette found in Season 1. Holland doesn’t waste much time asking. Instead, he places a VR headset over Meadows’ eyes and allows her final moments to be spent in a Costa Rican biological research reserve, where she gets to see the flourishing plants and animals of a world before it was irrevocably lost.
A Plan Comes Together
There’s a horrifying neatness with which Silo Season 2, Episode 4 reveals how all of these events inform the next, with the ultimate goal of keeping the Silo in check. Shortly after Holland has quietly killed Meadows, Knox, Shirley, Martha, and Carla arrive outside Judicial HQ, demanding to see Meadows. They have leverage – with the toss of a red ball that bounces down into Mechanical, they shut off the power. It’ll only come back on if they’re granted access.
So, Holland grants them access and a green ball bounces down to get the power back on. Why would he do such a thing? Because he and Sims have set up Meadows’ death to look like she was murdered by Mechanical. The gang realizes they’ve been set up and flees, and Sims incites the crowd by pinning Meadows’ murder on Mechanical. The chase is on as Knox, Shirley, Martha, and Carla try to escape the real mob that has quickly formed behind them.
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