‘Silo’ Season 2, Episode 9 Recap – The Penultimate Installment Is The Best Yet

“The Safeguard” is probably the best episode of Silo Season 2 thus far. This is perhaps not the highest of praise given the sophomore run hasn’t been perfect and has started to sag in its most recent episodes, both in Silo 18 and, particularly, in Juliette’s subplot with Solo, but Episode 9 is a really strong episode of television whatever way you slice it. The weak Juliette stuff is livened up with the introduction of some new characters and a surprising amount of emotional heft, while back in Silo 18 people start to choose their sides and prepare to defend them.

It’s obvious that the finale won’t complete the story, but that’s fine since Apple TV+ has already renewed Silo for a third and fourth season. As long as it maintains this level of drama, tension, and mystery, it can keep going for as long as it wants as far as I’m concerned.

From a Different Point Of View

Episode 9 begins by introducing us to Audrey (Georgina Sadler), Rick (Orlando Norman), and Eater (Sara Hazemi), the Silo 17 survivors whom Juliette met – albeit on the wrong side of a bow – in the previous episode. But the smart thing here is how this introduction recontextualizes everything we’ve seen Juliette do in Silo 17 since her bad luck started in the premiere; she has been watched and occasionally sabotaged the entire time.

These scenes also give us a sense of the group dynamics. Rick is a little more sympathetic, Audrey just wants to kill everyone, and Eater – so-called because she’s just another mouth to feed – is the put-upon lackey who isn’t treated the same. These three think that Solo is a killer responsible for the deaths of Audrey’s father, Chase, and Rick’s mother, Tess, and they want to use him to get into the vault before enacting their revenge.

Since Juliette needs Solo alive, she agrees to break into the vault in exchange for being able to see him, but she only has until Audrey’s baby starts crying again before the terms expire and Solo is killed. Eater accompanies her on a mission to try and crack the vault code before time runs out.

Juliette Discovers Who Solo Really Is

Rebecca Ferguson in Silo | Image via Apple TV+

I like this subplot since it gives Juliette an excuse to do some detective work again, and it also allows Eater to color in some of this Silo’s backstory. Rick and Audrey’s parents were killed trying to break into the vault because they were starving, and Eater, whose parents died long before and asked Chase and Tess to take care of her, was blamed by the other two for their dwindling food supplies. Hence the nickname.

As for the vault code, Eater helps with that too. She reveals that Chase and Tess kept a log of all the failed combinations they had tried, which is the classroom chalkboard Juliette discovered in Episode 3. Using that, she’s able to narrow the potential combinations down to just a few, but only three can be entered in a 24-hour period. After trying two incorrect ones, she knows she can’t risk guessing at the third. She needs more concrete information.

Enter, again, Eater, who explains that she wasn’t even born when the rebellion started. Based on that, and Solo’s inconsistent earlier testimony, Juliette realizes that he was a child when the rebellion occurred. He can’t have been the shadow of the former IT head, Russell Conroy, as he repeatedly claimed. But he was also locked in the vault and given strict instructions never to open it. Why? Because he was Conroy’s son.

The scene of Juliette breaking through to Solo, helping him to rationalize his trauma, is one of the best of Silo’s second season thus far. It also makes a nice “end” to this particular subplot, with Juliette getting her suit, but Solo also realizing that she stayed behind when she could have left because she had genuinely become fond of him. I’m still happy Juliette should now be leaving Silo 17 to return home, but the events of Episode 9 really helped to make the whole deviation feel worthwhile.

Mayor Holland Is Losing Allies Rapidly

The underlying themes of Silo revolve mainly around the idea of control, and Mayor Holland has embodied this throughout. Existence in the Silo has been built from the ground up to keep everyone in line through lies and exploitation. Any semblance of hope has to be carefully rationed. The urge to know more has to be quelled. All of the Silo’s hierarchy and systems are designed to enforce these ideas.

But they require complicity, and that’s what Holland is losing in “The Safeguard”. His downfall began by killing Meadows; it was a decision too rash to keep obscured. He assumed pinning it on Mechanical would be easy, but the cracks that were already there thanks to what happened to Juliette only widened. Knox and Shirley rallied support. Camille helped them escape. Billings switched sides. Ironically, the only “allies” Holland still has are Lukas, who likely isn’t his ally at all, and Martha Walker, who can’t stand him.

Billings and his wife unequivocally offer their support to Knox and Shirley in Silo Season 2, Episode 9, which Knox is so excited about that he rushes to Martha’s bugged workshop to tell her, thus inadvertently telling Holland. But what he doesn’t expect is Sims switching sides. Thanks to Camille having helped out earlier behind her husband’s back, the rebels realize she might be a viable candidate for recruitment, so Paul slips Robert the illegal ad of the Blue Ridge Mountains so he can see what he and Kathleen have seen. He and Camille both decide rather quickly to throw their lot in with the truth – and thus Mechanical.

The Safeguard

Greg Hemphill, Avi Nash and Ricky Shah in Silo | Image via Apple TV+

As mentioned, Holland believes that Lukas is working to decode Salvadore Quinn’s code for his benefit, too seduced by the power of being a shadow and the potential of avoiding a short life in the mines to quibble too much about it. But you can tell from Lukas’s demeanor and a lot of his dialogue that he doesn’t intend to stick with Bernard. He already regrets not doing enough to help Juliette. He won’t let inaction be his mistake again.

This is why he heads to the Down Deep, flexing his blue badge and Juliette’s name to venture lower and lower, revealing the odd bit of convincing information from Holland to make a skeptical Shirley trusting enough to escort him. Lukas thinks the water on the lowest level of the Silo isn’t especially deep and is hiding a hidden tunnel. And Lukas is right.

But it takes Lukas finally being willing to take action, to risk his own life, to discover this. He heads under the water and emerges into a tunnel with a giant door, where a disembodied, presumably artificially intelligent voice addresses him. Lukas is only the fourth person to have ever made it here; the first three were Salvador Quinn, Mary Meadows, and Juliette’s boyfriend, George Wilkins. Both Quinn and Meadows were given the same directive that Lukas is about to be given, one that he cannot share with anyone under threat of triggering “The Safeguard”.

What’s the Safeguard? I have no idea, but it doesn’t sound good. Lukas, though, seems to have figured it out already.