Summary
Silo Season 3 kicks into a much higher gear in “A Dark Web”, juggling multiple subplots and perspectives, building real tension, and coming together in an impressive intricate and entertaining way.
For such a humourless show, Silo can be hilarious sometimes. Season 3 has been pretty sedate so far. Entertaining and mysterious, sure, but largely functional rather than really riveting. Episode 3, “A Dark Web”, is one of those “y’all must have forgot” hours that cycles through several new gears, juggles multiple perspectives and subplots, and knits together into a legitimately tense and expertly orchestrated climax like it’s no big deal. This is a truly impressive show when it wants to be.
As ever, there’s a metric ton to break down, speculate over, and marvel at, so let’s just get into the meat and potatoes instead of beating around the bush, shall we?
Juliette Has Had Enough
After the big revelations in the previous episode, Juliette has decided that enough is enough. She’s spitting out her “vitamins”, gets Jerry to let her roam the Silo alone, and immediately starts knocking on doors with big questions. She slips Shirley a note saying she’s looking for Lukas Kyle, asks Kathleen Billings about Kyle and Patrick Kennedy, having basically intuited that she’s an Outsider and was part of the IT break-in, and even asks Sims, who was the last person to see Kyle, why Bernard made him his shadow. She’s rocking the boat in a big way, and it’s having a pretty substantial effect.
One word, or at least one location, keeps cropping up again and again: The Mines. What did Lukas learn down there? What has been hidden since? Why was the Digger Void sealed up? These are the big questions, and Juliette, even without her memory, knows the answers are important. Her big play is to rope down to the Gap and enlist Knox’s help in getting down through Mechanical to the mines. Mark isn’t willing to help, but each little bit of information fills in some of the broader picture, and she’s beginning to sense, as she did with Martha, Shirley, and now Knox, who her allies are.
She also, by extension, is getting a sense of who her enemies are. Camille is trying to have her followed all over the place, but Juliette notices and slips the tail, causing all kinds of panic in IT. But we’ll loop around to this in a minute.
The Dark Web
In the “before times” sequences, Daniel has now very much teamed up with Helen to get to the bottom of the mysterious fate of Charlotte and the other pilots during the Iran mission. Through the father of one of the pilots who died, Daniel confirms Helen’s earlier claim that the communications equipment on the planes was swapped out with extremely old, discontinued models before takeoff, their lack of encryption meaning that, theoretically, anyone could have recorded them.
Daniel tells Helen, who has just been fired from her mundane celebrity gossip job, and she goes searching the dark web for information about it. Through an intermediary, she manages to arrange a meeting with a guy named “Steve” about the potential recording. The price of admission is Daniel allowing him to clone his congressional badge. Steve isn’t willing to reveal anything at first, but when Daniel mentions Charlotte being his sister, Steve provides a 20-second recording he transferred to a cassette. He advises Daniel not to listen. Helen does and also advises Daniel to stay away, but he ignores the advice and listens anyway, though we don’t get to hear it for ourselves.
After leaving Steve and the recording behind, Daniel tells Helen that they need to go back for the recording, since the “people he works for” need to hear it. When they return to Steve’s lair, though, they find the place broken into and wrecked. Steve and the recording are both gone.
Jessica Henwick and Ashley Zukerman in Silo Season 3 | Image via Apple TV
Difficult Decisions
Camille spends Silo Season 3, Episode 3 in near-constant communication with the Algorithm. Juliette not taking her pills is obviously a bad thing, but maybe her leading them to Lukas Kyle and confirming his death could be a good thing. If Juliette doesn’t find what she’s looking for, maybe the entire Silo won’t have to be dosed with Vitamin D+. The Algorithm pretends it’s Camille’s decision, but you can tell the disembodied voice is trying to sway her.
Speaking of being swayed, Robert’s conversation with Juliette, especially her not being able to recall a relationship with her father, has really rattled him and forced him to reconsider his own relationship with Anthony. He tries to force Camille into spending some family time with them, but she’s too busy. She does, though, tell him about her plans for the Vitamin D+, and it’s really obvious he’s not into it and isn’t entirely keen on what’s being done to Juliette, either. I think I see a face turn coming down the line. But for now, Camille is framing everything she’s doing as being in the best interests of the Silo, and thus Anthony. Even if he can’t remember his parents, at least he’ll survive and one day get to leave.
However, Juliette’s heading into the mines represents a massive problem. Camille rushes to the Algorithm and asks how close together the other Silos are. Her theory is that if Lukas knew about the other Silos, which he did, then he probably also figured out why the Pact forbids digging horizontally. If he’s hiding out in the mines and attempting to tunnel through to another Silo, that represents a massive existential threat, since Silo-to-Silo contact triggers an immediate Safeguard. Severe precautions need to be taken, so Camille orders the mines to be flooded with poison gas without any advance notice.
A Toxic Move (And A Sad Fate)
Camille’s actions cause a bunch of miners to be trapped and poisoned. Several break out right in front of Juliette and Knox, and Juliette’s heroic instinct kicks in immediately. She rushes into the mines to try and help people, but the first guy she saves attacks her and steals her gas mask, leaving her stranded. She collapses, but is picked up and rescued by none other than Lukas Kyle, whom, curiously, she immediately recognises.
Lukas legs it, pursued by Raiders, but he manages to hide until the Outsiders are able to find him. Meanwhile, Billings’s search for Orla Kent comes to a tragic conclusion as her corpse is carried out of the mines, despite the fact that she never should have been there in the first place. To be fair, Orla really got short shrift after her introduction in the premiere, with barely any scenes devoted to Billings’s efforts to find her, so this moment doesn’t land as well as it perhaps should, but it’ll definitely mean that Billings doubles down on the investigation now.
In a final, dramatic turn, the Algorithm pitches Camille another idea. With Juliette unconscious and hooked up to an oxygen machine, it’d be all too easy for her to die “from her injuries”, and her death, stemming from her bravery, might be able to instill calm in the community without the need for Vitamin D+. The Algorithm reveals that Camille was selected as the Head of IT because of her facility for deception, since it’s central to the role, which I think says a lot. Despite how much she might have admired Juliette in the past, Camille now reckons she’s an existential threat to the Silo and is willing to do what’s necessary for the greater good.
