Warning: This article will contain spoiler details for Silo Season 1 from an indicated point.
2023’s Silo might have slipped under the radar for a lot of people, but this dystopian, post-apocalyptic mystery is absolutely worth your time – in fact, it ranked among our top three new streaming series of last year.
As with the likes of Foundation, Severance, Dark Matter and For All Mankind, Silo is yet another example of Apple TV+ going hard with their prestige, premium sci-fi, delivering genre entries with big name actors and extreme production polish. With the 10-episode second season of Silo debuting today Friday, 15 November, and delivering weekly episode drops until 17 January, below you’ll find our first impressions of the sophomore set of episodes.
For the record, Silo, starring the likes of Rebecca Ferguson, Common and Tim Robbins (with prominent Season 1 roles for Rashida Jones and David Oyelowo), is based on a book series by Hugh Howey, known as the Silo Trilogy – comprising of Wool, Shift and Dust. The first season of the Apple TV+ show establishes the backdrop for our story: the last remaining 10,000 or so members of humanity live underground in a city-sized, spiral shaped silo, sealed away from the apparently toxic and deadly environment of the surface world. Society has been completely reinvented and records of anything that happened before humanity’s downfall have since been lost… or have they?
Spoilers start here, you’ve been warned!
As the cliffhanger ending of Season One attests, there are more questions than answers to what is going on in the world of Silo. Main character Juliette AKA Jules (Ferguson) has surprisingly been promoted from an engineer on the lowest level of the silo to its Sheriff, determined to find out the truth of her lover’s apparent murder. In the process, she uncovers a Silo-wide conspiracy of population control, subjugation and lies, which sees her unwilling sent outside the Silo by the powers that be.
As Jules walks out the Silo, first refusing to follow tradition and clean the outside camera, then disappearing beyond the point where every other cleaner has died, this ignites a tinderbox of emotion among the Silo’s population. Unable to return, Jules must move forward into a desolate landscape dotted with multiple hatches, in the hopes of finding somewhere else to survive.
The first episode of the new season is both a fantastic setup of what’s to come, and a reminder of why we fell in love with this show in the first place. As Jules breaks into a neighbouring uninhabited, non-functioning Silo, the tension is just beginning, with some massively anxiety spiking scenes as she explores in near silence.
Much like the generator repair episode from the previous season, there are some incredibly nail-biting moments, starkly contrasted by the cool, dispassionate desolation of the Silo Jules finds herself in. Silo’s impeccable environmental storytelling is in full swing from the get-go, with richly detailed, decaying sets which stand as a counterpoint to the rundown but believably habitable sphere Jules was forced to leave.
That being said, from its opening moment, Season 2 is already set up structurally in a way that has previously been a coffin nail for other TV shows (looking at you, Sweet Tooth): splitting the party. When the main character is removed from where the bulk of the action takes place, the rest of the plot threads run the risk of either being left to dangle in the wind, or failing to hook viewers.
A couple of episodes in, we can already tell that Season 2 of Silo will probably be at its best, and most compelling, when focusing on Ferguson versus the friends and grey-hued foes she left behind in the increasingly unrest-plagued Silo. Audience engagement is centred predominantly on Jules, the driving force of the show itself and now a martyr-like figure for the populace. As strong and capable as Jules has been, she’s now faced with a new mystery to unravel with far deadlier stakes – how does she survive in a dead Silo on her own? How did things fall apart in the first place? And what is going to happen with the loved ones she left behind?
While the rest of the season seems happy to answer to that last question, devoting a lot of its running time to the events in Jules’s home Silo, the truth behind Silo’s biggest overarching secrets may not be forthcoming yet, if at all. What we do know is that Silo Season 2 is off to an incredibly strong start, with deeper mysteries and even stronger acting from Ferguson.
Watch new episodes of Silo Season 2 every Friday from 15 November on Apple TV+. Season 1 is also available on the streaming service.