The first season of Silo It ended on a huge cliffhanger. The Apple TV Plus series, an adaptation of Hugh Howey's trilogy of post-apocalyptic novels, tells the story of the remnants of humanity, who live underground in silos designed to protect them from a poisoned planet. Season 1 had the feel of a small-town mystery, when Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson), a mechanic turned sheriff, stumbled upon a secret that completely upended her worldview. Her quest to uncover that mystery eventually led her outside the protective walls of the silo, which is right where the season ended. SiloThe second season continues and ramps things up by raising the stakes. and raising a whole host of new mysteries to obsess over.
This piece contains spoilers, including details of SiloThe end of season 1.
First, a little reminder of how we got here. The show is set sometime in the future, and the silo is home to a carefully controlled population of 10,000 residents, who follow a strict set of rules seemingly designed to keep them safe from the grim landscape outside. That landscape is ever-present in huge displays inside the silo, and certain residents are punished by being forced outside, while everyone else watches as they walk into the scorched world and, a few moments later, inevitably collapse.
But after reluctantly taking on the role of sheriff, Juliette discovered that the outside might not be so dangerous after all. A complex series of events leads to Juliette herself leaving. But she does not collapse, and her steps over the hill into a vast expanse set the silo on fire.
Season 2 begins right at the moment she takes those steps and creates two parallel threads. On the one hand, there is Juliette, who discovers that her house is just one of many silos. Finally, he heads to a seemingly abandoned one not far from his own. The road there is full of corpses; Step over dead bodies and crush some skulls along the way. The new silo appears empty and much of it is flooded, although somehow the electricity is still working. After investigating and meeting the sole survivor (played by Steve Zahn, a wonderful new addition to the cast), you quickly learn that this silo died due to a violent uprising. And what started? Someone getting out and surviving. So, despite all the initial effort to get to this new place, he sets to work to get back.
It should not surprise us, then, that things are not going well at home. Tensions rise when Mayor Bernard (Tim Robbins) uses every trick at his disposal in an attempt to quell a rebellion from below. Meanwhile, Juliette's friends, spurred on by her bold steps outside, are rightly convinced that they are being lied to about the reality of their world. There are violent clashes on the huge spiral staircases that connect all the levels of the silo and all kinds of clandestine meetings between different factions. The tight confines of the silo make many of these moments feel claustrophobic and intense.
What quickly becomes clear is that the silos are not just arks destined to save humanity from a post-apocalyptic wasteland. They are also extremely complex psychological experiments. And those two things go hand in hand; It seems that every strange or unexpected thing that happens in the silo is actually part of an intricate manipulative plan to keep the population under control and prevent a deadly disaster.
That became obvious towards the end of the first season, and the complexity increases here. There are multiple layers of deception and mystery, which are compounded by the fact that no one in the silo really knows the full picture. They are simply doing the best they can with the information they have. Even seemingly small revelations, such as the quality of a certain type of tape, can have major implications.
For the first half of season 2 (I've seen five of the 10 episodes so far), this makes for a compelling watch that constantly expands on what it did Silo so cool initially. Just scale it up. And as the mysteries change and grow, so does the tension.
SiloThe second season begins streaming on Apple TV Plus on November 15.
