Silo‘s first season set up a complex story about human survivors who were being lied to and gaslit by the leaders they chose. In a way, creator Graham Yost gaslit the viewers: The first episode focused on Rashida Jones’ and David Oyelowo’s characters, when the season revolved mostly around engineer Juliette Nichols, played by Rebecca Ferguson. But as the second season begins, Juliette is outside the silo, somehow roaming the toxic planet much longer than anyone else who’s gone outside, while the situation in Silo 18 gets worse.
SILO SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A boy with a torch runs through a darkened silo.
The Gist: A group of silo residents are trapped at the bottom of the silo, by the generator. When the leaders (Kosha Engler, Ross McCall) get a note from engineering that the generator will be flooded, they have no choice. The massive group attacks the people holding higher ground, and the battle is brutal. They emerge victorious, though, and decide to open the hatch to the outside and walk out with no protection.
Many, many years later, Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson), a former engineer and sheriff in Silo 18, is walking the toxic surface of the Earth, protected by homemade tape her mentor Martha Walker (Harriet Walter) made for her suit. She notices other silos and walks towards the nearest one. To get inside, though, she has to walk over the skeletons of hundreds if not thousands of bodies, who pushed to get outside after winning their battle and almost immediately died.
As she tries to make her way through the silo, following noises that may indicate that there are people alive down there, she thinks about her childhood. Young Juliette (Amelie Child-Villier) works with Shirley (Ida Brooke) on the recycling line. She recently started living with Martha, and she’s been showing her how to revive machines that would otherwise be junked. Repairing a toy dog helped re-bond her with Shirley, from whom she learned how to escape even the darkest, most desperate situations.
With both of these people in mind, Juliette improvises bridges to get her across gaps in the walkways; she also pulls up hanging bodies to use the pieces of rope. When she gets down to a door at the bottom, she thinks she’s alone… but she’s not.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Silo definitely has Snowpiercer vibes, but it can be compared to any number of dystopian, post-apocalyptic dramas.
Our Take: Silo creator Graham Yost took a bit of a chance temporarily leaving Silo 18 behind in the Season 2 premiere of Silo to follow Juliette as she tries to figure out if anyone is alive in the new silo she found. He will of course come back to 18, and see if the populace rebels against the lies perpetrated by Mayor Holland (Tim Robbins) and Judicial head Robert Sims (Common). But the first episode is all about what Juliette is doing.
Ferguson manages to pull off a mostly silent performance, able to communicate Juliette’s ingenuity and determination without saying much. All the information that feeds into that determination is seen in the flashbacks, where we get a good idea of just how good she is at solving problems in ingenious ways.
Now, the implication that she’s not alone down there will be fascinating. We don’t know much about the man (Steve Zahn) that’s behind that thick door and doesn’t want to come out, but we’d expect him to come out soon and the two of them will try to figure out who else has survived. We’re also curious to see how he got to where he is, given the fact that the silo was open to the elements for what could have been decades.
Given how complex the series is, Silo is definitely a show that requires patience. But Yost has proven in the past that when he goes off on a creative side trip on one of his shows, he not only ties it into the main story but doesn’t stay on that side trip for very long.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: The man behind the thick door threatens to kill Juliette if she opens it.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Amelie Child-Villiers as the preteen Juliette, who seems to have some pretty good mechanical ability for someone so young.
Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find, mainly because the episode didn’t have a whole lot of dialogue.
Our Call: STREAM IT. It feels like after Silo‘s complex first season finale, Graham Yost has given viewers a chance to ease into Season 2 with the single-minded season premiere. For a series this dense in story, that’s not altogether a bad thing.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Silo’ Season 2 On Apple TV+, Where Juliette Finds A New Silo While The People She Left Behind Continue To Get Gaslit appeared first on Decider.
