Ask any Silo fan, and they’ll tell you: you really need to be watching Silo right now. As it barrels towards its Season 3 finale, Apple TV’s sci-fi smash is paying off years of storytelling investment, delivering the kind of massive moments that you’re dying to discuss with… well, whoever else you can find that’s watching Silo. You’re not? Why?
The show gets its big hooks in right from Episode 1: what, exactly, lies outside the Silo? The show – based on Hugh Howey’s Wool books – is driven by such gigantic questions. We follow a small subsection of humanity (roughly 10,000 people) living deep below ground in a colossal purpose-built silo; they don’t know exactly how long their people have been living down there, or why. Long enough that none remember what the world outside used to be. Nobody really knows what exists beyond the front door, and anyone who leaves can’t come back. With one final season to go, those massive questions are starting to be answered (don’t worry, no spoilers here), and it is making for staggering viewing.
While the series starts by getting viewers to contemplate what might be up there in the outside world – big mysteries that become the engine of the whole story – it then spends much of its time ploughing downwards; digging deep into the machinations of the Silo itself. It gets into the minutiae: exploring the rules and regulations that keep the society – and the giant metal structure – working, the fascistic demands on its rulers to quell disruption, and the inner dramas of its people as they live their confined lives. The show’s obsession with meticulous detail gives the world a lived-in authenticity; thought has been given to every facet of the Silo dwellers’ existence, with extensive tangible sets (give that staircase a raise, please) that make the whole thing feel real.
It has the clockwork precision of early Game Of Thrones.
The complex ecosystem of the Silo is a setting just as much as it is a central mystery. Season 1 is, primarily, a cop drama, with Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliette Nichols (one of the most satisfyingly capable characters on TV right now) investigating what happened to her dead boyfriend; the Silo itself is a dystopian backdrop, both incidental and integral to the human story. Because, as soon as anyone starts digging at the little queries, it inevitably leads back to the big ones: what in the (possibly apocalyptic) world is going on?
It’s this cause-and-effect between the daily workings of the world and the gigantic reveals that makes Silo so exciting. It has the clockwork precision of early Game Of Thrones, spending ample time laying the groundwork and investing you in the human dramas, so that when the sweeping story tides inevitably shift, you feel how seismic it is. And you’re given enough knowledge of how things work to start to imagine what comes next.
So far, Silo has already dealt some major shocks, none of which we’ll reveal here. After spending most of Season 1 going deep into the bowels of the Silo, the finale delivers a revelation that changes the game. And Season 2 follows up on that knowledge in a deeply human way, delivering big ideas through individual characters who you come to love and care for.
Now, the final stretch of Season 3 is filling in some of the big blanks, while creating whole new questions in the process – and, again, anchoring it all in the stories of people. It’s an idea-filled show that never lets its ideas become abstract, because you’re always feeling it through the impact it’s having on the characters. Season 3, Episode 9 (‘Farewell’) delivered both visual and emotional spectacle, hitting as hard as it does because of the 29 hours of story preceding it.
With only one season to go, long-time Silo dwellers are having their faith rewarded. Except, after all this time – and all that wondering of what lies beyond – saying goodbye might prove to be the toughest test of all.
Silo is streaming now on Apple TV
