Silo Season-Finale Recap: A Sort of Homecoming

There was a moment in last week’s Silo episode that, to me, exemplified everything remarkable about Rebecca Ferguson’s performance this season. It happens when Eater — sorry, I mean “Hope” — is telling her sad origin story to Juliette while they’re rummaging through apartments, looking for clues that might lead them to the Vault’s door code. Juliette is not unsympathetic to Hope’s hard past, and yet … she really doesn’t have time for this. And her face — especially her eyes — reflects it. Juliette’s in a state of perpetual anxious distraction, even as the other person in the room is pouring her heart out.

This has been the mode Ferguson has played Juliette in all season, whether the character is managing Jimmy’s erratic behavior or she’s trying to talk the Silo 17 scavengers into letting her complete her mission. Some actors tend to play moments, focusing only on the scene in front of them and not what came before. Not Ferguson. Her Juliette carries the weight of season one with her into season two, and as soon as she hears from Jimmy that Silo 18 is in danger of utter social collapse and potential slaughter, Ferguson never stops playing the character’s desperate sense of urgency. She has to get back immediately. She needs everyone in Silo 17 to stop wasting her time.

The Silo finale is an intense, action-packed affair, mostly dealing with exactly the kind of mayhem in Silo 18 that Juliette has been dreading. The episode builds to an unexpected climax and a brutal cliffhanger before ending with a “whoa” coda that comes seemingly out of nowhere. Ferguson deserves a lot of credit for putting some smaller, more emotional, more human notes into a heady mix. Sometimes genre TV shows rely too much on characters just shouting the stakes at the audience and expecting us to care. But it’s easy to feel Juliette’s worry. She doesn’t need to say much.

Most of the Juliette scenes in this episode have to do with her preparing to leave while also coming to terms with what might await her in Silo 18. Jimmy has a convenient flash of memory about what “the Safeguard” is, recalling that his parents figured out how to prevent a mass extermination-causing gas pipe from doing what it was designed to do during a rebellion. Jimmy also — sweetly — tests out the air-tightness of Juliette’s excursion suit after his father’s suit turns out to be riddled with holes. The two of them share a couple of awkward attempts at hugging as she explains that she can’t promise she’ll return but that she’ll sure try.

I’d argue that Juliette’s exasperation with Jimmy and the other Silo 17 dwellers throughout the season is what makes her gestures of kindness in the finale so touching. She never loses her focus on urgently getting back to Silo 18. But she does recognize that the people she’s met in Silo 17 need something from her before she goes, and she tries to give it to them. That’s how she gets “Eater” to reveal her real name.

This partly inspires a rousing speech, which happens after Audrey once again blames Hope for something going wrong. Juliette tells everyone that with the Vault open, they have the resources to live together, while back in Silo 18, everyone Juliette loves — including her father — could be on the verge of dying, if not dead already. “Look at all you have,” she says, adding, “Be angry with each other, not at each other.”

Juliette’s anxiety over what’s happening back home intensifies when Silo 17 shakes from a huge boom outside. The source of that sound? A devastating explosion — triggered by Juliette’s own father, working with Mechanical — which has destroyed two whole levels of stairs.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s hard not to, given that so much of what happens in Silo 18 this week consists of lurching reversals, where what’s happening proves to be part of larger plans we weren’t privy to.

Let’s take the big plot twists and character beats one by one:

Walker: For the first half of the episode, we see the rebels continuing to discuss their plans in Walker’s apartment, where we know a hidden camera is broadcasting everything to Bernard. Walker seemingly suffers a major embarrassment when the whole crew is arrested and she’s thanked in front of them (and her ex-wife!) for her service. But then! While meeting with Bernard, Walker reveals that people in Mechanical have a sign language they use to communicate over the clamor of the generator. It turns out that she’s been secretly keeping Knox informed about what’s been going on the whole time.

Billings: After Bernard tells the deputies that the sheriff is responsible for leading the rebellion, they have him arrested and construct a makeshift jail in a cafeteria, as instructed. But then! The deputies, as they had planned all along, free Billings and the rebels after turning in their badges en masse.

Knox: The rebels, led by Knox, announce their intention to distract the raiders until they can wire up an explosive, which they will then detonate, trapping the raiders in the Down Deep and forcing Bernard to negotiate. All of this goes according to plan. But then! Patrick Kennedy convinces a large subset of the rebels that before Juliette went out, he saw an image of a verdant green landscape outside. He wants them all to leave the silo, potentially triggering the Safeguard.

Lukas and Sims: Having learned about the Safeguard from the tunnel’s mysterious voice (identified in the captions as “the Algorithm”), Lukas believes everyone in Silo 18 is doomed. He resigns his shadowship and goes to spend his final hours with his mom. But then! Bernard makes Robert Sims the new shadow and gives him the code to the Vault, which Lukas encourages Sims to go see while there’s still time. When Sims’ family enters, the Algorithm greets them and is reassured to hear that they want to save Silo 18. But then (again)! The Algorithm tells Robert and his son to leave the room so the voice can talk to Camille.

Bernard: Convinced the Safeguard is about to be deployed, Bernard grabs his own secret suit. He sits alone and stews for a while, with a gun in his hand. But then! On the view screens, everyone sees Juliette walking into the crater, where she symbolically cleans the camera before raising this warning sign: “NOT SAFE DO NOT COME OUT.”

I don’t want to give the impression that Juliette is responsible for all the emotional and exciting moments in this finale. Her dad has a strong scene, handing his watch to Deputy Hank to pass along to Juliette before Dr. Pete completes his suicide mission and blows up the stairs. The scene where Walker reveals that she duped Bernard is a humdinger, too, including the moment when she counts down to the explosion … and nothing happens. (The bomb detonates a few seconds later after Bernard sarcastically says, “That was dramatic.”)

But Juliette anchors the episode in the moving scenes in Silo 17 and in the gripping final moments. Juliette struggles to open the Silo 18 door with a crowbar, only to see the door open at Bernard’s command … and then to see Bernard waiting at the bottom of the stairs, all suited up and carrying his gun. They talk briefly about what the Safeguard is, why it might be deployed, and by whom. (Bernard: “I know who, but I don’t know why, and I don’t fucking care.” Juliette: “I think I figured something out.”) Then Juliette wrestles them both into the airlock before it closes. The season ends with them facing possible doom from the airlock’s cleansing wall of fire.

Dramatic, right? The season could’ve ended there, and Silo fans would still be talking about the implications during the long off-season.

Instead, we get one more scene, set in Washington D.C. (!) in what looks to be close to our present day (!!). There, a freshman Georgia congressman is on a date with a Post reporter that turns into an opportunity for her to grill him about a recent Iranian dirty bomb explosion and whether the U.S. plans to retaliate. The scene is fascinating and entertaining and gains in resonance when the congressman abruptly leaves after giving the reporter a cheap gift he picked up at a convenience store. It’s the rubber duck Pez dispenser that will later be a relic in Silo 18.

How does a novelty candy end up in a post-apocalyptic bunker hundreds of years later? That tale must wait until season three, alas.

I might be as jittery and preoccupied as Juliette until then.

The Down Deep

• How many days passed between the moment Juliette stepped out of Silo 18 and the moment she returned? With no sun underground to track the passing of days, it’s hard to nail it down precisely. (And, of course, Juliette was passed out for a while with an infection.) If I had to venture a guess, I’d say this season covered maybe a week?

• Jimmy’s Vault contains so many wonders: pop-up books, nature recordings, canned pineapple. It’s important to remember, too, that Juliette has never been in Silo 18’s Vault and has never seen so many relics in one place. Once again, I hail Rebecca Ferguson, who subtly conveys the character’s fascination with all this stuff — while also showing how Juliette won’t let it become a distraction.

• And that wraps Silo season two, folks! There seemed to be more buzz around the show this year, which I hope carries over into a season three that — based on this episode’s coda — should be wild.