While there’s no shortage of under-seen TV shows that need evangelizing, the one I constantly try to push toward anyone looking for a recommendation is Apple TV’s “Silo.” A mystery-box sci-fi series about a future society that lives entirely underground, it resembles, in the best ways, the J.J. Abrams-style mystery-box shows of the early aughts. It’s character-forward, but also stocked with more than enough WTF mysteries to keep it moving through two wild seasons so far. It’s the type of show that someone will probably call a “hidden gem” a few years from now.
Season 3, part of an expected four-season run, continues that character-centric approach while also providing many of the answers that the first two seasons teased. That it does so largely in the back half of the ten-episode season might strain the patience of many viewers. But even with a sluggish start, the final five-episode run is one of the best things I’ve seen on television in some time.
However, creator Graham Yost (“Justified”) and his writing team prefer to reset the board in those initial episodes. When Season 2 ended, a revolt had played out in Silo 18, with the lower levels turning against those in charge, including head of IT Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) and his underling Robert Sims (Common), in the hopes of breaking free of the silo. The uprising was spurred by Juliette Nichols’ (Rebecca Ferguson) decision not to clean at the end of Season 1. But after a season spent in the abandoned Silo 17, her return in the final moments of Season 2 ended the revolution and led to Sims’ wife, Camille (Alexandria Riley), being installed as the new head of IT. The final shot of Season 2 flashed back to pre-silo days, where Daniel (Ashley Zukerman), a young congressman, and Helen (Jessica Henwick), a reporter, met to discuss a dirty bomb from Iran that had blown up the Capitol.
If that final scene hinted at a new direction for the show, Yost nevertheless keeps the split focus that structured Season 2, this time replacing Juliette’s story in Silo 17 with Daniel and Helen’s story set in an alternate present day. Most episodes alternate between Silo 18 and Washington, D.C. But at least initially, neither narrative is especially propulsive. A decision to have Juliette suffer memory loss, and the even stranger decision to withhold the reasons for that memory loss for a few episodes, means that Ferguson is forced to wander around the silo while everyone essentially recounts the plot of the previous seasons. Even the fact that she has been elected mayor, for reasons unexplained until the middle of the season, makes little structural sense beyond discombobulating the viewer.
Similarly, it’s perhaps not exactly a mystery why the silos were created, especially after the dirty-bomb reveal in our present day, but Daniel and Helen spend a bit too much time wandering around D.C. in a fog, trying to figure out why everyone around them is so secretive. That thread is furthered by Daniel’s sister, Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay), a fighter pilot who suffers from a memory loss similar to Juliette’s.
While the parallels between the narratives are interesting, they also become repetitive and strained. It’s only in Episode 5, when the story takes a major turn — one Apple TV unfortunately included in its list of spoilers to avoid — that “Silo” snaps back into being one of TV’s best shows. That final run of episodes, where much more is revealed about the infrastructure and reasoning behind the silos, taps into the propulsiveness that carried the first two seasons. It’s one of the best stretches of episodes I’ve seen in some time and, unlike other mystery-box shows, actually delivers on the answers it has long been promising.
Further, like many similar shows, “Silo” has evolved past being just a star vehicle for Ferguson. While she remains incredible as Nichols, especially as she balances her newfound role as mayor with a wide-eyed confusion about everything happening around her, the show has also become a vehicle for its supporting characters. Juliette’s friends Knox (Shane McRae) and Shirley (Remmie Milner) are given much more to do here, fleshing out two characters who were often peripheral in earlier seasons. The same goes for Zukerman and Henwick, perhaps the biggest names added to the cast this time around. While their plot is largely divorced from the rest of the show, their narrative slowly becomes more engaging as they are forced on the run from shadowy forces. Cliché? A bit, but the two actors sell the material quite well.
All of this does feel like a setup for an already-shot fourth and final season, which, if the final episode of Season 3 is any indication, will see a different kind of revolution unfold. Still, even if half of Season 3 may test some patience, “Silo”’s back half will remind the already committed that Yost and company know what they are doing and have an endgame in mind. [B+]
