Review: Silo, “Troy” | Season 3, Episode 10

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I’ve dinged Silo a lot this season—and every season—for its strange pacing. This is a show that often holds off for as long as possible before moving the plot forward, using devices like an amnesia story or a two-episode-long road trip to stretch out the long search for answers. Then, when the plot does finally get moving, it usually lurches forward a little too fast, without the adequate time for us to understand the impact on the characters or feel the impact of the reveals ourselves.

But in “Troy,” we also see one of the few benefits of this method of storytelling. The sheer mind-blowing discombobulation of that 26-minute cold open wouldn’t be possible without the show playing so coy about Silo 1 up to this point. There’s so much to process here, from the casual cryo-sleep reveal to the specific roles of each of the flashback characters: Thurman as Madam Director, Victor as founder (and typically the voice of the Algorithm), Charlotte as senior drone commander (now using the name “Susan”), and Daniel as a specialist awoken occasionally to deal with emergencies (now using the name “Troy”).

It’s riveting stuff, especially for how it ties in the Silo 17 rebellion we witnessed at the beginning of season two—a rebellion that we now know was brutally culled by one of the co-protagonists of this season. Troy is a different man than Daniel, colder and more ruthless; it’s very difficult to imagine the man we’ve been following this year ordering a massacre like this, and without much regret. But there are glimpses of the man we know, just like Juliette in those first four episodes without her memories, to make this character feel like more than just Daniel’s evil twin.

That’s not to say this finale singlehandedly made every act of obfuscation worth it. As with “Farewell” last week, much of the episode made me wonder why we couldn’t have gotten to this point sooner. What happened in Silo 1 leading up to this point? Will we ever see flashbacks to the early days in the Silos, with Victor and Thurman convincing Daniel to accept a new role, and with Helen off in another Silo, pregnant and potentially entering her own hibernation? Why not include any of that in the lead-up to this finale? Think about how much time this season spent on diversions, on sluggishly moving characters from point A to point B, when there was so much other rich material to explore.