Review: Silo, “Who Are You?” | Season 3, Episode 1

Hey free subscribers—welcome back to our coverage of Apple TV’s Silo, which begins its third season ahead of a fourth and final outing. As always, this first review is free for all, but subsequent reviews and discussions will be exclusively for paid subscribers.

When last year’s finale of Silo concluded with a flashback to a time similar to our own, it became apparent the series was entering a new era. Each finale of this show has expanded the scope of the show in memorable ways, beginning with Juliette first stepping out of the Silo at the end of season one, and leaving behind the futuristic setting was an especially bold turn.

If it wasn’t already clear, “Who Are You?” confirms that flashback wasn’t an anomaly; this will be a prominent storyline throughout season three, perhaps along the lines of last season’s Silo 17 story. It’s an intriguing shift, both in structure and in genre: until that strange, metallic technology takes down Charlotte’s squadron during their strike on an Iranian nuclear facility, there’s nothing sci-fi at all about the story. This is a political drama about a war brewing with Iran in a recognizable version of America, and that type of show is very different from what we’ve been watching.

And so far, it mostly works. Ashley Zukerman and Jessica Brown Findlay have solid sibling chemistry as Daniel and Charlotte “Charles” Keene, established efficiently during their one conversation of the episode. (They do a good job selling the casual sibling bickering and sense of humor that never goes away, even during a grave conversation.) Freshman Georgia congressman Daniel makes for a somewhat plain but likable anchor for the story: he has a personal connection to Senator Thurman’s Iran Committee given his sister’s naval aviator post, but also an army engineer past and a journalist love interest, either of which could offer clues as to his larger significance in this story.

For now, this is an engaging enough new set of characters. And if the storyline’s connection to the Silos is still somewhat tenuous, that just creates more intrigue for how exactly this all came together. Nuclear war makes sense as the origin for the Silos, but there’s a reason we’re learning more about the particulars, including that oily substance on the instrumental panels. Presumably this story will eventually intersect or shed light on the story we’ve already followed for two seasons prior to now.

That’s already starting to happen on some level; it feels notable that Thurman praises Daniel’s old idea to replace levees with tunnels (along with his role in inventing a drill that doesn’t disturb the soil above), given the big conversation about Silo tunnels in this same episode. Memory suppression drugs, too, show up in both storylines: Charlotte has no memory of her brother at the time of the final flashback, and Juliette struggles to claw back her memories throughout the entire episode. The parallel is right there in the title of the episode.

The majority of “Who Are You?” still takes place in our home Silo far in the future, and the cutting between the two settings does feel a bit jarring, though each storyline is engaging enough that it’s not a huge problem. Most of the Silo 18 story is dedicated to doling out exposition about the three-month time jump since last season. Juliette is currently mayor, despite her severe case of amnesia; Camille Sims is head of IT and therefore tasked by the Legacy with zapping Juliette’s memories of Silo 17 and her friends there; Bernard is dead, suffocated by Robert Sims to finish the job started by that “box of fire” air lock; Sheriff Billings is rewriting portions of the Pact, in the process legalizing pulleys in order to make reconstruction easier post-rebellion; there’s a new weekly Council meeting made up of level reps and department heads. Oh, yeah, and there’s a group of leftover rebels called the Outsiders who want to go outside.

It’s a peaceful time again for the Silo, relatively—which means, of course, the same old intense suppression of the truth. Still, the status quo has shifted enough that this premiere doesn’t feel like a retread. The new council meetings provide an easy venue for Silo’s usual town-hall-style discussions. And Juliette’s effort to bring back her memories works well as a way of reintroducing the protagonist to a story that she sat out for large stretches of season two. (Rebecca Ferguson captures the character’s confusion and frustration with her own mind pretty well.) Camille, too, is a whole new person this season; it’s like becoming head of IT turns you into the villain by default. She’s the puppet master to Juliette’s puppet right now, and it should be deeply satisfying to see Juliette realize how much Camille has been controlling her. What would doubling her dose mean when she has already lost so much of herself?

A number of other major characters are still unaccounted for—Lukas Kyle, Patrick Kennedy, and Martha Walker, not to mention the Silo 17 crew—but Silo has always been deliberate about when and how it chooses to reintroduce various cast members. That’s not to say it always lands in the right place, of course. If there’s one element of “Who Are You?” that feels a bit out of place, it’s not the flashbacks. It’s the sudden introduction of new Silo 18 characters Ed Harwood and Orla Kent: Head of Mines and shadow to the Head of Supply, respectively. They have beef related to Orla taking Ed’s daughter’s job, but we’re otherwise given very little context for this new interpersonal conflict and how it relates to the larger story of this season. And introducing Orla’s boyfriend in another scene doesn’t clarify much.

Most of Silo’s issues over time have related to those structural choices, and the show still hasn’t necessarily figured out the ideal balance in its bifurcated narrative. The flashback scenes in “Who Are You?” left me craving more, and so did the Silo scenes. Still, after season two became a little too convoluted in dragging out its mysteries and sidelining the main character, it’s good to feel some genuine curiosity again.

Stray observations

• Who’s the old man Charlotte was avoiding?
• Shirley treating Juliette with total coldness irritated me, but I guess it’s in character for someone mainly characterized by one-note anger and an extra-hard exterior. The moment when she crumbles and cries in Knox’s arms is a step in the right direction, though. And I really like how most of the other characters react to Juliette’s amnesia, including Knox and Hank.
• Why does Sims confront Juliette about taking his family hostage when he knows she doesn’t even remember? I guess it shows how he rationalizes what he and Camille are doing to her.

Book spoiler observations

• So, we’ve diverged quite a bit from the book plot, especially in the Silo storyline, and … I don’t mind it at all. Dust was easily my least favorite of the Silo novels, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the show borrows elements while also building out a lot of its own new paths.
• I like Shift more than Dust, and so far I don’t mind that we’re dropping in a bit earlier in the timeline for this telling. Is nanotech to blame for Charlotte’s squadron getting taken down? How much of it all is engineered by Thurman?