Silo Season 3 review: Apple TV+ thriller surpasses its previous seasons

Full text

This is a spoiler-free review of Silo Season 3. The series premieres on Apple TV on Friday, July 3.

As Silo returns for its third season, the Apple TV sci-fi thriller ups the ante and improves on the previous two seasons, continuing on as one of the strongest series of the "Streaming Wars Era" glut of content. These new 10 episodes are equally split between the new rebellious struggles of Silo 18 and the Before Times, in which a junior congressman and a reporter find themselves caught up in a pre- and post-Silos game of shadow conspiracies — and it keeps things fresh, informative, and emotional. It's not presented the usual way, with entire episodes devoted to the flashbacks. They're in every episode, with the story often alternating back and forth from scene to scene.

Silo has always been an excellent mystery show. It's a dystopian noir of sorts, dealing with a Dark City-style containment lorded over by string-pulling "omniscient forces." There are the larger questions about what happened to the world and why everyone's in a damn Silo but also smaller cases involving murder, theft, betrayal, smuggling, and re-written history. The show is claustrophobic by design, but that risks becoming visually stale after two seasons of dark, dank adventuring. The Season 3 flashbacks to Daniel (Ashley Zukerman) and Helen (Jessica Henwick) offer a glorious reprieve from the dim, murky Silo sleuthing.

We last saw Daniel and Helen at the very end of Season 2 , where, sometime in the wake of a dirty bomb explosion in D.C., Daniel finds himself on a non-date with Helen, who's after answers about the attack. We, of course, assumed there would be more to this story in Season 3, giving us the backstory we need about the world leading up to the current less-than-ideal Silo situation, but the decision was made to give these two — and other flashback characters played by Jessica Brown Findlay, Laura Innes, Matt Craven, and Colin Hanks — an entire half of Season 3 and it works incredibly well. The conflict back (or forward?) in Silo 18 remains crucial, but it's this Before Times storyline that wins the season. It's also the reason why the season finale contains some very brutal, upsetting content — in a Damn Good TV way.

Season 2 came close to losing its footing, separating the powerhouse presence of Rebecca Ferguson's Juliette from Silo 18 for the entire run. It introduced a new Silo, new characters, and new lore while also having the previous supporting players in 18 do a ton of heavy lifting with their own story so they could become fuller characters we could grow to care about.

This pays off in big ways in Season 3 since Juliette may be back home, but her memory's gone. What did she experience outside? Why did she need to get back to 18 so desperately? Well, she's clueless. Don't worry, it's only televisually frustrating for a few episodes and it's actually a huge part of the new Silo 18 crucible. And thanks to the noble efforts of Season 2, Knox, Shirley, Billings, Robert Sims, Kennedy, and more are there to fill the void as Juliette walks around in a memory vacuum.

Camille Sims (Alexandria Riley), who was chosen as the new head of IT by the Blue Voice last year, has flipped from rebel to overseer, finding herself in a very Bernard-style predicament of having to make hard choices. Husband Robert (Common) is now in the reversed position of possibly undermining her, which was the way Camille operated with him previously. The season unspools in a very satisfying manner, balancing its questions and answers. If things momentarily settle in the Silo, something heated up in the past that propels the story forward.

A ton of answers flood our way this year, essentially changing the show. For two seasons, we've been discovering things alongside Juliette and the others. We're now being given information they don't have, and in doing so, our viewing and participating role shifts. As Silo 18 deals with its (hopefully) final conflict involving a sacrificial numbers game — either involving a poisonous gas "safeguard" or a wiping of everyone's memory via the water supply — we're entrusted with holding information, even about the goings on in Silo 1, that our characters can't yet touch. There's still plenty of room for characters falling in love, mini mysteries, a handful of nice redemption arcs, and a bit of commentary about how billionaires are basically so sequestered from actual society that they have no interest in humankind.

What should be the tipping point for sheer survival as a priority? Who are we if we're just husks that get rebooted? What does existence mean for the middle generations who are never meant to go outside? These are the questions raised by Silo 18's last big blowout. In a very Snowpiercer-esque manner, we've learned that in the world of Silo, rebellions against the strict tyrannical rules is predictable and cyclical... so what does it mean to break a cycle?

Season 3 creates a palpable backdrop of clashing ideologies and, as always, Rebecca Ferguson serves as the story's formidable fulcrum in a charismatic mix of empathy, courage, and humility. Even when Juliette is struggling to form new connections with people she's forgotten, she pushes forward with mesmerizing determination.