‘Silo’ Season 3 Goes Out With a Bang

If for any reason over the past few years you ever felt like, “Man, it’s been hard to stick with Silo,” the season three finale made every second worth it. It was a shocking, brutal, excellent episode that perfectly paid off the season’s dual timeline story, while answering a bunch of questions and posing even more. To say more than that would be a massive spoiler, so let’s get into those massive spoilers for the season three finale of Silo, titled “Troy.” When we last left the characters in the previous episode, we saw the opening day of the silos and a mysterious nuclear explosion. Daniel and Helen, pregnant with their child, were separated and, we assume, forced to go into the silos they had been assigned: Number one for Daniel, number 18 for Helen. Unfortunately, the finale didn’t answer any of the questions about who set off the explosion, how everyone involved with the silos knew, or anything like that. But it did reveal the fate of most of those characters, in a way no one could have expected. The finale picks up hundreds of years in the future with Daniel waking up from some sort of cryo sleep. Only, they don’t call him Daniel. They call him “Troy.” And Troy is awakened by Victor (the doctor who helped his sister all those years ago) to help with a problem. There is an insurrection in silo 17, and Troy needs to figure out how to stop it. This is the event that Steve Zahn’s character experienced as a child, several decades before the events of the main timeline of the show. Instantly, as a viewer, we’re shook. How do all of those people we saw enter the silo hundreds of years before look exactly the same? Why is Daniel not Daniel anymore? We don’t know exactly, but apparently, Victor’s memory juice is not just working. It’s thriving. Troy goes to operations to try to fix the problem, and he runs into his sister Charlotte, though they call her “Susan.” He doesn’t recognize her. She doesn’t recognize him. And, eventually, Troy/Daniel is forced to dismiss Susan/Charlotte when she refuses to act out Troy’s plan to massacre almost 10,000 people. But he does it and is rewarded for it. Meanwhile, something is bugging Troy. Not the thousands of people he just killed to keep some silo secrets we don’t understand. He’s bothered by visions of a woman. A woman we know to be his wife, Helen. Troy asks Victor about her, and Victor says he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. However, we know Victor knew Helen, and we see that he has a file full of proof that Troy has asked him about her dozens of times. They are purposely keeping this from him. Speaking of Helen, though, we’re led to believe she ended up in silo 18, right? The same silo our show is set in? The same silo where the Pez dispenser Daniel gave her years ago shows up? The silo of Juliette Nichols, who sure seems to share that same rambunctious charm Helen had, doesn’t she? Hmmm. We wonder. Fast forward a few decades, picking up events from the end of the previous episode and finally bringing the two timelines from this season together. It’s revealed that Bernard and Camille’s suspicions from the penultimate episode are true. The all-knowing AI that gives them their orders is not a computer but a person. In this case, Victor, who is about to kill every single person in silo 18 for setting off some bombs. Camille begs him for time, which he gives, and ultimately we learn that Camille turned on her superiors and helped the rebels cap the failsafe pipe. It took all season to figure it out, but the pipe that would’ve allowed silo one to kill everyone with gas was finally located and capped, saving everyone’s lives. © Apple TV When Victor asks Camille why she turned her back on her superiors, she says it’s because she couldn’t answer a simple question. Why would they have the power to kill everyone? Victor doesn’t answer. Victor’s answer is to wake up Troy, which is how we learn it’s been 35 years since he killed all those people at silo 17. Apparently, silo one has a cryo process, and the people there go “on” and “off shift” every few years, which is how they age so slowly. Or, at least, that’s the implication. Senator Thurman, who runs the whole thing, looks a little older, but most everyone else is close to the age they were when it all started. Anyway, Troy is awake again and ready to figure out how to kill everyone in silo 18 when Juliette and her friends all approach the mysterious doorway down by the silo digger. This, apparently, is off limits, and Troy takes over the omniscient voice. He threatens the group, but eventually they reach a compromise—as long as they don’t try to contact any other silos, there will be no safeguard attempts. Everyone will be safe. Juliette agrees. But does she really? Of course not. This is Juliette we’re talking about, and she hatches a plan to not just save everyone in her silo, but all the silos. The one thing she feels silo one won’t be expecting is a full-on assault, and that’s what she wants to do. Meanwhile, we learn that Victor killed himself after the events earlier in the episode, and Troy gets a posthumous email from him. Victor reveals that he felt relief that the people of silo 18 stopped the failsafe, implying maybe he didn’t buy into their mission as much as he had for the past few centuries. That’s why he took his life. But before he went, he had one more piece of info for Troy—a name: Helen Drew. And, it seems, the name certainly triggered something. It would, considering she was your wife and the mother of a child you never got to meet. So the tables are set for the fourth and final season of Silo. Juliette Nichols is ready to take silo 18 out into the world and save the rest of the silos. The leaders in silo one, who have been around for centuries maintaining this mysterious balance, may have started to see some cracks. And there are certainly implications that Juliette, or someone, in silo 18 has some relation to Daniel, aka Troy, one of the top leaders. And yet, there are still so many questions that it’s almost silly. Who set off the explosion in the past? How did everyone know about it? Why did they do it? Why did they set up a system that they’d rather people die than communicate with each other? Can they repopulate the world at some point? Is there even a world left out there? What is the ultimate plan? Why isn’t this cryo sleep technology being used for better things? Again, so many questions. But this is Silo. And we’d have it no other way. The season three finale proved that even though Silo is always gonna have us asking questions, when we get the answers, it will be worth it. We just have to be patient. Here are a few other things we wondered: The Senator says that Charlotte/Susan can’t be punished for her insubordination because her skills as a pilot will be crucial at the end of the mission. What does that mean? What is the ending? The silos were the brainchild of Per Stensen (Colin Hanks) and Senator Rosalind Thurman, right? Well, the senator is still alive, kicking, and running the whole thing. But where is Stensen? And, yes, we know Silo is based on a series of books, and the answers are out there and accessible. But we’re talking about the show and prefer to experience the story that way. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.