Gettin' My Eps In: Silo S1E10
The season ends with enough intrigue to keep things going for at least a little while.
Silo
Season 1, Episode 10: “Outside”
Written by Fred Golan
Directed by Adam Bernstein
Streaming on Apple TV+
A season finale can provide the opportunity to look at where a TV series stands, try to figure out what works, and consider what might come next. The big climax of one part of the story can sort of crystallize things into place, providing some of the moments that viewers have been expecting, answering some questions, and piquing interest about future events and revelations. That’s the hope, anyway, and fortunately, the first season of Silo mostly lives up to expectations.
From the beginning, the series has been promising revelations about the nature of the characters’ plight, but really, there were probably only two ways it could have gone: either the story people were being told about the outside world being a barren, devastated landscape was a smokescreen, meant to keep the people in the silo under control, or it was true, and the hints we had been given that the outside is lush and green are the actual falsehood. And actually, the former is probably the less interesting possibility. Evil authority figures maintaining control by lying to people about the nature of the world is a pretty common idea, and it almost seemed too obvious for the plot to go in that direction. So having things go the other way seemed more likely, at least to someone like me who analyzes things more deeply than is necessary.
However, the other alternative raises even more questions, which we’ll get to momentarily. But first, let’s look at what happens in this episode and how well it fits into the plot and themes of the series. Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) has been on the run for a couple episodes, and she’s trying to make sure the truth comes out about the lies people have been told. After finally accessing the hard drive that has served as the McGuffin for most of the season, she finds a video that shows green vegetation and birds flying outside the silo. So she gets her accomplices to broadcast this on people’s screens, forcing Bernard (Tim Robbins) to perform a hard reboot of the silo’s computer systems to keep people from seeing this forbidden image.
After some more chases, Juliette is finally accosted at the bottom of the silo, where the head of Mechanical turns her in to keep Judicial from tearing everything apart and harming everyone. Bernard and Sims (Common) intend to force her to go outside, offering her some answers about what happened to her boyfriend George (Ferdinand Kingsley) if she doesn’t fight or attempt to run anymore. So she ends up complying, leading to the climactic moment in which she learns about what the outside is actually like.
In the midst of this, we get a few other character moments that may inform what will happen in the next season. Billings (Chinaza Uche), who will assume the duties of Sheriff after Juliette’s death, is outed by Sims as having “the syndrome,” but he’s apparently provided with an exception to the law, allowing him to continue serving in an authority role even though he should be forbidden to do so. I expect that this will lead to some conflicting loyalties as Billings serves as Sheriff in the future, with his tenuous status being held over his head as he attempts to do the right thing.
Juliette’s mentor Martha (Harriet Walker), an agoraphobic who hasn’t left her workshop at the bottom of the silo for 25 years, finally decides to exit her lair and potentially do something that may help Juliette. There’s some mostly-unexplained business about some heat tape that Juliette stole from IT at some point in the past and how it compares to a superior type of tape that Martha developed. It seems that Martha’s tape plays a role in how Juliette is affected by the atmosphere outside the silo, but we don’t get any definitive answers here. Instead, we may get some more intrigue related to how Martha and others may work the system in the various departments that keep the silo running, attempting to counter the authoritarian moves of Bernard and Sims.
Bernard also meets with Lukas (Avi Nash), Juliette’s potential love interest who briefly aided her, and he rules that while Lukas won’t be forced to leave the silo, he’ll be sentenced to 10 years working in the mines. Again, this seems like setup for potential plot lines in the next season, with Bernard recognizing that Lukas is too intelligent and inquisitive to remain among the general populace and raise questions about what is really going on. This fits in with another scene in which Bernard notes that Juliette should never even have been conceived due to the ongoing efforts by the ruling powers to breed any potential dissent out of the silo’s population.
But all of that is background to the real meat of the episode, which has raised some questions about the exact nature of the plan of the evil authority figures. When Juliette broadcasts the images of what things apparently look like outside the silo (it’s never clear how widespread this broadest is; did everyone see it, or was it limited to the screens of the people who monitor the silo’s hidden cameras from their panopticon-style secret lair?), Bernard orders his minions to look away and says that they should unsee what they briefly saw. It comes off almost as religious dogma, with followers being ordered to ignore anything that goes against what they have been told to believe.
However, what we learn in the episode’s final revelatory moments sort of belies that idea. While Juliette does see greenery and birds after leaving the silo, it turns out that this is a simulation projected on the screen of her spacesuit, and the landscape is actually as devastated as it had appeared to be. This raises the question of what exactly was the point of tricking the people who had left the silo. In the first episode, Rashida Jones’ character speculated that the reason people who went outside decided to “clean” by wiping off the lens of the camera that provides the silo’s residents with a view of the outside was because they hoped people would see what things were actually like out there. But that seems like a pretty elaborate scheme to accomplish something fairly mundane. Are super hi-def virtual reality simulations really necessary just to trick people during the few minutes before their deaths?
Perhaps we’ll get more exploration of these schemes and conspiracies in the second season, or maybe we’re just meant to accept that people in power will do anything and everything they can to keep everyone else under their thumbs. I expect that Juliette, as the main character of the series so far, will manage to survive, but what exactly will happen is very much up in the air. I hope it won’t turn out to be a series of nonsensical power plays, and I would definitely prefer some more exploration of the silo’s society, maybe even building toward a more democratic way of working together for the good of everyone. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m hopeful that the series will continue to be interesting and provide me with the opportunity to expound at length about my areas of interest.