Silo: season 3 is here! Finally, the weight is over, and I’m going to tell you right now that this is the best season so far. Seasons 1 and 2 have been building toward these moments when all will be revealed. There’s a line from each season that keeps getting quoted over and over and over; it’s part of the Pact…It’s what they say when somebody wishes to go out. We don’t know why we are here – we do not know when it will be safe to go outside – we only know that day is not this day! It’s the line that creates the mystery box within the show, and it’s in this season that the mystery boxes are solved. When I received my screeners, I zipped through season 3 in 2 days, and then I had to watch it all over again because it’s so good. In every great series, there is a pendulum episode, and it’s usually the next-to-last episode that brings all the characters back to the emotional center of the story or the one with all of the action that helps set up the conclusion. Well, there’s always a season that does that in an overall series…that’s season 3 of Silo. Now I’m not going to get into spoilers, and I’m certainly not going to tell you who lives and who dies, but there’s a lot of big surprises along the way, and even though the last trailer gives some of it away, the big surprises will blow your mind, and that is part of the brilliance of this series. It may seem like I’m going to review this latest season from a fanboy standpoint, and yes, I am a bit of a fanboy because I love this series; in fact, it’s my favorite series on Apple TV. But this is about why you should be excited and what makes this show fantastic.
We all know that Juliette was going to survive. She is the main protagonist. But this season starts off with memory issues. She doesn’t remember what happened before. It’s a way to neutralize the character so she can’t keep digging into the truth, which makes things very exciting. Her character development is phenomenal, but I honestly feel like the two best character narratives have to come from Camille and Roland Sims. Common and Alexandria Riley are phenomenal this season. But I also have to praise the dual story lines because, as I said before, this is where you’re going to find out how and why the silos were built. In the season, we pick up from the very last season of season 2, where we met Daniel and Helen, a congressman and a reporter. Their storyline will run parallel with the events of season 3 in the Silo. In fact, they are the ones asking the questions regarding the project that will become the Silos. This isn’t really spoiler territory since you do see Helen entering a silo in the trailer, but it’s about their journey that answers the big questions of why the silos were built. Daniel is played by Ashley Zuckerman, who is no stranger to mystery series, as he played Robert Langdon in the Lost Symbol series on Peacock based on the Dan Brown book. And we get Jessica Henwick playing the journalist. Great performance is all around, and their journey does a great job running parallel to Juliette’s story in season 3 when she is trying to figure everything out, especially the mystery voice. Each episode keeps building intensity until the shock of the final episode. What’s going to be hard is watching each episode every week and not wanting to binge-watch it, so if you are one who can’t wait, then I encourage you to wait a few episodes so you can watch three or four at a time. And I even have to give props to Colin Hanks, who plays the richest man on the planet and one of the architects of the Silo project. Like his dad, I’m a big fan, but he’s not known for drama. He is better known for comedy. But I think this is a really great villainous role because he’s a combination of Elon Musk and Bill Gates…Out to control the things that he cannot control. As his character says in the trailer, “the end of the world is inevitable, and it comes down to who will survive it.”
In a lot of ways, I feel like this show is like Lost, but it doesn’t get stupid in the end. You easily connect to these characters. You can’t necessarily figure out who the villains are, even when it seems like it’s obvious. In season 1, you start to think that Roland and Camille are villains. By the time we get to season 3, you understand their true motivations, and they’re not really the bad guy. There is a villain in this show, the man behind the curtain, so to speak. You’ll learn who that is by the end of season 3 because season 4 is going to be about who takes back control. I think that’s the best way I can say it without really spoiling anything, and for those who haven’t read the books. But like all great mysteries, especially within sci-fi, nothing is what it seems, and we start to learn that all these people want to do is survive and know the truth. But are they ready for the truth? Season 3 does a great job of building to these themes as the pendulum season. By the time I got to the end of season 3, I understood the motivations of every character, and the overall theme really is that truth is hard to handle…sometimes it’s easier not knowing. They did a great job intersecting the dual story lines and bringing us even closer to revealing everything. But there’s always one underlying theme that never goes away. There’s always someone who thinks they can control the outcome of world events. They can control their fate and the fate of others. Perhaps that’s the ultimate villain.
Season 3 not only dives more into what’s going on with Silo 17, but we also get to revisit Silo 18 and learn how they stopped their extermination. Every season has been about answering the most fundamental questions, starting with why they’re there in the Silo. And as we learn to keep the peace so that they’re not exterminated, because asking too many questions is a dangerous thing. Season 3 is about the man behind the curtain, or in this case, who is behind the AI . For the past two seasons, all we wanted to know was how everything came about and why there was such control over each Silo; those questions are going to be answered, and it’s one hell of a ride. Now that I’ve watched season 3, I have to admit that season 2 ended perfectly with Helen and Daniel meeting each other for a drink and setting up their journey together, especially when you see that he got her a Pez machine that becomes one of the most prized artifacts in Silo 17 that unveils the truth about what the world was before this great catastrophe. It’s a great easter egg. There’s so much I would love to talk about, but I won’t spoil it because every fan should enjoy the journey of getting to that last episode, which is perfection. I have always said that this show is great, and while season 2 was not as good as the first season, it was necessary for moving the plot forward. Season 3 matches the greatness of season 1 and, in some cases, is better. I’m hesitant to give this season a perfect 10, but it’s about a 9.5, so we’ll set a lot of nine because there are some very minor criticisms that I have, and I can’t completely go into them without spoiling the season, which I won’t do. But as a critic, those criticisms don’t take away from the story and the mystery box that drives the plot. The only downside to getting to the end of season 3 is that we’re going to have to wait a year to get to watch the final season. Oh well, I’ll just have to keep occupied with season 4 of Ted Lasso in the meantime.
My review of Season 3…
