Each week Joe and Terry discuss the most recent episodes of Apple TV’s Silo Season 2, alternating between our respective sites.

Catch up on Season 1: 1.01-1.02 / 1.03 / 1.04 / 1.05 / 1.06 / 1.07 / 1.08 / 1.09 / 1.10

Spoilers follow for Silo S02E01 “The Engineer”.

TERRY

It feels so good to be back on the Silo beat, Joe!

We ended our discussion of Silo Season 1 with me comparing the reveals and imagery to the Fallout game series and you predicting that Jules (Rebecca Ferguson) would either be heading towards the ruins of a city or another silo. For me, in the time that passed, Amazon released the quite excellent Fallout TV series and the differences between the two couldn’t be more striking. And you were right in that she heads straight to the (ruined) remains of another silo.

Season 2 begins with a fantastic cold open of a dark silo with a ton of people milling around, waiting for…something. A kid runs up with a note saying that the generator will be flooded in 15 minutes. A man begins banging pipes. And we see a lot of visual storytelling that tells us so much without a single word. A huge painting of the founders has the word “Fuck” scribbled in front of “The Founders”. A bridge that connects the central ramp of the silo has been destroyed. On one side, a group of people waiting with makeshift weapons. On the other, a more organized militia led by a man with a Sheriff badge leads a revolution, it seems like.

The group pushes through the blast doors and begins climbing the stairs to the outside world with hope in their eyes and a green flag clutched in their hands…before it cuts to that same flag, planted in the ground but now tattered. A skeletal corpse lies beside it as Jules comes into view.

The dawning horror washed over me as she walked towards the entrance of the new silo and the camera pulls back further and further to show mounds of skeletons. Hundreds of them. The entirety of this new silo, quite possibly. And it gets worse as Jules begins descending into the silo, walking over skeletal remains on her way down.

It’s gruesome and haunting imagery, Joe.

But what makes it hit home even harder is the way Silo implicitly but quietly contrasts this with what could have happened to Silo 18 had Sheriff Holston (David Oyelowo) or Jules been more successful in launching their own revolution.

What follows is a quietly exciting and mellow reintroduction to the show that really showcases Rebecca Ferguson’s acting chops and physicality. She practically carries this entire episode and a lot of my joy came from watching her as she methodically approached every situation and obstacle that stood in her way. Showrunner Graham Yost, who wrote this episode, and seasoned TV director Michael Dinner really put her through her paces with a very physical episode that was lean on dialogue (at least in the present). From prying open blast doors, to taking falls, to almost drowning…this was a showcase for Ferguson’s physicality and every win - or failure - hit hard.

Thematically, this episode isn’t very weighty and I’m not sure there’s a whole lot to discuss or recap, but it was still an incredibly vivid start to season 2 that ends on a delicious and ominous cliffhanger.

So over to you, Joe. Did you enjoy the mostly one-woman-show reintroduction to Silo? Aside from it being smart and effective production design, were you surprised that this silo seems pretty identical to Silo 18? Flashbacks returned and I’m curious if you found the young Jules (Amelie Child Villiers) and young Shirley (Ida Brooke) storyline effective? Finally who is this heterochromatic mystery man and do you think Jules’ makeshift rope swing was cut?

JOE

Welcome back to Silo, Terry!

Yeah, as soon as we saw Jules headed into the tomb-like new silo, I had a feeling that we were going to getting a nearly silent, one-woman show. And you’re absolutely right that Ferguson sells it: from the frustration post-fall into the water to the non-plussed “huh” when she uses the barrels to reconnect the broken walkway. We’ve never doubted Ferguson could handle anything the show could throw at her, but the premiere (re)confirms that she’s an incredible talent…even when she’s doing it all by herself.

With that said, I *mostly* liked the flashbacks, which detail the early days when Jules first arrived in Mechanical and learned to work the line. Admittedly some of the dialogue I found a touch clunky and/or heavy-handed, particularly Shirley’s admonishment about giving up and dying if Jules ever found herself in a tough spot and how Walker (Harriet Walter)’s nightmare of being left alone perfectly suits Jules’ current predicament.

I get it: this is screenwriting and you don’t want to show things that have no bearing, but it plays out a bit like every YA property wherein the kids are reading a book in English that perfectly fits whatever drama the main character is going through.

(As I said, it’s not a new technique, nor is it a bad one, but Silo is usually a little more graceful and a little less obvious in its storytelling).

Which brings us back to our friend at the end of the episode. It’s clear almost from the beginning that Jules isn’t entirely alone. The silo was closed off to the outside world; despite the darkness, there’s at least one tree that is still alive, and then there’s the tell-tale light and record that all anticipate Jules will meet *someone* before the episode ends.

In proper cliffhanger-y fashion, it comes right in the closing moments as a man with, yes, two-coloured eyes stares out from behind a padlocked vault door. He acknowledges through the glass that it’s understandable that she would try the door, but clarifies that if she tries it again, he’ll have to kill her.

Simple as that. Very nonchalant. The affective is such that if he wasn’t using the word kill you wouldn’t even assume it was a threat. But yeah, this is someone who has survived down here, presumably by himself, for long enough that all of the dead bodies are firmly skeletons, but kept the power running.

So yeah, this person may appear calm and (mostly) reasonable, but there’s a stranger in his midst now and he may see that as a threat to his livelihood. Was the rope from her initial attempt to bridge the gap cut or was it an accident? It seems clear that we’re made to wonder because it’s just not clear (the cut to a close-up of the frayed rope does suggest it was sabotage, though, no?)

If so, this man can leave the vault whenever he likes, which puts Jules in danger.

Let’s hope that after all this exertion and no food she can still sleep with one eye open. Jules may have escaped the overlords in her former silo, but she’s not out of danger yet!

The real question is whether we’ll have to wait a whole other episode to see what comes next for her. Or will episode 2.02 take pity on us and cut back and forth between the old silo and the new?

We’ll find out when we hop over to QueerHorrorMovies for the second episode of the season next week!

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Silo airs weekly on Apple TV+