Silo S2E1: The Engineer

A note before we start: it’s impossible to discuss the second season of Silo without spoiling basically everything that happened in Season 1. So if you haven’t watched Season 1, read no further.

The problem with building a show around a central mystery is that, at some point, either you answer the mystery and you have no show, or you draw out the mystery and you have an unsatisfying show. Silo avoids this trick, appropriately enough, by having layers. The season 1 finale answered some of the show’s foundational questions. Anyone who leaves the silo dies because the powers that be want it that way — the hazmat suits people are sent outside in as punishment are sabotaged to kill them after a few minutes. But in the season’s final shot, Juliette Nichols, in a non-sabotaged suit, walks away from the silo and lives. She sees a word beyond, blighted, but real.

So the mysteries of season 1 are simply replaced a new mystery: What’s out there? Not to mention the deeper mystery season 1 only hinted at: why are all these people in a silo? Who put the there? And to what end?

And for readers of Hugh Howey’s trilogy of books the show is based on, another question looms: how will Silo — which stuck very closely to Wool, the first book in the series, continue as an adaptation when the second book, Shift, largely takes place centuries earlier, during the rebellion our characters know as ancient history.

Sure enough, “The Engineer” opens with scenes of that rebellion. Two groups of citizens of the silo clash; the winners force the door open, and get to go outside. But instead of freedom, their reward is death. Cut to Juliette, in the show’s present, stepping past their bodies. She’s out of the silo, her suit is protecting her for now, but is there anywhere else to go?

She gets her answer quickly, as the bodies radiate from a central point — a concrete bunker, leading to a second silo. That wasn’t our rebellion. The other silo’s population went outside to their deaths, but their home is still there. Ever-resourceful Juliette manages to pry her way inside, and find breathable air before she suffocates in her suit.

One of the first things she does is smash a mirror in an abandoned bedroom, confirming that, just like her silo, this one has surveillance cameras hidden everywhere. Those people who died rebelling did have something to rebel against.

Juliette spends the rest of the episode exploring the abandoned silo, and without any interaction or dialogue (or contrived reason for her to talk to herself), we’re reminded of exactly who Juliette is — clever, resilient, and well aware she’s in a hopeless situation but determined to keep trying. A significant chunk of the episode is a wordless sequence of Juliette trying, and failing, and trying again to get to an inaccessible part of the silo because she thought she heard a noise. (And as always, Rebecca Ferguson does a terrific job of conveying the interiority of a character who’s taciturn even at the best of times.)

This quiet, mostly-one-character episode makes for a slow start to the season. But as last season showed us, Silo is very good at methodical building up to the story’s payoffs, and this episode is no different, as Juliette’s search does eventually lead her to something. But like the show’s best payoffs, it’s one that only leads to more questions.

Stray thoughts:
• The second silo is mostly shrouded in darkness, but has a few emergency lights on. Given what a big deal last season made about not being able to shut down the central generator without plunging the whole place into darkness, it’s a stretch to have a backup generator running unattended for decades.

• As Juliette explores the abandoned silo, we get flashbacks to 12-year-old Juliette joining the mechanical department, and getting to know Weaver, her no-nonsense mentor and mother figure. It’s largely stuff we’ve seen before, and feels like an excuse to give an otherwise dialogue-free episode an excuse for a little conversation.

• I know this is a hackneyed complaint at this point, but the show is so dimly lit in regular circumstances, so setting most of the episode in a darkened silo means it’s often hard to tell what’s going on.