Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | August 31, 2026
The last few minutes of this week’s episode of Silo — Season 3, Episode 9, “Farewell” — is a real daggum doozy. Daniel and Helen are on hand to basically celebrate the finished silo project. They hang out with Charlotte and her wife, Anna, the night before, and it seems mostly normal. Helen is pregnant and expecting soon. Anna and Charlotte are in a great place — Anna details to Daniel how supportive Charlotte was during her cancer scare. Charlotte tells Daniel about a document Victor constructed (with a lot of help from AI, apparently) called “The Pact,” which — as we know — is basically the Homeowner’s Association document for the silos for the next 500 years. Peter Gabriel is on hand to sing “Here Comes the Flood” ahead of the unveiling (and it is eerie).
All the visitors are assigned a particular silo for a tour, and it all feels a little too orchestrated. Helen is steered toward Silo 18, while Daniel hangs out at Silo 1 with Per Stenson, Victor, Senator Thurman, and Henry. Everything feels very tense and foreboding (Peter Gabriel’s song set the mood). Suddenly, Helen is not answering Daniel’s texts, and when Charlotte finally responds to a text, it’s clearly not her responding.
Eventually, Helen decides she’s not OK hanging out in Silo 18 and leaves. She and Daniel briefly chat on the phone, but the reception is bad. Daniel decides to get up and find her, while Henry tries to direct him back to Silo 1, as though Daniel needs to be at Silo 1 at a particular time. And then … a nuclear bomb explodes in the distance and a mushroom cloud blossoms. Daniel and Helen are dragged back to their respective silos. It’s not entirely clear whether they make it (though I assume they do).
What seems abundantly clear is that this was no accident. Per Stenson orchestrated it. He built these silos, and he’s ready to use them now. The most generous reading is that he thought the end of the world was about to arrive, he hastened it, and he engineered the event as a sort of man-made Noah’s Ark, handpicking the people he wanted to live in the silos and ultimately repopulate the planet.
The more sinister reading is that his plan, all along, was to orchestrate a nuclear attack so that he could start his own underground colony where he would be basically the leader of the surviving world. That is the kind of thing that the richest man on the planet might do: He can’t control a population of 8 billion. But he can control 500,000, all of whom will live under his thumb and The Pact.
Which brings us to the present timeline, which basically sees Bernard give himself up to Camille, knowing that he’ll have to go out and clean, which he wants to do in order to create a distraction for the rebellion to destroy the Vitamin D+ delivery system — the forgetting drugs — in Silo 18 before it can cause any more damage. It appears to work, too: While Bernard is outside dying without a suit, the rebellion sets off a bunch of explosions in the mines. Camille is trying to stop it in time, but it seems unlikely that she will make it.
The other important takeaway, however, is what Bernard reveals to both Juliette and Camille: The Algorithm is not a computer program. It’s apparently a person. Or maybe more than one person (because the Algorithm is available 24/7). Is it somehow possible that Per Stenson is still alive? Or his consciousness, at least? Who else could that person be that makes sense to this show?
Either way, as Bernard reasons, if it is a human, humans have emotions, and humans can be reasoned with. And that, apparently, is a game changer, a possibility that even Camille seems to soften to.
What’s nice about this episode is that it feels like a season finale with a huge cliffhanger. I appreciate that there is one more episode this season, where perhaps we will at least get a sense of what it was like for the original inhabitants of the Silo, and maybe even get some answers as to why Per Stensen likely triggered the apocalypse. Will Stensen use Helen as leverage to get Daniel to do what he wants? And where is Charlotte? Did Anna — who clearly appeared to know about the impending apocalypse — leave her wife out of the silos? We should also find out if the rebellion’s attempt to destroy the forgetting drugs delivery system was successful, too.
I haven’t read the books, but if we have to wait another year or more for the final season, I may finally be compelled to do so.
