Apple TV's 'Silo' Is Going to Play It Like That, Huh?

I was a huge fan of the first season of Apple TV’s Silo because my love for dystopian thrillers outweighs my typical indifference to sci-fi. It was a thrilling season, one that crushed it out of the gate (Rashida Jones! I still miss you!) and introduced a lot of intriguing mystery.

But then the second season, as these shows tend to do, spent too much time mucking around in the questions without providing sufficient answers. The Steve Zahn storyline was compelling … for a bit, but after a few episodes of it, I was ready to get back to pushing the story along. And then, in the finale, they did! Juliette finally returned to Silo 18 from the dead Silo 17; Bernard learned from Lukas that the Silo, per the Safeguard Protocol, is rigged, and that if it’s ever compromised, the AI Algorithm will poison everyone. Bernard was about to leave Silo 18 when he encountered Juliette, and he was just able to spill his secret when the Algorithm sealed them both in and set off the incinerator. DAMNIT.

But if you were hoping for quick answers and an information dump in the season three premiere, you may have been sorely disappointed. I don’t know if it’s in the book or if it’s just a Graham Yost contrivance, but Silo hit us with a bloody amnesia storyline. Season three opens three months later. It’s a little confusing at first, but eventually we learn that Juliette survived the incinerator (thanks to that suit she brought back from Silo 17), while Bernard did not. The official story is that he died in the incinerator (though we eventually learn the real story, which is that he survived the fire and Sims killed him).

Juliette, being the first person ever to leave the Silo to clean and return, is appointed Mayor, but it’s a figurehead role. Sims and Camille are actually working with the Algorithm and running the Silo under the guise of reform. They’re “rewriting” the Pact, the surveillance cameras are supposedly coming down, and department heads ostensibly have a say in how the Silo is run. It’s all hogwash. In reality, Juliette’s amnesia is a product of the Algorithm: Camille is dosing her with memory-suppression drugs (and is ordered to double those doses), and she’s feeding Juliette false memories about her return.

It’s very annoying. Juliette doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, but she has sense enough to know that things ain’t right. Her pals in Mechanical, meanwhile, are heartbroken that she doesn’t remember them, and — again — there is more unrest brewing: Lukas Kyle is a missing fugitive, and there are agitators hanging a banner reading, “The display is a lie.”

Granted, Juliette is catching on, and by the end of the episode, there’s reason to believe she’ll follow the instructions of whoever left a capsule in her soup containing a note with a specified location where she can meet someone and learn “the truth.” Hopefully, that means the amnesia storyline will run its course quickly.

The saving grace of the season three premiere, honestly, is whatever the hell is happening in the past with Congressman Daniel Keene in D.C., because the origin story of the Silos finally seems to be making some headway. I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, either, but it has to do with a dirty bomb attack the government is blaming on Iran and a retaliatory strike flown by Keene’s sister, a Navy aviator named Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay — where has she been?). Before heading off on her mission, Charlotte insists that Daniel get himself onto Senator Thurman’s Iran committee, which presumably has something to do with the Silo project.

Alas, on that retaliatory strike, Charlotte’s squadron flies into a cloud full of black gooey stuff that shouldn’t exist at 50,000 feet. Everyone else in her squadron appears to die, except Charlotte, who miraculously survives but … she, too, has amnesia. DAMNIT.

What’s the cloud goo? Did it cause Charlotte to lose her memory? Is it the reason for the Silo project in the first place? Has Charlotte been sequestered in a medical facility as part of a cover-up? (Almost certainly, yes.) What is going on? I haven’t read the books, so I have no idea. I’d like to find out by watching the show, but the show is frustrating in its pace, and now we have not one but two amnesiacs who would otherwise have at least some of the pieces to put this puzzle together (the one saving grace is that the fact that there are two amnesiacs suggest that there is a parallel reason). And where the hell is Steve Zahn? (He is listed as a season 3 castmember).