Silo season 2 review: the mysteries only deepen

The first season of Silo ended on a really big cliffhanger. The Apple TV Plus series, an adaptation of Hugh Howey’s trilogy of post-apocalyptic novels, tells the story of the remnants of humanity, who live deep underground in silos designed to protect them from a poisoned planet. Season 1 had the feel of a small town mystery as mechanic-turned-sheriff Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) stumbled upon a secret that completely changed her worldview. Her quest to uncover that mystery eventually led her outside the protective walls of the silo, which is right where the season ended. SiloThe second season picks up in its wake and steps things up by both raising the stakes and raises a great pile of new mysteries to obsess over.

This piece contains spoilers, including details about Silo‘s season 1 finale.

First, a little reminder of how we got here. Set sometime in the future, the show is home to a carefully controlled population of 10,000 residents who follow a strict set of rules seemingly designed to keep them safe from the bleak landscape outside. That landscape is ever-present on huge displays inside the silo, and certain residents are punished by being forced to go outside while everyone else watches as they step out into the burnt world and moments later inevitably collapse.

But after reluctantly being thrust into the role of sheriff, Juliette learned that the exterior might not be so dangerous after all. A complex series of events lead to Juliette leaving herself. But she doesn’t collapse – and her step over the hill into a large flat sets the silo on fire.

Season 2 starts right at the moment she takes these steps, creating two parallel threads. On the one hand, there is Juliette, who learns that her home is just one of many silos. Eventually she finds her way to a seemingly abandoned one not far from her own. The path there is littered with dead bodies; she steps over corpses and crunches a few skulls along the way. The new silo is apparently empty and much of it is flooded, although the power is somehow still working. After investigating and meeting the sole survivor (played by Steve Zahn, a wonderful new addition to the cast), she soon learns that this silo died due to a violent uprising. And what started it? Someone goes outside and survives. So, despite all the initial effort to get to this new place, she starts going back.

It should not be so surprising that things are not going well at home. Tensions rise as Mayor Bernard (Tim Robbins) uses every trick at his disposal in an attempt to quell a rebellion from the lower levels. Meanwhile, Juliette’s friends – spurred on by her bold step outside – become rightly convinced that they are being lied to about the reality of their world. There are violent clashes on the massive spiral staircase that connects all levels of the silo, and all sorts of secret meetings between different factions. The tight confines of the silo make many of these moments feel claustrophobic and intense.

What becomes clear pretty quickly is that the silos aren’t just arks to save humanity from a post-apocalyptic wasteland. They are also extremely complex psychological experiments. And the two things go hand in hand; every strange or unexpected thing that happens in the silo, it seems, is actually part of an intricate, manipulative plan to keep the population in check and avoid a deadly disaster.

It became apparent towards the end of the first season, and the complexity increases here. There are multiple layers of deception and mystery, which are heightened by the fact that no one in the silo actually knows the full picture. They are just doing the best they can with the information they have. Even seemingly small revelations—like the quality of a certain kind of tape—can have big consequences.

For Season 2’s first half (I’ve seen five of the 10 episodes so far), this makes for a compelling watch that steadily expands on what made Silo so amazing at first. It simply expands the scale. And as the mysteries shift and grow, so does the tension.

Silothe second season begins streaming on Apple TV Plus on November 15.