Season 2 has started slowly but steadily

Anyone hoping for kick-ass action in Silo‘s recurring hour will probably be a little disappointed. The Season 2 premiere is less about Juliette Nichols facing new threats after venturing out into the world and more about her realizing how literally toxic and lonely it is out there. And yet she continues. Rebecca Ferguson crushes it on her own here, taking up most of the episode’s screen time solo. That alone makes “The Engineer” worth watching, though Silo season two is off to a slow start. But it is necessary to spend time with Juliette to understand the truth. And what is the truth? Let’s revisit season 1 before we unpack it completely.

Here’s your extremely brief refresher because Apple TV+ drama aired more than a year ago: Juliette, a brilliant mechanical engineer, has spent her entire life in an underground silo. The bunker has 140 floors and a population of more than 10,000 people, but no one can leave because the ground outside has been uninhabitable for more than a century. In Season 1, Juliette eventually becomes the sheriff and secretly investigates the mysterious death of her boyfriend, discovering that the IT department is the true evil mastermind who wants to control everyone. To prevent her from revealing this information, she is banished from the silo. Miraculously, she survives on the outside and finds out what the hell is really going on.

Juliette lives on because the suit she wears is upholstered with high-quality material, unlike others who previously went outside and fell over within minutes, including Sheriff Holston (David Oyelowo) and his wife, Alison (Rashida Jones). Now free to roam, she spots a skyline silhouette far, far away. She wanders her way through the vast, sunny land to discover the existence of several other underground bunkers nearby. They are not alone! We still don’t know how many other silos are actively populated and what they are going through.

What we do know—thanks to this new season’s cold open—is that decades ago, at least one community near Juliette’s silo orchestrated a revolution and stormed out—only to quickly discover that the world wasn’t fit to survive and died within minutes. Now, years later, Juliette has come across their remains and stomped over them to get to the entrance to their silo. The wide shot of just how many skeletons there are is extremely jarring. It strengthens us and Juliette that despite an evil agenda, people like IT manager Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) keep everyone safe. His methods are unhinged and wrong, but now at least she can see the truth with her own eyes. But will she be able to communicate that to any of her friends, such as Lukas (Avi Nash), Shirley (Remmie Milner) or Martha (Harriet Walter)?

There is a small chance of that happening because Juliette enters the second silo. Once inside, she sees that it is built the same with the same winding staircases connecting all the floors. But unlike her busy home base, this silo is deserted, dilapidated, dark and extremely quiet. So she goes and explores it floor by floor. If she’s startled, she doesn’t show it. Her first task is to find a change of clothes after she was forced to tear off the suffocating shield she was wearing. This means that her only form of survival on earth is now in tatters. Then again, no one is more resourceful than her.

The pace of this episode reminds us that there is a reason why Juliette is the chosen one. She is determined to find the truth and endowed with good morals intelligent and also physically strong. She carries a lot of unwieldy gear here, including putting all her muscle into turning a heavy object into a bridge. She’s basically fixing a little corner of this silo, with a lot of grunting and pushing involved. If only they would light this her adventure properly. I understand this silo doesn’t have working power, but the darkness makes it annoying to watch unfold.

In the end, thankfully, Juliette realizes that she is not as alone as she thought. She hears notes of Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” playing and creeps towards the music. She finally stops at a large round door. What greets her from behind is a pair of terrifying eyes. The man tells her to never, ever try to open the door or he will have to kill her. And just like that, welcome to SiloSteve Zahn. No spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read the book, but he plays an important role with a fascinating backstory that I’m sure the series will spin out at will. Let’s see how Zahn fares against Ferguson. And let us also see if next week’s second outing turns things up a bit.

Stray Observations

• • As Juliette explores this new silo, the show rarely flashes back to her teenage years—specifically, to when she moved onto the mechanical floor as a teenager and proved to everyone, including Martha, that she’s a gifted engineer. We get it; she is a prodigy!
• • Kudos to the sound designer because Juliette’s crunching stomping on skeletons was like nails on a chalkboard. That is, it was actually creepy.
• • Amelie Villiers is a capable actress, but I just don’t buy her as a younger version of Rebecca Ferguson.
• • How soon will we meet people living in one of the other bunkers (if we meet them at all)?
• • Juliette also walks past the large digital screen in this silo that shows the outside world to the residents. It has the word LIE written in big, bold letters.
• • I can’t wait to catch up with Juliette’s silo to see how everyone is doing after her departure and what lies have been told about where she disappeared to.