The second season of Silo — a postapocalyptic thriller on Apple TV Plus — has wrapped up, and the finale was the present at its best. It was filled with dramatic twists, painful sacrifices, brutal fights, lovely photographs of a decayed future, and in its last moments, a tease that reveals how a lot bigger and extra expansive the story really is. It left me enthusiastic about what’s coming subsequent — but additionally cautious that the present is operating out of time to inform the complete story.
This article incorporates spoilers for the primary two seasons of Silo.
Silo takes place far sooner or later, when the skin world is seemingly uninhabitable and what stays of humanity lives in huge, tightly managed silos deep underground. The first season adopted Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) as she was capable of uncover (a few of) the reality in regards to the actuality of the world and her dwelling’s place inside it. It ended with an amazing cliffhanger as she stepped exterior and found that her silo, which she believed to be the one remaining place filled with human life, was simply certainly one of many.
Season 2 picked up proper after that and explored two concurrent threads. On one facet, there was Juliette, whose trek exterior uncovered a silo crammed with useless our bodies. With the assistance of the long-isolated Solo (Steve Zahn), the obvious sole survivor of a devastating riot in Silo 17, she spends virtually your entire season trying to restore a swimsuit in order that she will be able to return to her dwelling (Silo 18) and forestall it from going through an analogous destiny. Meanwhile, tensions are rising in 18, because the riot from the decrease ranges actually begins to warmth up, throwing every part in disarray. Imagine a civil battle contained in a subterranean concrete construction with 144 ranges, 10,000 inhabitants, and a sequence of very particular guidelines meant to maintain everybody alive, and you’ve got an concept of how dire issues get.
The season 2 finale noticed these two threads lastly join in thrilling style after which ended with a fair larger tease: a have a look at the world earlier than the silos existed. Which is to say, the current day. Just just like the ending of season 1, it confirmed there may be a lot extra to the story than was first let on. So far, the present has carried out an amazing job of managing that steadiness between questions and solutions, retaining me interested by what’s subsequent whereas nonetheless doling out essential revelations.
Silo relies on a trilogy of books by Hugh Howey, and the primary two seasons cowl guide one, referred to as Wool. While it’s principally been a stable adaptation, halfway by season 2, there have been moments that felt just like the present was stretching issues out slightly longer than they wanted to be. The pacing faltered below an pointless quantity of element, significantly when it got here to Juliette engineering every kind of options to her drawback of touring between silos.
What makes that regarding is that Silo solely has a lot time. Apple has renewed the present for 2 extra seasons, after which it can conclude, which means that the 2 remaining seasons have to cowl the whole lot of the 2 last novels, Shift and Dust. That received’t be simple. Without spoiling a lot, I’ll simply say that issues get rather more complicated within the later books. There are nonetheless the silos we find out about and Juliette’s quest to free their inhabitants, plus essential particulars about silos we haven’t seen but, together with the exceedingly convoluted story of how the world got here to be the best way it’s. These books span not solely a number of places but additionally a number of time intervals.
Since Silo spent a lot time dithering on guide one (which, to be truthful, is essentially the most cinematic of the bunch, making it probably essentially the most thrilling to adapt), it now has its work reduce out for it to squeeze the remainder of the postapocalyptic epic into two seasons of tv. At its present pacing, I don’t know how the present’s creators are going to make it work in a satisfying approach.
Then once more, this strain is perhaps a superb factor. Maybe with that tough deadline in place, the storytelling will change into extra environment friendly and faster-paced, chopping out the fluff to concentrate on the larger image. The present is at its greatest when it’s racing towards a conclusion, slightly than spending lots of time lingering on the logistics of heat-resistant tape or air pumps. With the tip now in sight, the race is on.
