Last week, Silo Season 3 delivered its most shocking episode so far. But now, with the finale, Graham Yost’s adaptation of Hugh Howey’s book series may have outdone itself.
A lot happens in the closing episode of Season 3, which knits our post-apocalyptic silos of the present day with the flashback storyline that’s followed congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) and journalist Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick). The main thing we’re left with? Questions. Many, many questions.
From the ominous goings-on in Silo 1 to terminology like “The Project” and “The Directive,” we’ve done our best to unpack everything below.
What happens in Silo Season 3’s finale?
First, a recap. After Season 3, episode 9 showed us the start of the apocalypse — a nuclear explosion on the launch day of the silo project masterminded by Per Stensen (Colin Hanks) and Senator Thurman (Laura Innes) — that sends Daniel and Helen running towards Silo 1 and Silo 18, respectively. We know that event took place hundreds of years before the present-day silos, but the finale opens with another shock: Daniel is still alive. Like other key members of Silo 1, he’s been cryogenically frozen, woken only to deal with major security incidents around the silo complex. Now a specialist known as Troy, he seems like a different person, listening to a briefing from (also still-alive) psychologist Victor (Matt Craven) before ordering the killing of Silo 17’s rebels with disturbing detachment.
His sister Charles (Jessica Brown Findlay) is alive too. She’s now known as Susan, and she is a senior drone commander who Daniel/Troy appears not to recognise. Clearly, his memory has been wiped, but he still has flashes of Helen, even though he no longer knows who she is. Before he goes back into cryogenic sleep, he asks Victor about her. The doctor promises to look into it and give Daniel/Troy an answer when he next wakes up. But when he puts the note in Troy’s file, we see many other notes just like it.
Back in Silo 18, Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) and her allies do their best to clamp the pipe that’s used to deliver the “safeguard” (i.e. poisonous gas) to the silo, while Camille (Alexandria Riley) attempts to negotiate with the algorithm to stop their silo from being poisoned. Here, we finally learn that the algorithm’s voice is actually that of Victor back in Silo 1, which answers a question that’s been hanging over the show since the end of Season 2.
Thankfully, Silo 1’s attempt to safeguard Silo 18 doesn’t work. Camille deceives the algorithm/Victor and switches sides, giving Knox (Shane McRae) and Shirley (Remmie Milner) time to clamp the pipe. Victor orders Daniel/Troy to be woken back up and then dies by suicide, leaving him a video recording to tell him that the name of the woman he’s been glimpsing when he wakes from cryogenic sleep is Helen Drew.
Finally, back in Silo 18, Juliette visits the pipe at the very bottom of the silo and speaks with the algorithm, now voiced by Daniel/Troy. He tells her that if they make no attempt to contact other silos, Silo 1 will stop trying to kill them. She agrees.
What will happen next in Season 4?
We have many questions, but what comes next feels like the most pressing one. Something that seems pretty certain, though, is that Season 4 will focus on the people of Silo 18 going up against Silo 1.
“They’re expecting us to prepare to defend ourselves, right?” Juliette whispers to the others in the episode’s closing moments. “Which means they won’t be prepared to defend themselves against us. So if we get to them first, we could protect everyone. We need to take out Silo 1.”
Mashable’s Belen Edwards spoke to showrunner Graham Yost, who confirmed that Season 4 will follow Juliette on the warpath while also spending more time with Silo 1’s characters. He also said we’ll learn what happened to Helen, so it sounds like more flashbacks may be on the way.
Is the air outside the silos actually poisonous?
Throughout Silo, the characters have been imprisoned by the fear of a supposedly poisoned atmosphere that exists beyond the safety of their underground bunkers. But is it actually poisonous after all?
The answer appears to be no. In the opening sequence of Season 3’s finale, when we watch from Silo 1’s perspective as Daniel orders the murder of Silo 17’s rebels, the people are outside the silo for some time. It’s only when Silo 1 launches a drone attack using a “compound” that they start to die.
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Does this mean that every person who’s been sent out to clean has actually been murdered by Silo 1’s drones, flying high enough to be invisible and targeting them with the same compound? It suddenly seems likely.
What is The Directive?
When the newly murderous Daniel enters Silo 1’s control room to deal with Silo 17’s rebellion, he uses something called “The Directive” to justify his actions.
“The top priority, per The Directive, is to prevent contamination between silos,” Daniel says, before referring to it again later when he addresses his drone operators. “The citizens of Silo 17 have chosen to go outside. They are beyond The Pact, but they’re not outside The Directive.”
So we’ve got The Pact, The Order, and now The Directive — but what’s this latest one? Well, while The Pact is the public law memorised by silo citizens, and The Order is a secret rulebook for the head of IT, it seems that The Directive is yet another rulebook exclusively for Silo 1. Perhaps it’s a framework that they use for keeping the rest of the silos in check?
What is The Project?
We don’t see Per Stensen (Colin Hanks) in the finale (more on that later), but we do see Senator Thurman. She’s now known as “Madam Director,” and she’s also still very much alive thanks to Silo 1’s cryogenics. During her conversation with Daniel/Troy and Victor, she mentions another term we’re not familiar with: The Project.
Speaking about Susan/Charles, who earlier disobeyed a direct order from Daniel/Troy, Thurman says Susan’s punishment would typically be “neutralization.” But in this case, that’s not an option.
“Susan’s skills will play a critical role at the end of The Project,” she says.
Later, when speaking with Daniel/Troy about the memories he’s been experiencing, Victor references The Project again. “The whole purpose and design of The Project is to free us from the past,” he says.
It’s pretty clear that The Project is the concept of the silos themselves, orchestrated by Stensen, Thurman, and Victor all those centuries ago. What we still don’t know is the real why behind The Project, and what the mysterious end — referenced by Thurman — will look like. Why will Susan/Charles’ drone piloting skills be so important?
We don’t yet have the answers, but we do have one more clue. It comes in the answer Victor gives to Camille when she asks the why question posed to her by Juliette.
“The human species was in a terminal cycle of self-annihilation,” Victor says. “The silo was the last, best hope to ensure the survival of the species.”
It’s a little unclear, but it sounds to us like Victor is saying that the silo’s founders decided that The Project needed to begin. Rather than using the silos as a last resort, is it possible they orchestrated the apocalypse to put the wheels of their own plan into motion? If that’s the case, then presumably they also have an end goal in mind.
Where is Per Stensen?
Speaking of the Founders, where is the world’s richest man who financed the entire project? There’s no mention of him in the finale, and the fact that Thurman is referred to as “Madam Director” sort of implies that she’s the top dog. Of course, it’s been hundreds of years since the founders first entered Silo 1. A lot of stuff could have happened in the meantime. Maybe Per Stensen died somewhere along the way?
Is Helen Drew related to Juliette Nichols?
We know that Helen is pregnant when she runs into the shelter of Silo 18. It would seem like a very strange narrative choice for her not to be related to someone in the present-day silos, but who is her distant descendant? Juliette seems like obvious choice here. She has the same no-nonsense rebellious streak as Helen, and there’s a moment at the end of the finale when Daniel/Troy stares at a close-up of Juliette’s face on his giant Silo 1 screen. Wouldn’t it make their upcoming war even more tragic if they were, in fact, long-lost relatives?
The good news? We won’t have too long to wait for answers. Season 4 has already been filmed and is due out summer 2027. In the meantime, you can read Mashable’s interview with showrunner Graham Yost for more clues.
Silo Season 3 is streaming now on Apple TV.
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