Juliette Lives!
Well, we as audience members knew that, but the rebellious citizens of Silo 18 didn’t have an inkling until the very end of the “Silo” Season 2 finale, “Into the Fire.”
And not so coincidentally, that’s exactly where we leave Juliette and Bernard at the episode’s conclusion. The Algorithm traps them in the airlock’s decontamination inferno after she trotted back over the hill to end the rebellion, only to find the IT Head suited up in survival gear and pointing a pistol. This was right before Juliette was going to tell him how to stop The Safeguard. Who will survive this baked situation?
Given that Juliette not only is the main character in the series but is also wearing a firefighting suit that’s far more effective against scorching flames than Bernard’s flimsy basic survival outfit, we know where we’d bet our money. Fans of the books know how this goes on paper, but who knows how this adaptation shakes out? Nothing is guaranteed.
“Into the Fire” acts as more of a heated second half of the penultimate chapter, “The Safeguard,” and picks up with Juliette’s father, Pete Nichols, being told that she might still be alive. But these Down Deepers are getting desperate as supplies dwindle from Bernard’s siege plan. While the drums of discontent grow louder, their last option is to blow the generator and plunge Silo 18 into darkness, and Sheriff Billings concurs with Knox’s last-ditch idea to gain control.
But Bernard, still blackmailing Walker, has been monitoring their plan via a closed-circuit TV camera and microphone in her apartment so he gleefully sends all his raiders down to the generator room to thwart the dangerous ploy. Judicial agents arrest Knox, Shirley, Carla, and Co. and jail them as Rick Amundsen reveals to the insurgents that Walker is the traitor. Or is she?
In a clever twist unveiled when Walker insists on talking to Bernard in IT, it’s revealed that Mechanical workers practice a special form of sign language to communicate amid the droning machines and that Bernard was mistaken for taking the conversation between Walker and Knox at face value. Walker had secretly informed Knox that they were being listened in on and so it turns out that the generator plan was all a ruse to get the raiders down to the bottom of the silo. Those bombs were just empty decoys. Their actual plan was to detonate a bomb on the stairs that Dr. Nichols and Hank were secretly carrying on a fake medical stretcher.
Unfortunately, the bomb timer is lost, and stoic Dr. Nichols makes the ultimate sacrifice by demanding that Hank leave. He manually detonates the explosive device, blasting away two stories and sadly killing himself in the process, but trapping all the raiders down in the silo’s depths. Dang, and we had just started to bond with the good doctor and were yearning for his reunion with Jules!
It’s revealed that Billings’ message got up top and deputies release Billings, Knox, and his crew as a full-blown riot ensues now that they’ve taken IT. Bernard is dumbfounded and staggers around in disbelief upon hearing what happened from Amundsen. Kennedy and the rebels clamor to get outside, wrongly believing it’s safe to do so.
Lukas arrives and whispers to Bernard what The Algorithm told him down in the tunnel. Stupefied, Bernard reacts by blankly resigning his position and giving the vault key to Sims, declaring him his official shadow — not a job you’d really want.
Sims, Camille, and their young son use the Silo 18 key to enter the vault and are confronted by The Algorithm’s booming AI voice, which says that he and his son must leave, but Camille can stay. This looks to be setting up a new power struggle that will likely bleed into season 3 when Juliette could be challenged.
Over in Silo 17, Juliette suits up in the tape-fortified firefighter’s outfit and says her goodbyes to Audrey, Rick, and Hope. However, prior to her trek back home, Solo remembers how The Safeguard procedure works. He explains that each silo has a pipe inside that pumps poisonous gasses and that it might be on Level 14, where his mom worked.
Juliette has a tearful moment with Solo where they embrace and she promises she’ll do everything she can to return. The next time we see her is through the cafeteria view screen where she bounds over the hill, cleans the lens, and holds up a sign telling her rioting people to not come outside and that it’s NOT SAFE. We then close on her confrontation with Bernard coming back through the airlock which ends in the blazing cliffhanger… or do we? We’re suddenly treated to the sound of raindrops and transported back in time 352 years to a rainy night in current Washington D.C.
Huh? It’s somewhat disorienting after the drab world we’ve been inhabiting for ten episodes, seeing wet pavement, streetlights, city traffic, and the white dome of the Capitol building. We follow a clean-cut politician type into a downtown watering hole where a doorman checks for radiation levels. Inside he meets a journalist named Helen who presses him about the “dirty bomb” incident. Sharp eyes will notice the brochure he’s holding of a man in a nuclear hazmat suit.
It’s revealed that he’s a junior Congressman from Georgia and that he’s involved in some clandestine affairs relating to a potential strikeback against the supposed culprit of Iran. It’s implied that the bomb might have been blamed in error and that there’s far more to the story, one she hopes to uncover.
Readers of the Hugh Howey trilogy will immediately know that the man is one of the original main architects of the silos, Donald Keene (changed to Daniel for the TV series), and Helen is his future wife. Via their probing conversation, it’s revealed that he worked for the Army Corps of Engineers before getting into politics. This sly and suspicious Congressman becomes uncomfortable and rises to leave, but not before handing her a simple bagged gift he grabbed at a convenience store.
Inside is a certain Pez candy dispenser with a yellow duck on top, a reference to Helen’s Alma Mater, the University of Oregon and its mascot. And yes, this is the same Pez dispenser we saw hundreds of years later when George Wilkins gives the relic to Juliette during a romantic interlude. How did it end up in Silo 18?
This was a pitch-perfect way to end “Silo’s” second triumphant season with that hot cliffhanger and sudden launch back in time to the beginning of the silo project and the man who was so instrumental in the creation. Many questions will have to wait until season 3 but let’s just be happy and revel in what we’ve watched!
With season three and its tale of “The Before Time” already filming and season 4 now being written, it might not be that long. But be content in the fact that we’re about to learn the straight story of why people from all 50 states ended up stuck in the silo network and how that construction and selection process occurred.
Both seasons of “Silo” are now available exclusively on Apple TV+.
Article by:Source: stingrayghost@gmail.com (Jeff Spry)
