(Season 1 spoilers ahead—consider yourself warned.)
Recap of Season 2, Episode 1 of Silo – ‘The Engineer’
One of my recent favorite TV series, Silo, starring Rebecca Ferguson as Juliette Nichols, an engineer in the dystopian underground world known as the Silo, is back. In the debut episode of Season 2, Juliette finds herself largely alone in the present day. She has made it out of the Silo, and more importantly she’s gone beyond the surreality presented to most escapees – a perfect serene and lively world – and she’s seen that in fact it is a poisonous, dead world, but that her Silo is by no means the only one. In fact there’s dozens if not hundreds.
Kosha Engler and Ross McCall in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
As she starts walking we are then shown in flashback a conflict about to begin in a Silo, as the lower level citizens learn they are about to be flooded. The two sides dramatically face off on a bridge, and later we’re seen the citizens breach the Silo exterior and pour out into the exterior. Unlike Nichols, whose suit securely fastened and taped, these combatants had no suits at all, and we’re brought back to Nichols point-of-view where we see the death and destruction wrought by their escape. The skeletons of the citizens spread out from the Silo like a fan, with the fastest going the furthest away from the mouth. What is clear though to Nichols though is at least up top there are no survivors, as she reacts in horror to the site of all this death.
Nichols investigates the Silo further, occasionally risking life and limb as she goes further in. Fortunately though the destruction of the Silo is the greatest risk, it also saves her as she slips from a height that’d surely kill her in her Silo; however, in this Silo now flooded the water catches her. She continues to investigate. All the while we are getting flashbacks into her life as a young child, when she first joins Mechanical in the the lower levels as a trash sorter. We see her early expertise as a engineer, as she fixes a toy for another kid working the trash line, and she first starts to work with Martha Walker, played by Harriet Walter, who we know well from Season 1.
Amelie Child Villiers in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
As the episode nears its end, Nichols nearly leaves for the entrance when she hears music. Following the music she finds a door she attempts to open, where she is surprisingly greeted by a man on the other side. At first charming, he then threatens to killer her, when the screen fades to black.
Thoughts on Silo’s Season 2 Episode: ‘The Engineer’
Overall this was an excellent episode and even though it’s been sometime since watching the finale, it felt appropriate for a rather insular return into Nichols’ character even as we learn more about the outside world. Nichols now has proven herself to be a dogged fighter for truth, and a leader, but we see how early on she’s precocious but doesn’t yet know her place.
We are also given insight into the world of the other Silos, and by seeing the death and destruction from the escape, we start to understand in part the rationale of Bernard Holland Robert Sims, played by Tim Robbins and Common respectively, who have tried to keep the peace of their Silo, albeit through force and the expulsion of Nichols.
Undoubtedly there’ll be a lot more to discover, of the world, the new Silo, this lone survivor, and Nichols fate to come, but this was a perfect welcome back to the world of the Silo and a tease for what’s to come.
