TV-MA | 10 episodes | Drama, Sci-Fi, Mystery, Action | 2024
“Silo” is based on the books “Legacy,” “Order,” and “Pact,” contained in the middle set (“Shift") of author Hugh Howey’s dystopian opus. The second season of Apple TV’s “Silo” never quite lives up to its enormous potential.
In entertainment jargon, this is commonly referred to as a “sophomore slump,” but that label doesn’t really apply here as the first season was also something of a disappointment.
Picking up where season one left off, the first episode in the new season, “The Engineer,” gets things off to a great start. Although the lengthy 12-minute preopening title sequence features hundreds of fired-up doomed extras, its series lead Rebecca Ferguson as Juliette Nichols who rightfully receives almost all of the attention.
Going Underground
“Silo” is set in Fulton County, Georgia, 140 years after a cataclysmic event wiped out nearly all human and animal life and vegetation. The surviving humans (about 10,000) live underground in a 144-story silo. The idea of even considering venturing to the surface is verboten. For the few that do, they die within minutes even while wearing a protective suit not dissimilar to those worn by NASA astronauts on the moon.
Excessive Flashback
As good as this episode is, it includes far too much flashback, mostly where a younger Juliette (Amelie Child-Villiers) begins bonding with Martha Walker (Harriet Walter), another “MacGyver” type who repairs, well, every broken thing in the silo. With her mother dead and estranged from her doctor father, Juliette views Martha as her surrogate parent.
After a magnificent start, the season hits a narrative and repetitive brick wall. Season 2 rehashes far too much material from the previous season and doesn’t include enough new stuff. The second, third, and fourth episodes could have easily been pared down and edited into one without losing any significant narrative value. The clear highlight of this section is the circumstances surrounding the death of a powerful member of the silo hierarchy.
Convincing Villains
The most glaring weak acting link in the first season, former rapper Common is still way out of his element here, only this time he screams less and glares more. As for Robbins, the role of Holland is one of his rare outings as a villain, and he does a magnificent job at being truly hateful and “hateable.” Holland is a calculating, loathsome, despicable, and truly evil being. Any movie or TV show is only as good as the villain, and Robbins is almost too believable at being bad.
Luckily, the second half of Season 2 of “Silo” is far better than the first half. It contains far less padding and more ideological connections and content overlap. The second half can be compared to such classic dystopian works as “1984,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Brave New World.” There is also a key reference to a certain timeless movie from 1939, itself based on a book.
A third season of “Silo” has already been confirmed. In recent interviews, Ferguson has stated that the series will end with a fourth season. There have also been reports that the third season will significantly alter the ultimate fate of Juliette from that in the books. Whether that is good for the character or not is still anyone’s guess.
My main gripe with the “Silo” series thus far is that there is simply too much of it that’s not needed; it’s not lean enough. Both seasons take 10 episodes (averaging 51 minutes each) to impart what could have been done much better in just six equally long episodes. In this particular case, less really would be more.
