I feel for Patrick Kennedy, man. He was just a smuggler with some big ideas about the outside world, but he’s not an execution/implementation guy. Yet in this episode, it falls to him to almost singlehandedly rescue the inhabitants of his Silo with everything from engineering to sweet-talking. It’s not an easy job, but someone very literally has to do it.
And it can’t be Lukas. That gunfire we heard over the radio last episode was him getting shot by a drone — right through the radio at that. But the atmosphere isn’t poisonous, or at least it’s not poisonous enough to kill Lukas through the hole in his suit. However, he’s now pretty incapacitated, so even though Kennedy only agreed to get him to Silo 17 before going off on his own, he’s inherited the man’s mission.
As is custom for Silo, attention to detail is what gets the job done. Searching the Silo for its poison pipe, Kennedy notices oxidized paint on a grate, suggesting it was exposed to a blowtorch — but since there’s no evidence of soldering on this side, it must have been done from within. He cuts down the door…and finds the mother of our favorite Seventeener, Solo/Jimmy (once again played by Steve Zahn, clean-shaven this season).
Jimmy breaks down. His three young Silo-mates Audrey (Georgina Sadler), Rick (Orlando Norman), and Hope (Sara Hazemi), insist that no one try to move the body and access the pipe until Jimmy’s okay with it. It falls to Kennedy to do so, by telling him of the beautiful burial ritual in Silo 18, where people are interred in orchards to help feed the trees that feed the Silo.
Once they get to work, Lukas and Kennedy discover that Jimmy’s mom was tasked with sealing the pipe, but was overmatched by the amount of leakage. So she sealed herself inside the compartment containing the pipe because it was the only way to save everyone as her blowtorch ran low. She died a hero, just as his dad did. It brings the poor man some peace to hear it.
But knowing the location of the pipe is only half the battle. Now a bigger problem remains: breaking or sneaking into Judicial, the heart of Camille Sims’s power base, to crack open the wall and pinch off the pipe so that no poison will escape. The rebels send Sandy to scout the place as a “supervisor,” then Shirley to conduct the “repairs.”
But by now, Camille has successfully argued the Algorithm into revealing at least the rough location of the pipe — at least, I think that’s the only explanation why a whole hall full of Judicial raiders are there waiting for the rebels. Meanwhile, Juliette realizes the Silos are oriented differently, and Shirley has been sent to work in the wrong place. In order to convincingly spare Shirley from arrest, Juliette sends her back home and gives herself up instead.
She winds up in the same cell as Camille’s husband Robert. He never broke under questioning regarding Juliette’s real motives for sending Kennedy and Lukas to Silo 17 — “If you can’t believe she genuinely wants to help those children, then I don’t know you anymore,” he tells his wife manipulatively — and now he’s being punished for it. “You made your choice,” she spits at him as she leaves them behind.
Now it falls to the gang left behind to decide what to do. Their only option is to return to Plan A: Blowing up Judicial and rooting around in the wreckage for the pipe while wearing cleaning suits. If this means killing Juliette in the process, it’s a sacrifice they’ll have to make for the good of the Silo. (At last, Bernard feels he’s truly doing this, not falling for the lies he heard in the Vault.)
Sheriff Paul, meanwhile, finally gets to the bottom of the Orla Kent murder. Somewhat literally, in fact: He discovers that Harwood, the criminal boss of the Mines, had Knox’s dad (William Hope) build him a lift down into a crevice in the mines where he’s been storing stuff stolen from critical supply. (For safekeeping, he assures the cops.) But neither old man had anything to do with Orla’s murder: That was her boyfriend’s doing, to keep her quiet about the smuggling.
As expected, the only storylines not tied directly to the central mystery were, instead, tied to each other. Not the best use of everyone involved’s time, I have to say, but maybe it’ll pay off down the line instead of feeling like a sidequest.
The season’s big B-story, of course, is the continuing adventures of Helen and Daniel. This week they get the story (though I’m doubting it’s the whole story) about his sister Charlotte’s Iran mission and what Stensen’s digging in the Georgia countryside.
Of course he’s making Silos, 50 of them to be exact. (We see in the future they’re clustered in seven groups of seven, with one central Silo governing the rest.) They’re built to ensure humanity’s survival in the event of an extinction-level event of any kind.
But what Stensen and Senator Thurman are really worried about, they say, is the threat of nanotechnology of the sort Stensen himself has developed. In the wrong hands, this tech could turn everyone on earth into “gray goo”; Iran’s stab at it is what destroyed Charlotte’s sortie. (It’s unfortunate that Iran is the villain given that in the real world the United States launched an unprovoked war on the country, but this is standard stuff for thrillers of the past 25 years.)
Neither Helen nor Daniel, however, accept Stensen and Thurman’s offer to work for the project. Something tells me the helicopter ride they’re taking away from the site while kissing (finally!) is not going to drop them off at Dulles.
Silo continues to be some of the most pound-for-pound satisfying storytelling on television. In this episode, the flashbacks serve up a heaping helping of Answers — though pointedly they have little to say about why the hell Stensen felt the need to turn his Silos into giant gas chambers with the flip of a switch, a haunting mystery in itself. The future returns us to our home for half of Season 2 and a much-beloved supporting character, wraps up the Orla Kent case, and keeps up the confrontations between Camille, Robert, and Juliette, which have been dramatic gold for all three actors involved. To me, this is the baseline of what TV should be. If you’re not at least this competent and compelling, give the job to someone who’ll do it right.
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.