Rebecca Ferguson's Juliette Nichols is back in Season 2 of Silo, and coming off the shocking ending of Season 1, there is plenty of narrative fodder for this next batch of episodes to gnaw on.
Based on the Hugh Howey Wool trilogy of novels, the Apple TV+ sci-fi series (which just returned for Season 2) focuses on a community of people living in a dystopian future where they are forced to spend their days in an underground silo.
Ferguson stars as Juliette Nichols, a Silo resident who, throughout Season 1, begins to peel the layers back on what might be an earth-shattering conspiracy meant to keep those in the Silo loyal to the power's that be.
Silo Season 1 Plot Explained
Silo, the hit sci-fi TV series from Apple TV +, centered its Season 1 primarily underground.
The series tells the story of an underground community and its powers that be, who may lie to its residents in hopes of keeping them loyal to their governing overlords.
At the center of this story is Rebecca Ferguson's Juliette Nichols, a new sheriff in the Silo, who, after the death of a friend, gets caught in a web of dystopian conspiracy.
Meet the Sheriff
Silo Season 1 started introducing audiences to the world of this underground community as well as the series' main character, Juliette Nichols.
The Silo is comprised of 144 floors driven deep into the ground, where every resident has a particular function, and population control measures are in place.
The mentality of the Silo is functionality over comfort. Each member of the underground community is a small cog in a larger machine with no real hope for escape.
Characters living within the Silo are allowed to leave, but they do so at their own risk. The outside world is said to be a terrifying place, as videos are shown to residents of fellow community members making their way above ground to clean the cameras that send video feeds of the world to each floor and suddenly dying.
This lens cleaning is a form of capital punishment within the Silo, forcing the community's political and criminal enemies to take a walk in this presumably toxic world.
Talk of the outside world hits close to Juliette as, early on, she, a meager engineer working within the Silo, is mysteriously promoted to the rank of sheriff.
This comes after the last sheriff, Holston Becker, helped her look into the death of her IT specialist boyfriend, George. George died in a presumed suicide after falling off a railing, but some people working close to Becker seem to think something else may be at play.
Becker had agreed to take on the case of George's murder because of a connection he seemed to have with the former sheriff's wife, Allison, who is also presumed to be dead.
Allison worked alongside George in IT, serving as a data recovery expert. She is central to the plot, possessing a hard drive with George said to hold the secrets of how the people of the Silo ended up there hundreds of years ago.
Allison and George unlocked the hard drive to find blueprints and schematics of the Silo itself as well as video footage of the outside but with blue skies and green grass (a stark contrast to the residents of the Silo are being shown).
Seeing the will may be being pulled over the residents of the Silo's eyes, Allison asks to go outside to clean the lens and see it for herself. She, too, dies on this outside excursion, proving just how dangerous the outside world is.
Becker had promised Juliette that he would investigate George's disappearance and would send back a message when he found something.
After some time, Becker, too, decides he wants to be with his wife and asks to go outside as well. Audiences see from his point of view a blue sky with green grass, only for the families sitting inside watching to see the normal grey landscape and the lens cleaner (in this case, Becker) crumple to his death.
This leaves the Silo's mayor Jahns and Becker's deputy Sam Marnes with the job of picking a new sheriff. However, their job is easy, as Becker has already picked his replacement, Juliette.
With Becker now gone, Juliette assumes that the trail of George's murder has run cold, and she may never know what exactly happened. That is, until she is promoted to sheriff herself.
Getting the new job, Juliette discovers that Becker has left a message for her. On the back of her new trusty sheriff's badge is the word "TRUTH," sending her back on the hunt for her missing lover.
Corruption Hides Underground
It does not take long for Juliette's hiring as sheriff to turn heads in the Silo.
Almost immediately, Juliette starts to butt heads with the overbearing Judicial Branch (a secret police who rules over the inner workings of the underground city).
The Judicial team, made up of Robert Sims, Judge Meadows, and Bernard Holland, does not like how much Juliette is poking her nose around in the Silo as she searches for answers into George's death.
Just as she is starting to develop some leads, the Silo's Mayor Jahns and deputy Sam Marnes are both mysteriously murdered as well, taking out two of the only high-ranking officials in the underground bunker city to support Juliette's appointment of sheriff.
This leads to fellow lawman Paul Billings, Judicial's candidate for sheriff, being promoted to Juliette's interim deputy. While the pair do not get on immediately, they slowly develop professional trust between them.
On the murder trail, Juliette and Billings begin to uncover the true nature of the Judicial Branch that oversees Silo operations. It turns out that Judicial has been closely monitoring residents and even attempting to frame Silo citizens for George's murder.
That is when it is revealed that George has some secrets as well. Juliette ends up crossing paths with a conspiracy-spouting old women seen earlier in the series, who had seemingly tried to tell Allison about the truth of the Silo.
For some reason, this grey-haired lady is being kept in captivity by Judicial, causing Julliete to question what exactly they are hiding.
She confronts Judge Meadows about the situation, only to learn that she is only the face of the Judicial branch, and the Judicial's Robert Sims is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
A Conspiracy & The Flamekeepers
With the help of her father, a doctor working within the Silo, Juliette gets an interview with the captive woman and asks questions about what she is hiding.
In a twist of fate, it is revealed that the old lady who had been crying for years about some hidden truth within the Silo's walls is a member of a long-dead resistance group known as The Flamekeepers.
During this interview, Juliette comes to the realization that everyone in the Silo is being watched (here through a camera in the woman's mirror), proving why the Judicial had been one step ahead of her this entire time.
Juliette discovers that Becker had hidden the hard drive from the start of the series with the woman, and she takes it despite knowing that Judicial is watching.
This realization of constantly being under surveillance sends Juliette to acting mayor Bernard Holland to tell him that Judicial may be trying to stage a coup and take over control of the Silo.
Their meeting does not go as planned as Mayor Holland tells her he knows, and it is revealed that he has been working with Judicial this whole time.
Juliette is then taken into custody by Sims, Holland, and the rest of Judicial, including Billings (who has been promised the role of sheriff when all this is said and done).
However, knowing that her former deputy is suffering from a nerve-destroying disease known as The Syndrome, Juliette breaks free, seeking out someone who can help her decode what is on the hard drive. She finds aid from a criminal working in the Down Deep, who happens to know a computer hacker.
They break open the drive to find a video from George telling her that he had found a hidden tunnel at the bottom of the Silo (which seems to be filled with water) as well as the green grass and blue sky footage from outside.
With Judicial hot on her tail and this image of a habitable environment topside in her mind, Juliette makes a run for it, heading deeper into the Silo to reconnect with her old engineer friends.
They are not as happy to see her though, as one of them turns her into Judicial and smashes the drive.
Juliette Is Sent Out To Clean
Juliette is made an example of in the custody of Judicial. She is marched through the Down Deep, showing what the consequences of possible rebellion can be.
She is then told that, as punishment, she will be sent to clean the lens, just like Allison and Becker did at the beginning of the series.
Mayor Holland tells her she had to do this because, if she knew what he does about the Silo and the world at large, she too would be doing the same thing. She is confused. Why would anyone suppress an entire history of a people if there was a better life waiting for them on the surface?
He does not tell her, and the series jumps to the cleaning ceremony, which should mean a certain death for Juliette (at least, if Holland and Judicial have been telling the truth).
Suited up in the white hazmat outfit and visor seen on all the cleaning ceremonies so far, Juliette ventures outside. She sees the same image Becker saw in his final moments: a beautiful, picturesque world with green grass and a bright blue sky.
She walks over the lens and, in protest, does not wipe the lens as is custom in this ceremony. This causes a bit of a stir from within the Silo.
That is when the big twist comes into play. As Juliette turns to where Becker and Allison's bodies should be lying, she sees rocks. Reaching out to touch them, her hand travels right through.
The video stored on the hard drive was not what the world looked like, but a digital reality created for those who were doomed to the cleaning ceremony.
At this moment, it is revealed that the world is, in fact, uninhabitable, and those who have to head out to clean the lens have had their hazmat suits intentionally altered with faulty tape, killing them due to exposure to the toxic air.
However, this does not happen to Juliette. Instead, she had one of her friends in engineering (whom she had been stealing tape for earlier in the show) have someone swap out the faulty tape for the real thing.
This means Juliette lives wherever one else dies. As she climbs to the top of the ridge, she emerges from the Silo's digital illusion, seeing the world for how it is.
Earth is not in good shape, and the ground has been left barren. But audiences get one final tease as the camera pans out, showing that Juliette's Silo is just one of hundreds strewn about the landscape.
Silo is streaming on Apple TV+.
