Silo S1E6 Recap: “The Relic” Rehashes Old Questions

The following recap contains spoilers for Silo S1E6, “The Relic” (written by Aric Avelino and directed by Bert & Bertie)

We’re six episodes in, and I can’t say that Silo has done a terribly good job of servicing its central mysteries. The big questions remain intriguing, and I still want to know the answers, but my biggest question personally is whether anyone thinks we’re any closer to that now than we were four episodes ago.

“The Relic” is interspersed with a number of scenes of Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) and George (Ferdinand Kingsley) being lovey-dovey. Maybe some will find these scenes to be more poignant than I do (I find them rather cloying), but since Silo has planted the seed that George learned something we don’t know yet, one has to pay attention.

Yet, the closest we seem to get to anything butting up against the big questions of Silo in these scenes occurs when Juliette asks George what the big questions are. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to take this as the implication that Juliette has never considered these questions before. If so, we might be able to forgive that by filing it under her tendency to keep her head down and just worry about machines. But any implication that we, as viewers, have not previously thought about these questions would be almost insulting.

What’s outside the silo? Why was it built and how long does everyone have to stay inside? What if everything you thought you knew turned out to be a lie? Yes, indeed, I know what show I’m watching.

As Silo S1E6 comes to a close, Juliette is flipping through a Georgia tourism guidebook for kids that Regina (Sonita Henry) said has been passed down through George’s family for generations. It’s presented as though Juliette will discover something shocking, but the book seems to be perfectly ordinary. So I guess we’re just hitting the point again that the people in the silo are ignorant of all sorts of things we take for granted and the powers that be want to keep them in that state of ignorance.

That point is certainly reinforced as the episode ends and we discover that Juliette is being watched on CCTV. What she’s doing is worth rousing an unnamed someone over, who is probably the same someone Regina was talking about threatening her in the night. I can’t help but think that’s probably Sims (Common) and that we’re seeing what’s in the janitorial closet he was talking about last week. Maybe not, but regardless, we’ve already known that people in the silo are being listened to secretly, so I’m not sure it’s a stunning reveal that they’re also being watched, even if it’s framed as one.

The interesting question is why relics are as regulated as they are in the world of Silo. It continues to make the most sense if they don’t want people to know about the past because it actually is safe to go outside at this point, and the powers that be don’t want that because they want to maintain their power. That’s basically the straight line Allison (Rashida Jones) drew for herself back in Episode 1.

If that’s not the case, then things get convoluted pretty fast. I’ve speculated from early on that perhaps it looks like it is safe to go outside, but it actually isn’t. And while that might seem to provide a justification for lying to everyone and banning any relic of the past that might lead anyone to want to leave the silo, I have to believe the truth would function just fine in such an instance. If it looked safe but wasn’t, just let anyone who wants to try to go out there do so while everyone watches them die… which is what they are doing right now anyway. It’s hard to believe that an additional grand deception is necessary in order for that to work.

It’s possible that the silo is actually home to some kind of huge, very long-term social experiment, but it’s hard to see what the purpose of the experiment might be or to believe that a century and a half wouldn’t be enough time to get the data you wanted.

So, I’m a little stumped, but not in a good way. Silo hasn’t really been adding little wrinkles along the way to keep things intriguing so much as it’s left the big questions in place while shuffling around a lot on smaller ones.

I guess George was killed because he found something. Why were Jahns (Geraldine James) and Marnes (Will Patton) killed? And if it had to do with Juliette, why didn’t they just kill Juliette? Is it because of her plot armor?

Some people in the silo have something they call “the syndrome,” and we learn in S1E6 that Paul Billings (Chinaza Uche) is among them. I’ve been starting to like him, so I figure he’ll probably die pretty soon, but beyond that I’d be curious for any more information about this ailment at all.

It makes your hands shaky, which is something that we already knew. I suppose we didn’t know that it’s illegal to hide that you have it, but that’s not exactly surprising. Nor is it surprising that Juliette doesn’t turn Paul in, as she has this whole scofflaw thing going on. I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t respect that.

Regardless, Silo remains defined by some really intriguing questions at the heart of its premise, and I can only hope that its lack of forward momentum at this point boils down to a pacing problem. Maybe things will pick up down the last stretch of Season 1. Maybe by the time we get to S1E10, I’ll be excited for a Season 2. One can only hope.

See you next week.