The following recap contains spoilers for the Silo Season 2 premiere, S2E1, “The Engineer” (written by Graham Yost and directed by Michael Dinner)
In the age of Reddit threads, social media leaks, and rampant fan theories, any time a popular television show can successfully pull off a surprising twist at the end of a season, similar to what Silo did in the Season 1 finale, we should both commend them and raise our caution flags.
In what was a surprise to the non-Silo short story readers, the end of Season 1 saw Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) leave the silo to go clean, hoping to prove that what she saw on George’s contraband hard drive was real. Outside is safe. Today is the day we can leave the Silo. What she (and the viewers) discovered, however, is that the outside is unequivocally not safe. Those dead bodies they see are, in fact, dead.
What Bernard (Tim Robbins) and the rest of the IT surveillance department were attempting to cover up with those idyllic blue skies and green grass images was the fact that their silo is not the only silo. In fact, from what we could see in the closing shot of Season 1, there are dozens of other silos. As Season 1 spent 10 episodes wondering around and eventually confirming what was actually happening outside, it appears Season 2 might spend an oversized amount of time trying to get back into silos and figuring out what’s happening inside each of those.
That’s where the caution flags should come up.

You see, with such a shocking twist that ended Season 1, it leaves many interesting questions unanswered as we dive deep into Season 2. Many of those questions revolve around the new information about the existence of multiple silos. How many are there? How many of them are still actively trying to keep people inside? Why are there so many? Do they communicate? What actually happened to cause all of these people to go underground?
These are all interesting, relevant questions. But right now, none of them can be answered unless we as viewers leave Juliette’s point of view. Season 1 also allowed us to get invested in the life of Juliette’s mentor, Walker (Harriet Walter), and other members of Mechanical. We now have intimate knowledge of the head of IT Bernard Holland, the head of Judicial Robert Sims (Common), Deputy Sheriff Paul Billings (Chinaza Uche), and curious IT analyst Lukas Kyle (Avi Nash).
Some of the other most interesting questions remaining from Season 1 revolve around this group of characters. Off the top of my head, I want to know: Has Lukas been sent down to the mines for 10 years as Bernard prescribed? What happened to Walker after she left Mechanical for the first time in years? Will the syndrome overcome Billings, and will Sims elevate him to sheriff? Where was Bernard going when he discovered that Juliette knew the image in her mask was a fake? And most importantly, what happens to the population of Silo Prime when they see the first person ever not clean and live to tell about it?
Expanding the world to other silos, as S2E1 (“The Engineer”) does, addresses the first set of questions, but does literally nothing to address the second set. In fact, the only characters we see in this episode besides Juliette are in the form of flashbacks.
The episode begins with a scene depicting a rebellion that happened some time ago in the silo that Juliette discovers and explores in this episode. A group of freedom-seekers band together, march up the silo levels, attack the armed forces, overpower them, and find a way to force their group outside, where they likely believe they will find safety and tranquility. The conversation between the rebel leader and his wife goes just far enough to confirm their belief that the outside is safe, although they have doubts before they go. As Juliette sees before she finds a way into this new silo, those people all quickly meet their deaths.

In another flashback, we see Juliette as a young teenager when she first begins her time in Mechanical. Walker takes her under her wing, teaches her about what’s a priority in their area, and forces her to confront the reality—no matter how sad and ugly—that her mother killed herself. Those scenes serve as a method by which we are shown how Juliette learned resiliency and resourcefulness.
These are both needed many times over as Juliette begins to explore the remains of a silo whose occupants all seem to have tried to escape. Hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies, litter the outside and the immediate area to the entrance to this silo. We are not exactly told why she chose this one to explore, but perhaps it’s just because it was accessible and there is a pretty good chance that Juliette will not run into other people. Maybe she hopes she can get some of her questions answered at this abandoned station.

What happens in this silo, however, is the complete opposite of answering questions. In what depressingly seems like a callback to the lethargically slow “Machines” episode from Season 1, Juliette spends literally half of this Season 2 premiere trying to engineer solutions to get across a bridge in the abandoned silo because she hears noises coming from the other side.
I was frustrated by this development because: A) it was always clear she was going to make it to the other side; and B) despite showing her ingenuity, this literal bridge-building did nothing to assist with the question-answering. Other than multiple soldiers who were apparently hung over railings of the silo stairs and a large, spray-painted “LIES” painted on their outside screen, there is very little in the way of Easter Eggs to even investigate.
It does seem, with how Juliette is able to navigate around this silo in the dark with ease (in addition to the identical cafeteria, outside screen area), that this silo is exactly the same as the one she knows. That raises more questions about why it would have been a coordinated effort to build these and who was behind it all. But those will have to wait for another episode or another season to address.
In the literal last moments of the episode, Juliette hears music coming from a sealed room deep within the IT section of the new silo. She tries to open the door with no luck to discover the source of the music only to have it disappear. In the quiet, a panel slides open and a pair of color-mismatched eyes appear, threatening Juliette to never try and open that door again, or this mysterious character (who appears to be the Steve Zahn character) will certainly kill her.

As someone who is also blessed with a version of heterochromia, I am very intrigued by this character and not just by his eyes. Why is he there alone? How has he survived? What is he trying to accomplish in a silo seemingly by himself? Also, is this character the titular “Engineer,” or is that Juliette? With the introduction of this character, we now have a third layer of questions to mine. Will this character help answer questions from the first layer? Presumably so, but that also means more time away from the chaos Juliette left behind in her home silo.
One of the criticisms of Season 1 of Silo was that the middle of the season really dragged and that much of Episodes 2–7 could have been condensed into fewer episodes. With how many doors have been opened in just the first 45 minutes of Season 2, it might just be a blessing this season is also 10 episodes, because there are a lot of proverbial dirty windows to clean.
Will they do it in a way that propels the narrative but also rewards viewers who invested in the characters from Season 1? I believe they can if we don’t have too many more episodes spending 20 minutes trying to cross a bridge. I just hope they have enough wool in their pockets to make all of it clear for us by the end.