Ryan Kirksey
The following recap contains spoilers for Silo S2E5, “Descent” (written by Jenny DeArmitt-Stran and directed by Amber Templemore)
I suppose in any relationship where both sides have to understand that if they are committed to staying in the relationship, they choose to accept their partner even with all their flaws. It’s a tale as old as time, and what a multi-billion dollar couples therapy industry is built around.
What does this have to do with “Descent,” the fifth episode of the second season of Silo? Quite a bit, I fear.
It’s clear by now that I’m in a committed relationship with Silo. I’m 15 episodes in. I write about each episode this site. I podcast about it with Caemeron Crain weekly. I’m invested in most—if not all—of the main characters and their fates (still not over Judge Meadows’ way-too-soon ending).
I have chosen to stay committed, so I must also then choose to accept the show for its one major flaw. After half the season, it’s now clear that the plot with Juliette and Solo in Silo 17 is simply not interesting or propulsive. I don’t know what I would have done differently to fix or amend it, but I find myself caring immensely about what’s happening in Silo 18 and losing patience when Juliette is tied up with yet another menial, slow-paced task in Silo 17.
In “The Descent,” Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) meanders along the path laid out in Episode 4 where she is trying to recreate a suit that’s acceptable to take her back outside and eventually to her friends in Silo 18. Since all she was able to grab last week was an old firefighter suit, she needs to procure some kind of helmet that she is apparently trying to sew (?) to the suit. I’m no seamstress, but I’m pretty sure you can’t sew something by hand so tight that air can’t get in.
While looking for where a helmet might be, Solo (Steve Zahn) eventually reveals his real name is Cole Myers. This reveal of Chekov’s First and Last Name assuredly will come back later (spoiler, it does), but that’s not the most surprising piece of information Solo dumps on Juliette. He just now tells her that Silo 17 is slowly flooding and he only has 10 months left until the water reaches the IT level and begins to flood his vault and its unique power source.
Juliette is all “wait, actually?” but then realizes she really doesn’t care because she needs to be out of there within hours or days and not months. I’m sure Solo thinks Juliette is an engineer gift from the silo gods and was sent there to help save him, but Juliette just wants out. The only thing that’s stopping her is a search for a workable helmet.
The helmet hunt takes her to a room where she discovers a staff memo about a missing helmet (convenient!). But the documents in there also have names, nicknames, and photos of the employees, and Solo doesn’t look a thing like the photos Juliette finds of him. Juliette reasonably confronts him about this and Solo goes absolutely ballistic on her. She backs off, but realizes there may be more reasons to add to her list of incentives for getting out of Silo 17.
However, the weakness she has been feeling in Episodes 4 and 5 apparently wasn’t from hunger or exhaustion, but from a horrific wound she has on her arm that is infected and getting worse. As she loses consciousness, she finds a helmet.
What’s waiting for her on the other side of that rest is anyone’s guess, but my money is on Solo setting her up in a situation where she is forced to help him with the flooding before he will give her the helmet. So even though Juliette found what she was looking for, she’s not any closer to getting back to Silo 18 than when this episode began. See you in Silo 18 sometime around the finale, Juliette!
Speaking of Silo 18, things are actually happening over there. In the aftermath of Judge Meadows’s “murder” at the hands of Shirley and Knox, Bernard (Tim Robbins) appoints Robert Sims (Common) as the new Judge of the silo. This is not a promotion by any means, as both of these men know it is merely a figurehead position that signs papers all day long. But after Sims betrayed Bernard with the impeachment plot, Bernard furiously proclaims he can no longer trust Sims and can absolutely not continue with him as the IT shadow.
Sims is a respected man who is responsible for the mob justice currently after the Mechanical fugitives, so Bernard can’t simply poison his mushrooms as he did to Meadows. He needs Sims to be around, just out of the way.
Bernard’s new head of judicial security, Rick Amundsen (Christian Ochoa) is more of a Yes Man and will follow Bernard’s order with no questions asked. Amundsen is put in charge of finding the fugitives while Bernard goes off to give old mining friend Lukas Kyle (Avi Nash) a special assignment of sorts.
As we speculated on the podcast last week, Bernard actually kept Juliette’s red-level hard drive after the smashed it to pieces. Bernard offers to give Kyle time outside of the mines if he can recover the data that exists on the drive, and Bernard knows Kyle will stay motivated because he is serving what is essentially a life sentence down in the mines.
Lukas Kyle does uncover a coded message from Salvador Quinn (the IT head from 140 years ago), and also some schematics of Silo 18. Those plans show the silo with tunnels coming out of it and leading to other locations at three places within the silo, including one at the very bottom level down near where Mechanical is located. I’m not sure Bernard intended for Kyle to find that information, but it does give us some wild thoughts on which to speculate.
Are the silos connected (likely)? Who can travel between them? Are the three connected levels on IT, Judicial, and Mechanical? Why choose those first two but also include the low-class level in the Down Deep?
Answers to these are all likely to come down the road, but this is probably a stuff-it-in-our-back-pocket moment that will come up in some future season. This work gains Kyle “another 24 hours” outside the mines to do some more work. But is Lukas Kyle headstrong and resilient enough to resist Bernard when the chips are down, and will Kyle be asked to do something that jeopardizes the people he loves in the silo?
Bernard isn’t the only one doing some investigating behind the scenes. Sheriff Billings (Chinaza Ushe) gets his most screentime all season as he and Hank (Billy Postlethwaite) try to figure out if Patrick Kennedy (Rick Gomez) is, in fact, alive. They do discover that he is wounded but alive, and they find where he is hiding. When they locate him, Kennedy seems ready to sing about all the things he has heard about the silo and what actually happened to Juliette. Of course, his singing will have to wait for another episode, because the more pressing issue around the silo is what happened to Shirley (Remmie Milner), Knox (Shane McRae), Walker (Harriet Walter), and Carla (Clare Perkins).
Carla thinks they can trust a shady ex-porter named Calvin (Jon Chew) who can sneak them down levels in grain silos and other such clandestine methods. Consider me shocked, SHOCKED, that this plan didn’t work, as Calvin runs to secure the bag when he finds out Walker and Carla have a 1,000-credit bounty each on their heads. While Knox and Shirley separate from them, Carla sacrifices herself to the raiders so Walker can escape and blend in with the citizens of the silo.
That’s probably RIP Carla, but we will have to wait to see if she makes a return at some point this season. Knox and Shirley also seemingly get captured by a couple of upper-level rioters, but none other than Camille Sims (Alexandria Riley), a former raider, shows up to intervene and take them to their hearing. However, Camille is not happy with how her husband has been treated by Bernard so it’s turncoat time and Camille releases Knox and Shirley.
Bernard is made aware this has happened and starts to tighten the screws on Amundsen to find Knox and Shirley. They find their way back to Calvin, but they won’t be fooled again so they tie him up, threaten him, and take his gear that will allow them to repel some ungodly number of stories so the two can make a quick escape down to Mechanical.
Somehow, even with Amundsen in pursuit, it works, and Shirley and Knox barely make it back to their people. They are both hurt but alive, and it appears they have just as much sympathy and support from the people of the down deep as they have hatred and retribution from the citizens of the upper levels.
That means one thing is certainly ahead of them: war. With the “Descent” back down to their people now complete, it will be time for the citizens of the silo to choose sides. Better wake up and get that suit ready quickly, Juliette.
