Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Silo S3E2, “It’s All Good” (written by Shelley Birse and directed by Michael Dinner)
In Silo S3E2, Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) begins to take some steps to figure out what’s actually going on. After receiving a note that promised the truth in last week’s episode, she has a vague recollection of Martha (Harriet Walter) telling her they’re good in supply—the message that led her to use higher-quality tape when she went out to clean and saved her life.
Juliette seeks out Martha, and they have an amusing exchange where Martha says Juliette always came to her for advice she didn’t take. Juliette is again looking for advice, this time about whether to go to the marketplace as the note she received suggested. Martha says that the Jules she knew would trust her gut, and encourages the amnesiac Juliette to do the same. She also tells Juliette to “try harder” to regain her memory.
So, Juliette goes to the marketplace and shakes her chaperone, Deputy Jerry (Liam Akpan), by mustering a force composed of some of her fans. Sandy (Chipo Chung), dressed as a raider, then leads Juliette into a storage room. Patrick Kennedy (Rick Gomez) and some others are inside. At first, Kennedy wants to know why Juliette is lying about it being unsafe outside, given that he’s seen the Jane Carmody video, but as the conversation proceeds, it feels like the Outsiders might be getting closer to the truth.
They know the handwriting on the sign Juliette held up when she came back wasn’t her own, and they didn’t break into IT to steal a helmet in order to try to go outside so much as they wanted to compare the helmet from their home silo to the one that Juliette was wearing when she returned. One is inscribed with the number 18, the other with 17—how close are our erstwhile rebels to figuring out that there are other silos? Kennedy has already put together that Jules is being fed memory-suppressing drugs.
The meeting is interrupted when Camille (Alexandria Riley) and a group of raiders arrive, but the Outsiders are able to disperse in time thanks to a signal from Kat (Caitlin Zoz). It turns out the Sheriff’s wife is part of the Outsiders—she’s the one who injured her wrist during the IT break-in, even—which means that Paul’s (Chinaza Uche) loyalties remain as conflicted as ever. As he notes, it’s ironic that he has been tasked with revising The Pact.
But maybe the Algorithm is well aware of the competing forces creating tension in Paul’s mind, and has given Billings this task because of them. Towards the beginning of Silo S3E2, it’s made clear that the Algorithm knows about the note Juliette received. It’s more concerned about the fact that Juliette lied to Camille about it than the note itself.
At the end of the episode, the Algorithm makes explicit what we’ve already inferred: Juliette’s presence has had a calming effect on the silo, but she also poses a risk if she were to regain her memory. It shows Camille a graph with a line representing each of these factors, and says that if they intersect, Juliette will have outlived her usefulness. Of course, suddenly killing her could have a calamitous effect, so it hopes that the introduction of the “vitamin compound” into the water supply will happen before that becomes necessary.
This all felt a little too on the nose for me, personally, but S3E2 does confirm that memory suppressors have been placed into the water supply of the silo before, and that they are planning to do it again. Whether that will cause memory loss for everyone to the degree that Juliette has been experiencing it is an open question. I hope not, but I also hope we don’t find out because this plan is prevented.
The last we saw Orla (Quelin Sepulveda) in S3E1, she was talking about a vitamin D shipment that I think we can safely assume is actually a shipment of the memory-loss drugs the Algorithm refers to. In that scene, Orla said it would take several days. She also said that she had a hunch about how “she” was taking things from critical supply. Now, Orla has gone missing. Where is she? And who was she referring to?
Also, where is Lukas Kyle (Avi Nash)? He’s apparently been missing for 93 days, ever since the rebellion, but if he’s hiding, it’s not with Kennedy and the Outsiders. Juliette is looking for him, too, now. She goes to the cafeteria to look at Cassiopeia (she doesn’t know that name, of course), and vaguely recalls Lukas.
She spit her “vitamins” out that night. Unfortunately, her nurse has discovered this by finding a pill in the sink.
It’s All Good, Dan
In the Before Times, some 352 years before the creation of the silo (per the Algorithm), Daniel (Ashley Zukerman) is frustrated that his sister, Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay), doesn’t remember who he is. But, he’s informed by Dr. Victor Crnkovich (Matt Craven) that this is actually according to plan. The doctor has been working on perfecting a method to help people get over their trauma, and inducing memory loss is the first step. The second will be to tell Charlotte stories about her life, to reactivate the memories they want to bring back, while leaving the traumatic ones behind.
On the face of it, this strikes me as deeply unethical. It’s a violation of the patient’s autonomy, and one could even argue that it destroys the person’s identity in a way we could compare to homicide. Plus, we have to suspect that at least part of the reason that Charlotte is being given this treatment is to cover up things the government doesn’t want anyone to know.
On reflection, however, I have to acknowledge that the question is a bit more difficult if we focus on Charlotte’s specific case, and others like it. When Helen (Jessica Henwick) pings relevant memories in Charlotte’s subconscious, Charlotte’s severe PTSD is triggered. As much as we may want to say that you have to work through your trauma rather than erase it, we do need to think about how difficult, if not impossible, that can be in certain cases.
Still, given that we haven’t seen Charlotte’s condition prior to the initiation of the treatment, and have been given no indication that she consented to having her memory wiped, I have to stick to the conclusion that this is all categorically unethical. But, I do wonder whether everyone else will agree.
Even if a consequentialist might be able to muster a defense for the use of memory suppressors in the case of PTSD, there is a further worry about whether the patient could be implanted with false memories. Dr. Crnkovich tells Daniel that he supposes it would be possible (as though he’d never thought about it before, which is either bullshit or he’s a bad scientist), but more difficult than bringing back actual memories.
Regardless, it’s clear that the drugs being given to Charlotte are the same as those being given to Juliette however many years later, so even if Dr. Crnkovich views the creation of false memories as hypothetical, others will surely see the potential in his procedure. Because of course they will.
Helen tells Daniel that she didn’t initiate contact with Charlotte. Charlotte reached out to her because she was concerned about the Iran mission. The planes for her squadron had been taken off the network and installed with systems from the 1980s. They weren’t going to take out nuclear facilities, but something else. Something that required bunker blasters.
Helen further questions whether the dirty bomb attack on Washington, DC actually happened. It seems like that would be a hard thing to fake, but I suppose if they set off 850,000 fireworks during a heatwave maybe they could have used something like that as cover…
Regardless, by the end of Silo S3E2, Daniel seems to be amenable to working with Helen. If so, he’ll be at loggerheads with Senator Thurman (Laura Innes) and her daughter, Anna (Morven Christie), who have been friendly to Daniel up to this point and have confirmed that Charlotte was on a mission in the mountains that differed from the missions being discussed on the TV news.
What was the point of that mission, and how does it relate to the black goo? Over on YouTube, Miscellaneous Gab has speculated that the goo might have an extraterrestrial source (which I suppose is fair since black goo and aliens often go together), but I find myself doubting that possibility. I have thought, though, about how silos are usually for food, so maybe I shouldn’t entirely rule out the theory that there are aliens in this story… Maybe they eat humans?
Whatever happens, I am curious to see how the plot in the Before Times leads to an explanation of why the silos were created. I hope that we get there in Silo Season 3. The pacing of this series has often been slow, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the arc in each timeline isn’t resolved until the season finale, but I wouldn’t be mad if the show surprised me on that front.
See you next week.
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