Spoilers under.
It’s outstanding, actually, how a lot the Apple TV+ collection Silo is about tape. You might argue the present as an entire would merely evaporate—conceptually, anyway—with out the existence of tape. Tape would possibly as properly be the love curiosity, or the quippy sidekick who dies so the protagonist can have one thing to brood over. (Silo has that, too, however they’re arguably much less essential than the tape!) As somebody with a slim-to-nonexistent day by day relationship with tape, I now discover myself eyeing the Scotch roll in my junk drawer and questioning if it would show a pivotal plot machine because the Earth warms. Stranger issues have occurred!
This tape supplies a mind-boggling cap to the primary season of one of many extra intriguing new sci-fi collection in current reminiscence. Primarily based on Hugh Howey’s e-book trilogy, Silo follows a sturdy solid led by Dune’s Rebecca Ferguson as Juliette Nichols, the engineer-turned-sheriff who makes use of her job as protector of 10,000 post-apocalypse survivors to as an alternative examine the alleged homicide of her boyfriend, George Wilkins (Ferdinand Kingsley). She finally stumbles upon an unlimited conspiracy led by Mayor Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) and the pinnacle of Judicial, Robert Sims (Widespread), as they surveil and gaslight the whole lot of the underground Silo with out their neighborhood’s data or consent.
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The finale itself affords a satisfying reveal after 9 episodes of creeping suspense, however getting there requires some complicated narrative threads lastly intertwining. Let’s break them down.
Alright, what’s the take care of Walker and the warmth tape?
At first of the collection, we study Juliette stole some much-needed warmth tape from Provide whereas she was nonetheless working as a lowly engineer in Mechanical. Within the Silo, such petty thievery is a minor crime, which implies it’s odd that Mayor Holland brings it up a number of instances at any time when he and Juliette share the identical respiration area. What’s with Andy Dufresne nowadays? In spite of everything, tape isn’t your conventional Chekov’s gun. So most viewers—yours really included—probably tossed the warmth tape within the “bizarre however extraneous” part of their brains’ narrative submitting cupboard.
Outdoors the Silo is, apparently, a poisoned planet. Silo residents pressured outdoors the air lock are requested to “clear,” throughout which they actually wipe the mud off the construction’s digital camera sensors, which show the ravaged Earth to the residents inside. Moments after cleansing, these folks inevitably die, gasping in poisonous fumes till they stumble to their knees and suffocate. However because the episodes progress, Juliette discovers proof that the world isn’t, in reality, a wasteland. George’s all-important exhausting drive reveals video footage of a verdant, blooming Earth, one Juliette is determined to indicate her Silo neighbors.
Right here’s the place the tape is available in. We study that Walker (Harriet Walter)—Juliette’s mentor, psuedo-mother and fellow Down Deep resident—usually creates her personal warmth tape as a result of the stuff from Provide is sub-par. In truth, it’s weirdly sub-par. Why would Bernard (and the entire of IT and Judicial) be so upset over rolls of warmth tape in the event that they don’t even work correctly? The gears begin to flip in Walker’s head, and she or he realizes one thing: When Judicial sends somebody out to “clear,” they wrap the prison right into a hazmat swimsuit utilizing the crappy warmth tape from Provide. What if that’s intentional? What in the event that they’re not attempting to guard them from the toxicity outdoors? What in the event that they need the fits to leak?
Walker items this collectively shortly sufficient to go away her condominium for the primary time in many years. She goes to her ex-wife, Carla, who works in Provide, and collectively they exchange the dangerous warmth tape with Walker’s personal DIY stuff. This tape is then shuttled to the Holding Room, the place Juliette awaits her banishment to the world above. When Judicial sentences her and zippers her into her hazmat swimsuit, she’s sealed inside with Good Tape™️. Finally, it’s what saves her life as she faces the surface…and the unknown.
So, wait, what’s it really like Outdoors?
Seems, the true world actually does suck. The video footage George found on the exhausting drive was an phantasm, one he and numerous others fell for—together with Sheriff Holston (David Oyelowo) and his spouse, Allison (Rashida Jones).
This video is a intelligent trick positioned contained in the hazmat swimsuit helmets to forestall these despatched out to “clear” from seeing the truth that lies simply past the Silo’s hill. The reasoning for that is probably three-fold: 1) The hopeful view of flourishing gardens would incentivize “cleaners” to wipe the sensors and present this “actuality” to their associates nonetheless contained in the Silo; 2) This motion would then waste treasured moments of their air time, finally killing them earlier than that they had an opportunity to find something past the hill; 3) The opposite Silos would subsequently stay undiscovered.
Juliette lastly understands this deception when she notices the birds hovering throughout her helmet’s visual view. Curiously, they comply with the very same flight sample as those in George’s video. Positive that may’t be mere coincidence, she locations Holston’s sheriff’s badge on what’s purported to be his lifeless physique, solely to find a glitch in her show when her hand passes via his “corpse.”
She then crests the hill, and the footage enjoying in her helmet lastly cuts out. The greenery disappears. What stays—and what’s actual—is the barren stays of our little blue dot. However Juliette, quickly protected and alive inside her well-taped swimsuit, forges onward, whereupon she discovers lots of of hill-encircled sensors. Her Silo is one in every of many.
Did Alison and Holston actually die outdoors the Silo?
It’s unclear, precisely, what occurred to Alison and Holston, as their our bodies should not seen in Juliette’s new, unfiltered view of Earth. The likeliest clarification is that they did die because of the dangerous Provide tape defending their fits, and that their corpses shortly decomposed because of the degree of poison flooding into their pores and skin. (The our bodies seen on the Silo sensor, then, will need to have been superimposed on behalf of Judicial.)
What does Sims know?
It’s clear by the top of the finale that, nonetheless well-informed Sims might sound in regards to the Silo’s lies, he doesn’t know the extent of what’s happening Outdoors. Watching Juliette “clear” from the confines of the cafeteria, Mayor Holland notices her put Holston’s badge atop the sheriff’s physique, from which Holland infers that she’s deciphered the reality of her helmet show. “She is aware of,” he mutters. Sims eyes him, puzzled, and replies, “Is aware of what?”
Earlier episodes have revealed Sims is certainly a loyal soldier of Judicial, and he’s more than pleased to supervise the division’s unadvertised surveillance of Silo residents. He’s equally desperate to destroy so-called relics from the period earlier than the Silo, as evidenced by his relentless pursuit of George’s exhausting drive. He appears to take a typical state strategy, which is to deem such motion needed for a nebulous definition of “security.” However as soon as George’s digital camera footage makes its solution to Sims’ retinas, he appears more and more unmoored.
Does he now genuinely imagine the Outdoors is wholesome and thriving? If that’s the case, why does he nonetheless need everybody to stay ensconced within the Silo? May which have one thing to do with the undefined “one aim” he and his spouse mentioned in unfastened phrases throughout different, earlier scenes? And if Sims is now conscious that Holland (and Juliette) know one thing he doesn’t, would possibly he attempt to study the reality?
What does Mayor Holland know?
In addition to Juliette, Holland could be the one different character working with a lot of the information. He appears to know in regards to the tape; that Earth is ruined; and that his Silo is just one of lots of. He’s additionally the proud proprietor of a key with the quantity “18” etched on it, virtually definitely a signifier that his Silo is No. 18 amongst the cumulative Silos over yonder. And that will imply somebody else is conscious of—and even perhaps in command of!—the Silos as an entire. On the finish of the finale, Holland makes use of his helpful dandy 18 key to open a door to…someplace. Perhaps the multiverse!!
Nonetheless, there’s one door Holland appears unaware of: George’s water door. That’s proper! Our favourite Geek Squad member found an underwater door beneath the Silo earlier than he died, somewhat factoid he handed alongside through exhausting drive to Juliette, who inadvertently handed it alongside to Holland moments earlier than she slipped out to “clear.” When she reveals this tidbit in regards to the “large metal door,” a short flash of confusion crosses Holland’s face. His response feels uncharacteristically stunted and compelled: “The Founders left us with many mysteries.”
Later, we watch Holland unearth a shiny CD (the nostalgia!) from inside George’s exhausting drive. Perhaps he’s desperate to perform a little truth-hunting of his personal. And if that’s the case, it would solely be a matter of time earlier than insurrection sweeps Silo No. 18. Viva la revolución! Convey your pitchforks and Good Tape™️!