Silo Season 3 brings past and present into head-on collision, with the two amnesia plots dovetailing perfectly. The latest season of Silo has already proven controversial, simply because it’s deviating significantly from the books; Juliette has an amnesia arc, one designed to parallel the mystery of the Before Times, but that is entirely absent from the original novels. That said, three episodes in, it’s easy to justify the choice.
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Silo episode 3 feels like a turning point in both narratives. In both times, the amnesia plots have essentially given way to conspiracies; Daniel and Helen are uncovering dark secrets in the Before Times, while Juliette has accomplished in a day of searching what Camille couldn’t manage in three months, drawing Lukas Kyle out of hiding. The parallel makes one thing even clearer, though, because it confirms the true enemy all along.
Daniel and Helen Have Uncovered a Dangerous Conspiracy
Let’s start with Silo‘s Before Times plot, which is the most complex – even though these Silo characters are cut off from the wider cast, existing in a completely different part of the timeline. Daniel’s sister Charlotte was part of a mysterious black ops mission during US attacks on Iran. She was the sole survivor, and her memories have been deliberately erased to ensure all trace of the mission is wiped out. Daniel and (ex-)journalist Helen discover the one recording from the mission; when they return to try to get the recording, they find their contact missing and his rooms ransacked.
The revelation changes everything, because it immediately moves Silo‘s Before Times plot into the same narrative space as Juliette’s in her own time. Both are stories of covert manipulation, of memories wiped to erase patterns, and now – clearly – of covert surveillance programs being conducted on authority figures so potential threats can be identified. Juliette leads Camille’s security forces to Lukas, and it can’t be a coincidence that Daniel and Helen’s contact is taken straight after they’ve visited him. Silo is telling two stories, but both follow the same pattern.
Silo Season 3’s Structure Offers a Clue to the Real Villain
But let’s assume the pattern holds. In Juliette’s time, the Silo is run by an AI known as the Algorithm. A sophisticated predictive system, this AI is programmed to govern human life and ensure humanity’s continued survival under its control. The last point is crucial; the Algorithm is not programmed to value human independence, but rather seeks only to control every variable and prevent humanity ever becoming free. When a silo risks falling outside its influence, it enacts a safeguard to sterilize it. Every aspect of life in the silos is designed to maintain its control.
Silo Season 3 is paralleling the two stories, which means we can safely assume the Algorithm is active in the Before Times as well. The key difference, of course, is that the human race of the Before Times is too vast to be controlled overtly; thus, it’s more likely the Algorithm is deliberately engineering conflict between the US and Iran, seeking to reduce humanity to a much smaller number who can be contained and controlled. We’ve already had hints the dirty bomb wasn’t detonated by Iran at all, as well as the introduction of Silo‘s memory altering drugs. The playbook is the same – so is it actually the same player?
Was the End of the World Really Down to Humanity At All?
It’s easy to imagine a world where Silo becomes just another warning about the dangers of AI. But the books (and, indeed, the show so far) hint at a much more sophisticated idea; that people willingly subsume their own judgment to algorithms, to predictive models, to computer programs that they allow to live in a position of authority over themselves. Camille is a case in point; she’s considering erasing her own son’s memories because she fears the alternative, and it simply hasn’t occurred to her she could (or even should) fight for freedom from the Algorithm.
There’s a reason for this, of course; Camille wasn’t chosen by coincidence. The Algorithm carefully selected her, manipulating her into a position of authority because it believed she would comply with its imperatives. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Algorithm adopt the same approach in the Before Times, deliberately engineering events so compliant humans reach positions of power and do what it wants. Indeed, that’s likely the only way the Algorithm could ever get the silos built in the first place.
if this is the case, then Silo Season 3’s parallels will surely diverge. On the one hand, we have a time when the Algorithm won; it will engineer World War III under controlled conditions, ultimately reducing humanity to contained micro-populations. On the other, we can only hope Juliette will successfully overthrow the Algorithm, breaking its grip on her silo and then liberating all the others. Only time will tell whether Juliette can pull this off.
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