Silo Season 2 Episode 5 Recap & Review

Silo Season 2 Episode 5 descends deeper into chaos and unleashes the fury as Judicial hunts Mechanical, residents rebel, and Juliette learns who Solo really is.

Episode 5 opens in Silo 18 at Sims’ (Common) home, where Bernard (Tim Robbins) breaks in quietly and makes himself at home in the kitchen. Bernard sniffs out if he can trust Sims in keeping his secrets. Sims already betrayed Bernard’s trust when he called for Judge Meadows’ (Tanya Moodie) impeachment behind his back and forced his hand in doing something he did not want to do (i.e., kill Meadows). It’s clear Bernard is displeased and as a result, he tells Sims he will no longer be the IT shadow. Instead, he will be the new Head of Judicial, and Bernard swears him in right over the kitchen table.  

In the wake of Meadows’ death, Shirley (Remmie Milner), Knox (Shane McRae), and the other delegates from Mechanical, Walker (Harriet Walter) and Carla (Clare Perkins, of The Outlaws), do their best to calmly weave through upper silo crowds unnoticed. They know that once Judge Meadows’ death is announced and they are blamed, a blood hunt will ensue. And it does. 

Bernard deploys The Raiders, who line silo halls and set up a barrier preventing anyone from entering or exiting the Down Deep area. Bernard knows that, if they succeed, it’ll be a reset for the silo, like Juliette never even happened. 

Mechanical’s delegates know there is no way they’ll make it home without help, so they turn to The Transporters, a group who does just what their name suggests: transports things throughout the silo. The delegates’ decision blows up in their faces, though, when they discover The Transporters have lied about helping them and instead have turned them in to Judicial, who is offering a hefty reward for their heads. 

So, Carla surrenders herself to the Raiders, Walker disappears amongst the rebellious crowds, and Shirley and Knox come face to face with part of the mob chasing them. However, they receive unexpected help from an unlikely source, as Judge Sims’ wife, Camille (Alexandria Riley, of Baby Reindeer), steps in, diffuses the situation, then hides them until she can move them. She reminds them her husband wants them in custody, not dead, and if they stay out in the open, they will be killed.

Over in Silo 17, Juliette searches for a way to fix her helmet as Solo speaks of old classmates–namely, his friend Tiny. He then tells her of places in the silo where there might be a spare helmet, but they’re all underwater. In fact, we learn the main generator is under at least a hundred levels of water, and when Juliette asks how he has any power, Solo says IT has its own power source above ground, but he won’t say where. Instead, he tells Juliette the generator failed because Judicial Raiders blew up the groundwater pump to flood Mechanical but couldn’t get it fixed before the water took out the generator, essentially shooting their own selves in the foot. 

As Juliette continues her search, she comes across paperwork that suggests Solo might not actually be Solo at all. As she realizes this, her body weakens and she gets dizzy. Something is clearly wrong, and Solo rushes off to get her some food. While she waits, she comes across an old paperwork from before the rebellion: a memo stating that there’s a helmet missing to one of the outside suits. If she can find it, she can use it in place of her broken helmet and go home.

Back in Silo 18, Sims does his best to adapt to his new role. Sure, it means power, but it also means danger, and he’s very aware of that. Bernard meets with Juliette’s father, Dr. Pete Nichols (Iain Glen, of Game of Thrones), in an effort to recruit his support of the silo. He really just wants to make sure Pete won’t be a problem and stand in Judicial’s way, and as a gesture of good faith, he gives Pete some of Juliette’s things. Pete says he just wants to practice medicine truthfully and without harm. Bernard realizes that while he might be able to control what Juliette means to the people, he’ll never be able to control what she means to her father.

Oh, Bernard … quite the clever, busy little mischievous bee. 

See, in Episode 4 prior to her impeachment and subsequent death, Judge Meadows met with prisoner Lucas Kyle (Avi Nash), who assisted Juliette in accessing the data on the hard drive, to pass down his sentence. She asked him what he’s learned from watching the night skies in the dining hall … “the lights in the night sky”. Upon hearing his rudimentary knowledge, she lectured him on what stars are and how it is our world that revolves and orbits, changing how the skies look each night. When Lucas asked if there were other worlds too, Meadows quickly called in the guards and sentenced him to five years in the mines, thinking he wouldn’t survive to tell anyone what she’d told him, since most who wind up in the mines don’t survive to see a fifth year.

But oh was she wrong. So wrong. I’ve come to discover, in Silo, the biggest threat is always Bernard. 

In Episode 5, Bernard has Lucas brought to his office, where he questions him about the hard drive: Did he know what was on it? And what did he see? Then he makes a deal with Lucas: Hack into the hard drive again and search it thoroughly in exchange for time outside of the mines. Of course, Lucas accepts and gets to work, finding schematics of the silo that show areas unfamiliar to Bernard. He also finds a hidden file containing a love letter from Salvador Quinn to his wife, which starts off as a love letter but goes into code–the same mentionings Meadows mumbled about as she lay dying in Bernard’s arms. (Quinn was Silo 18’s Mayor when the 140-year-rebellion took place.) She would not tell Bernard if she deciphered the code or what she found. Now that he has the actual letter, he can work to decipher it himself … or have Lucas do it. It’s hard to say where Lucas is safest. Deals with the devil never work out.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Billings (Chinaza Uche) and Deputy Hank (Billy Postlethwaite) review The Pact and learn of Meadows’ death at the alleged hands of Mechanical, instantly not believing it. The two have been working together this entire season to piece together what’s really going on between Mechanical and Judicial. In Episode 5, they visit the morgue requesting to see the body of the man from Mechanical who started the riot in Episode 3, but he isn’t there. 

Patrick Kennedy (The Crossing) is his name, and Billings and Hank find him down in the tunnels, hiding and bleeding out from a gunshot wound. Kennedy reveals to Billings it was Sims who orchestrated the firebomb attack on the Deputy’s station. When Billings hears this, he pulls out a piece of paper he found hidden in a book in Juliette’s room. It’s a magazine ad–forbidden material in Silo 18. Kennedy realizes they’re all on the same side and says he’ll tell them everything they want to know … and even things they don’t.

Elsewhere, Shirley and Knox devise a plan and head back to The Transporters, where they forcibly take supplies needed to get home. In a daring feat of desperation, they repel from around the 90th level in an effort to get as close to the Down Deep as possible. The cable might not take them the whole way, but it will get them close enough. And it does. It’s a breath-holding scene to watch as they escape with their lives by the skin of their teeth. Before they can settle into security, though, silo residents rebel, break through the Raiders’ barrier in front of the Down Deep, and, as I said in the beginning, unleash the mother-f*cking fury. 

And speaking of, let’s hop back to Silo 17. Juliette grows fainter by the second, but she refuses to give up on locating the missing helmet. Just before Solo comes rushing back with food, she sees a photo of two people, their names engraved below: Solo & Tiny. The Solo in the photo is not the Solo Juliette knows, and when she confronts him about this and reads from a piece of paper that Solo was the IT Shadow, then mentions the name Cole Meyers, she learns who Solo really is as he loses his sh*t and unleashes his own mother-f*cking fury.

“I AM THE I.T. SHADOW!” he roars at her before moving closer and screaming in her face. “I AM SOLO! DO YOU HEAR ME? I AM THE I.T. SHADOW! I AM SOLO!”

We’ve had many intense moments in Season 2 so far, but this moment takes the cake. Steve Zahn is brilliant to watch here as he flips a powerful Jekyll/Hyde switch. One minute he is sweet, tender, and innocent; the next he is a raging lunatic completely off his rocker. He aggressively intimidates Juliette into submission (and agreement) before realizing what he’s done after she scampers away. Despite appearances, there is nothing about Silo 17 that is safe … or Solo. Juliette’s best hope is to find the missing helmet and get the hell out of there before she discovers more truth than she wants. 

As she continues her search in an old employee’s room, she grows weaker, barely able to stand, and falls to her knees. She holds up her wrist, where we see a bloody bandage around her left forearm. When she was retrieving the fireman’s suit in Episode 4, she was cut by a piece of metal underwater, and that injury has become badly infected. She wills herself to keep searching and lo and behold, she finds the missing helmet under the bed. Before she can escape with it, though, she passes clean out and is left lying on the floor.

See? What did I tell you? The tension in Silo Season 2 continues twisting tighter and tighter, and I must say the order and pace in which it plays out works really, really well in conjunction with our character development and the series’ use of some (quite literally) breath-holding scenes. Season 1 garnered interest in this plot, but Season 2 eerily works to reel us into this reality.

Will Solo find her before she regains consciousness and if so, what will he do? Will the angry mob reach deep into the heart of Mechanical? And what will Bernard do with the information that it was Sims’ wife who helped the delegates escape?

Season 2 Episode 5 of Silo is now available to watch on Apple TV+, with new episodes dropping every Friday through mid-January.

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