Silo Season 2 Episode 8 Recap & Review

Silo Season 2 Episode 8 hits us with two major plot twists, as Juliette discovers she and Solo aren’t alone, and the truth about Salvador Quinn comes to light. 

Episode 8 opens in silo 17 right where episode 7 left off: with Juliette watching as she realizes she and Solo might not be alone. She picks up the hatchet lying on the ground and proceeds with caution up the stairs, following a blood trail, presumably Solo’s. At some point, the higher she climbs, the more she encounters some sound interference that hurts her ears but fails to stop her from proceeding. She doesn’t know what’s going on, but she finds the pressure washer hose and uses it to breathe while she hides underwater.

Over in silo 18, the ping pong match begins. Bernard secretly rushes into a utility closet housing a groundwater pump on level 90 as Shirley (Remmie Milner) confronts Billings (Chinaza Uche) on why he’s really in the Down Deep, calling literal bullsh*t on him when he starts talking the truth of The Pact. We get the sense that—no pun intended—deep down, he truly fears (and likely knows) she’s right. 

Under Bernard’s orders, Lucas Kyle (Avi Nash) is sent to the late Judge Meadows’ (Tanya Moore) apartment in search of the book Quinn speaks of in his coded letter. To Kyle’s surprise, Judge Sims (Common) has sent his own people to pack up Meadows’ apartment. Kyle arrived just in time to kick them out and get to searching. He, of course, finds nothing but an old copy of The Pact. In his frustration, he’s struck with an idea to search the computer for descendants of Salvador Quinn and finds a wool maker named Terrance Pembrook.

Down in Mechanical, Shirley, Knox (Shane McRae), and others work to convince Walker (Harriet Walter) of their idea to break into medical supply to recoup what they aren’t receiving. Walker refuses and says they all need to be focused on getting their own head of supply, Carla (Clare Perkins), out of detention … let her fight to get their supply back. Walker is clearly being ripped apart inside the longer Carla is detained. It’s genuinely something we feel off screen. 

Then, a message pops up on Walker’s computer about a groundwater pump on level 90 needing maintenance. When Shirley warns her not to go, it could be a trap, Walker insists she’s been granted entry through upper levels and will be fine. So, off she goes. 

Lucas goes to see Terrance Pembrook. Pembrook tells him they do not speak Quinn’s name in their family, that “that man” brought them shame and dishonor, and they don’t have anything in their possession that would’ve belonged to him. When Lucas threatens an official judicial search, Pembrook corners him and tells him their family hasn’t made wool for 140 years because they like it. They do it to make up for the man who almost destroyed the silo.

Lucas reports to Bernard what he’s found. Mid-sentence, Bernard sits down and lets his shadow in on some explosive information about Quinn. In our first major plot twist, we learn it was Quinn who let the rebels erase the servers and burn the books all those years ago, that he saved the silo, not tried to destroy it. He figured out that every 20 years, there was a rebellion, and the reason people were continuing to rebel was because they knew their ancestors rebelled. So, Quinn came up with the idea to sever the silo’s history, thereby preventing the continuation of the pattern.

After Quinn cut the server access and had the rebels burn all the books, he then turned and blamed the rebels for everything. Next, he put a chemical compound in the water supply and slowly drugged everyone to make them forget over weeks, months … years, even. The consequence, Bernard says, was 140 years of peace … until now. 

Meanwhile, in silo 17, Juliette struggles to breathe underwater without someone pumping down a fresh supply of oxygen, and she’s forced back to the surface. She needs Solo. She screams out to whoever is there that the man they took has something she needs, to please let her see him, then they can have him back, to which a man replies, saying he killed Solo and will kill her, too, if she doesn’t go away right now. When she doesn’t, an arrow comes flying right into her chest, and she scurries off.

Back in silo 18, our ping pong match intensifies. 

Sims decides if Bernard won’t clue him in to what he’s doing, he’ll figure it out on his own and sends Camille (Alexandria Riley) to rope Judicial Agent Rick Amundsen (Christian Ochoa) into finding out what Bernard has Lucas doing that concerns Judge Meadows. She reminds him of the oath he swore when he took office, and it wasn’t to Bernard; it was to the silo. He knows she’s right. 

Walker makes her way to level 90 and enters the utility closet, where she finds Bernard waiting for her. There is, of course, nothing wrong with the groundwater pump, except Bernard’s manipulation of it. He tells Walker he knows she turned her camera back on for 30 seconds in episode 7, and despite her reason why, he took it as an invitation to negotiate, and that’s what he’s called her there to do.

Tim Robbins is so great at being creepy here. He slowly eases his way around the room, lurking around Walker, speaking calmly and smoothly as he shuts the door, then again shuts the pump down, exercising his control over the silo … and eventually over her. 

Bernard brings up Carla and her failing health, saying he doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be able to hold out in isolation under all this tension. Walker barks at him that he doesn’t know what he’s doing and he cuts her off, assuring he’s trying to save the silo, that what Mechanical is doing will get everyone killed. He is simply trying to prevent that. 

Is he though?

He then tells Walker before he lets Mechanical ruin everything, he’ll make sure Carla suffers more pain than she thought could exist in her life—the kind of pain that’ll have her pleading to the founders to let her die. And in a breathless moment hearkening back to one of my favorite movies, The Big Lebowski, Bernard tells Walker, “Her life is in your hands.” If he had someone to, say, let him know the rebels’ next move, he might be able to do something about letting her see Carla. 

And then it’s back to Lucas, who returns to Pembrook and his family with the truth about their ancestor: He was a hero, and, in fact, he saved the silo. The family look befuddled and as they talk, Lucas learns that Meadows visited the Pembrooks years ago, before she ever became Judge, trying to convince them of the same thing about Quinn. She, too, was looking for a book, same as Lucas. Meadows made an exchange of “outside world” books for the only thing the Pembrooks had belonging to Quinn: his old copy of The Pact.

Lucas high-tails it back to Meadows’ apartment and gets to work, figures out the cipher to the code, and finally uncovers a message:

“IF YOU’VE GOTTEN THIS FAR, YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS GAME IS RIGGED”.

Lucas hurriedly packs everything up and rushes to Bernard but is intercepted by Judge Sims, who warns him that Bernard is only using him and will throw him back to the mines after he gets what he needs. “Sometime soon, you’ll need a friend,” he tells Lucas, and what better friend to have than the Judge. Then, in a total “watch yourself, bro” moment, Sims makes an indirect threat on Lucas’s life, the kind that ensures Sims will get the information he wants.

Is Sims well on his way to taking down Bernard? Can he make this happen?! Is this even possible?

As all of this is going on, a team from Mechanical climbs their way up through the center of the silo and successfully breaks into the medical supply … only to be arrested. Pleased that Walker’s information paid off, Bernard allows her to lay eyes on Carla, who is strapped to a chair in a dark cell, blindfolded and nearly unconscious. Bernard quickly shuts the door.

“You can see she’s alive,” he tells her. “If you want it to stay this way, you’ll continue to cooperate.” Walker is to be his eyes and ears in the Down Deep.

AND FINALLY, at the end of episode 8, it’s back to silo 17 where we encounter our second major plot twist: Juliette discovers she indeed is not alone and is outnumbered when she comes face to face with three other people, each ready to kill her in an instant. 

Who are they? Where did they come from? Have they been in silo 17 the entire time, or did they arrive after Juliette did? And is Solo really dead?

Episode 8 is a fast-moving one, full of some big revelations that will no doubt send our main plot flying off in multiple directions and pile on more questions. Silo has done such a great job in particular at drawing us into Steve Zahn’s character that, for me, I really felt his absence in this episode. Then, hearing he was dead both shocked and saddened me, yet I can’t help but think, “Really, though?”. We have too much to learn through Solo, so for plot’s sake, I really hope he’s still with us. Only two more episodes remain, kids. Stay tuned.

Season 2 Episode 8 of Silo is now available to watch on Apple TV+, with new episodes dropping every Friday through January 17.

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