Silo Boss Previews Season 2’s Explosive Cold Open, the ‘Damaged’ Stranger Juliette Meets and War-Ready Bernard
Graham Yost, the creator and showrunner of Apple TV+’s Silo series, has one piece of advice for viewers ahead of Season 2, which debuts Friday, Nov. 15.
“I think everyone should buy the books but not read them until we’re done with the series, so we get to reveal all the answers,” Yost suggests with but a hint of a wink.
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Hugh Howey, author of the Wool/Shift/Dust trilogy on which the TV series is based, “created a mystery story, and it’s a big, weird, different kind of mystery story,” Yost enthuses. “‘What the hell happened? Why are they there? What’s going on?’ That’s what hooked me — that, and the characters.”
Season 1 left off, back in June 2023, with Rebecca Ferguson’s Sheriff Juliette Nichols being “sent out to clean,” as punishment for defying Bernard, the mayor, and rocking the silo boat. Once outside, in a protection suit made much more resilient due to her surreptitious use of “the good tape” (a term you’ll hear a lot in Season 2), Juliette realized that the landscape is in fact dystopian, poisoned by the same toxins trying to permeate her suit.
How will Season 2 open up? What very lonely man will Juliette meet? And what sort of mayhem might Bernard have to manage? TVLine spoke with showrunner Yost about all that and more.
TVLINE | Is Season 2 a direct pick-up from the finale, with Juliette walking over the hill?
It’s not a direct pick-up, as you’ll see. We open in a hopefully surprising fashion, which then makes sense within five minutes. I forget if there are any embargoes or moratorium when I’m supposed to talk about what, but I’ll basically be honest with you, because people can read the books and find out.
TVLINE | Well, you said during [the July San Diego] Comic-Con that there’s a flashback to a rebellion.
Yes, that’s how we start the season. We’re in the middle of a rebellion and we think, “Maybe it’s Silo 18?” We don’t know where it is. “It’s kind of weird they blew up the bridge between the stairs and IT, and it looks like IT blew it up to keep people from getting in.” So it’s this big action sequence, to get across that gap.
TVLINE | Rebecca Ferguson told me that Season 2 features more changes from the book, but for good reason. Can you give a flavor for any of the changes?
It’s funny – sometimes it’d be just a beat, a little plot turn is revealed one way in the book and we decided to do it a different way. But as will be made clear in the trailer, there are two stories running this season. There’s Juliette’s story, and then there’s back in her home silo, Silo 18, with Bernard (Tim Robbins) and Simms (Common) and her friends down in Mechanical — Knox and Shirley and Walker. I would say that our version of what happens in 18 holds close to what Hugh [Howey] has in the book. Basically, Season 1 is the first half of the first book [Wool], and Season 2 is the second half. But Juliette’s stuff, yeah, there are some changes. In Season 1, we had to build out a whole thing with the mystery of the death of George; that was one line in the book, and we made a season out of it, because we needed to give Juliette a drive. But Season 2, especially the Juliette story, is close to what happens in the book.
TVLINE | When I first saw the full list of returning cast, I did wonder if the TV show will spend more time in Silo 18 than the book does.
Yes, yes. It’s a little more 50-50. And I will say this: the first episode is all Juliette, and the second episode is all Silo 18. And the third episode, we start cross-cutting.
TVLINE | What do you want to say about Steve Zahn’s character, Solo?
There’s a bit of math the audience will do — from the very opening sequence, to when Juliette appears about five minutes in — where you’ll go, “Oh my God. Time has passed from that first thing we saw to where we are now with Juliette,” and we realize that it’s roughly 35 years that this guy has been in this vault, alone. Juliette encounters someone pretty damaged by that experience.
TVLINE | What did you look for in casting Solo?
We needed somebody who is amazing, and we got it with Steve. Somebody who can be funny and scary and scared and a little unaccustomed to human company…. It’s a bit like Robinson Crusoe without having Friday with him, or Tom Hanks without Wilson. He’s had no one really to talk to. But he’s also got a mystery. For Juliette in the first season, the mystery was, “What happened to George?” and in this season it’s, “What happened to this guy?” That becomes an important thing for her to figure out over the course of the season.
TVLINE | Does Bernard have a bee in his bonnet after Juliette’s defiant gesture? Does he go off the rails?
I will say this: He understands the problem. In the second episode, you discover [that in addition to The Pact] there’s another book called The Order, and the only people who read The Order are either the Head of IT or their shadow. One of the lines from The Order, which we love, is: “Failed Cleaning, Prepare for War.” And that’s what Bernard has to do.
We find out that with Judge Meadows (Tonya Moody), the alcoholic judge we saw a couple times in the first season, there is a backstory there, and a relationship with Bernard. We find out that’s she had been his shadow 25 years ago, and after disappearing for four days she reappeared and said, “I’m out, I’m not going to be your shadow anymore.” And that is a mystery there – what the hell happened to her? What happened in those four days? Because she knows something that he doesn’t know, and that’s why she became an alcoholic, to push this knowledge down. And that’s Tonya Moody, who’s just fantastic. It’s great to see her working with Tim.
TVLINE | Lukas (Avi Nash), who Juliette would run into now and again at the cafeteria and talk about “stars” with, will he have a more active role in Season 2?
Yes. In the books, Juliette and Lukas were pretty romantic pretty quickly, but because we brought George into the forefront, we didn’t feel we could have Juliette become too romantic with Lukas, so we decided to do what we did in Season 1. He’s sent to the mines at the end of Season 1, and in Season 2, e see him being sentenced. There’s a wonderful scene where he has requested a hearing for the review of his sentence, and it’s an interesting scene. He still gets sent to the mines, but then he does reappear, and he ends up having the strangest arc of really anyone, because he is suddenly not in the mines anymore. He is somewhere else that is utterly stunning for him. And he’s got a mystery that he has to solve.
TVLINE | You famously built a big chunk of Silo 18 for your Season 1 set. Did you build any of the other silo, or did you just dress and shoot the original set differently?
The latter; we had to do that. And there were things that had to be done with that [set in the Season 2 premiere] which meant that it had to film last. Michael Dinner, who I worked with all those years on Justified, was directing, but it was really hard for the visual effects people because it’s the first episode that’s going to be released, and it also has, like, 400 visual effects shots in it. It was very touch and go, it was a very rough schedule.
TVLINE | Is there any last thing you’d like to share about Silo Season 2?
For a big world-building show like this, in the second season the great advantage is you’ve already built the world. Now, we build the second world, literally, in stages and all of that, in sets, but it’s easier to get the story going. You can just jump in, so there’s more momentum in this season in the beginning, because we know who all these people are, away we go. That is more fun for us writing it and I hope for the viewers watching it. Annnnnd we mix it up a notch. One thing I would say about production — and they’ve only told me a little bit, because I’m not on the set that much — is how exhausting doing scenes on the stairs can be. You’re going up, then you gotta go back down, and then you go up… So if they’re not nice to me, I just add scenes on the stairs!
Want scoop on Silo Season 2, or for any other TV show? Shoot an email to [email protected], and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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