Commentary: ‘Silo’ Went Full ‘Fallout’

There have been a lot of post-apocalyptic television shows recently. And for stories that take place at the end of the world, there’s a surprising amount of variety between them. There are shows that focus on zombies, plagues, nuclear war, and even natural disasters. Programs that take place in fallout shelters have been especially popular. However, there are some tone and story differences that create nuance between them. Previously, it had seemed as if Silo and Fallout were in two distinctly different camps despite their similarities. Unfortunately, in its recent season finale, Silo proved that it’s more like Fallout than previously thought.

This season featured a dual narrative. One focused on the main timeline shown since the beginning as Juliet Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) seeks to free her silo from its overlord. However, there is also a flashback narrative that takes place in our present modern times following a congressman named Daniel (Ashley Zukerman) who wants to learn what happened to his injured pilot sister. It was inevitable that these two stories would somehow link, but there was a pretty big time gap between them. It wasn’t until the finale that it is revealed Daniel undergoes cryosleep until his services are needed by the silo that controls all others.

Despite its science fiction nature, Silo has more-or-less been relatively grounded with its far-fetched and fantastical elements. An enormous bunker housing an entire society is fundamentally realistic despite its stretch of the imagination. It doesn’t venture into a realm that alters the functions of the human body. Fallout does regularly. It plays very fast-and-loose with what could be considered “real.” This is how it has so many characters who have lived for hundreds of years. Once Silo introduced a character that could be frozen and unfrozen on demand, it entered a new territory of sci-fi, which Fallout existed in from the start.

Silo was now streaming on AppleTV.