Why were the silos built? Silo kept that secret for three seasons — and just gave it up
Why were the silos built in Silo? The Apple TV series finally addresses its founding mystery in season 3's Before Times storyline — here's where the answer comes, and who delivers it.
For three seasons, Apple TV's Silo ran on one glorious withheld answer: who built these things, and why. Season 3, episode 8 — cheerfully titled "Gray Goo" — finally hands it over, via the Before Times flashbacks set 352 years before Juliette ever cleaned a lens. And the answer is bleaker, pettier and more expensively catered than the Founders' mythology ever suggested.
The dinner party at the end of the world
The reveal arrives over dinner, because of course it does. Trillionaire Per Stensen (Colin Hanks, superbly punchable) and Senator Thurman explain to journalist Helen and congressman Daniel what actually happened:
- the "dirty bomb" attack on the Dulles Tech Corridor was no such thing — it was an Iranian nanoweapon, a technology far cheaper than nukes and rather harder to un-invent;
- America's retaliation was a nuclear strike smuggled through a tunnel from the Turkmenistan border, with Charlotte's air squadron flown in as unwitting bait;
- and since nano-warfare is now, in Stensen's view, a when rather than an if, he's been quietly digging his contingency plan: silos, to preserve a remnant of humanity for the repopulation of Earth. Fifty diggers, fifty holes, one trillionaire's insurance policy.
Stensen's own defence of the project, as Inverse's breakdown records, is peak billionaire logic:
"Could I stop this with money? Maybe buy Iran?"
Helen and Daniel, hearing all this, decline their golden tickets — which, given what we know about the surface in Juliette's timeline, is one of the most quietly devastating RSVPs in television.
Why the show sat on it this long
Showrunner Graham Yost has been open about the season being a deliberate genre swerve — the flashbacks are styled as a seventies-flavoured paranoid political thriller rather than sci-fi. And after three seasons underground, he wasn't immune to the novelty himself, telling ComicBook:
"It's so nice to see people breathing air."
Enjoy it whilst it lasts, Graham. We all know how the air situation turns out.