Silo Recap: Extinguishers Of The Flame — What New Intel Did Juliette Gather?
This week on Apple TV+'s Silo, Juliette tried to make a deal with Judge Meadows — only to learn that the doyenne of Judicial doesn't pull all the strings at all!
Juliette sought out Meadows after learning that Gloria Hildebrandt, the woman whose name was inscribed above George's inside the Georgia picture book (and who we met in Episode 1, as the fertility counselor), now is in Medical's longterm care facility, drugged out of her gourd. Juliette forces a meeting with the "sick" (drunk) judge after getting her address from Billings and then showing up at the door the next morning with breakfast. Meadows tries to rebuff the visit, so Juliette begins alluding to the dirty business with Gloria from the hall, forcing the judge's hand.
Once inside, Juliette asks Meadows to lift whatever hold there is on Gloria, so that she can take her away for a couple hours to burn off her fugue state and ask some questions. When the judge balks, Juliette offers a sweet deal: Let me talk to Gloria, and I'll resign/be back in Mechanical by the end of the week. Yet as tempting as that surely is for the judge, she admits, most candidly, that she "can't" release Gloria. Because "they" would never allow it.
And then it dawns. on Juliette, and us, that Meadows answers to someone. But whom?
Juliette takes matters into her own hands and leans on her doctor dad, Pete, to get her access to Gloria. Guilted into acting by the estranged daughter he wishes to reconnect with, Pete bulls–ts his way past the nurse coming off night duty, puts addled Gloria into a wheelchair and whisks her off to the nursery. There, Juliette implores her father to use whatever means necessary to diminish Gloria's stupor, so he injects her with a risky something that, expectedly, triggers a seizure... followed by a bit of calm. Juliette sends her dad away and hits Gloria with questions. Gloria is defiant at first, until Juliette produces the picture book.
Instantly, Gloria's face lights up, and she details how she had given the book to George's mother, who like her was a Flamekeeper — someone who is resolved to remembering the past, and is curious to know more. The Flamekeepers have had a tough lot in life, though, since those in charge of the silo want the past forgotten. So, the silo has done what it can to eradicate Flamekeepers, by death... drugging the water supply to fuzzy their memories... locking them up in mental wards... or lying about taking their birth control out, to keep them from breeding.
(Yes, Dr. Nichols was among the docs who did such a horrible thing, though as he will later explains to Jules, he had been told that it was in the name of curbing the spread of genetic disease.)
Gloria also confides in Juliette that her mother, Hanna Nichols, was an ally of the Flamekeepers, an honorary member if you will, due to her own curiosity about the world — though that put her in the crosshairs of those in power, as well.
Juliette returns Gloria to her hospital room, where Gloria clocks that the flowers by her mirror are oddly gone. (Sheriff Halston, she says, would always place flowers there when he visited, following his wife's death.) Juliette, coupling that tidbit with the fact that the vase by the mirror in her own apartment was "accidentally" broken by maintenance, and Halston's note to "double the flowers by the mirror," gleans that there are cameras behind the mirrors. (And sure enough, Sims and his tech wonks are watching as we speak.) So Juliette drapes Gloria's mirror with a blanket, then unscrews the nearby vent cover that Gloria said Sheriff Halston would tinker with. Inside the vent, Juliette finds a satchel containing George's hard drive. She then slips way with that and the book, eluding the band of armored "raiders" that Sims dispatched after seeing Juliette talking to Gloria.
But before Juliette runs off, Gloria poses a provocative question, asking if she knows why her mother killed herself....
What did you think of Silo Episode 7 (of 10)? What happens to Juliette now that they know she knows? (Will "lights in the sky"-gazer Lukas gladly offer her a place to crash?)