Rebecca Ferguson Breaks Down Silo Finale's Wild 'Lie Within The Lie,' Teases 'Intense' Season 2
The following contains spoilers from the Season 1 finale of Apple TV+'s Silo.
The thing about living in an enclosed silo is that there are only so many places one can hide.
And midway through the Season 1 finale of Apple TV+'s already-renewed Silo, fugitive sheriff Juliette Nichols — after having IT's Danny attempt to share the hard drive footage with the silo at large — was found, hunkered down back in Mechanical. (Knox had perhaps rightly decided it was better to give her up then have Judicial run roughshod over all of 'em.)
Before sending Juliette out to clean, Mayor Holland led her to the Janitor's Room aka the secret surveillance hub from which residents are monitored with hidden cameras. There, he had video cued up of the moments leading up to George's death, and Juliette saw with her own eyes that her lover was not pitched over the railing by Trumbull. Rather, so as to avoid being tortured about what he saw on the Silo 18 hard drive, George elected to hop off the railing, to a death that would set in motion Juliette's odyssey.
Juliette was then prepped to go outside, though for this cleaning the heat tape used to seal up the suit would be different. Better. That's because Walk had wondered aloud earlier why IT got so bent out of shape back when Juliette stole their heat tape, which is of a lesser quality than the one made/used by Mechanical. So Walk called in a favor with a pal in Supply, who made sure that Juliette's cleaning suit was bound up with the good stuff, then got to Jules a note hoping to tip her off to that fact.
The trek that followed, through decontamination and up the ramp, is "the last walk" for Juliette, Silo star and EP Rebecca Ferguson noted during a final chat with TVLine. "It's the death walk, isn't it?"
When Juliette passed through the sliding steel door up top and ventured outside, she took in the seemingly idyllic view, complete with birds soaring overhead. Except... huh, those birds were in the exact same formation, she realized, as on the hard drive video.
"The display is a lie," she uttered to herself. Meaning, there is a display embedded into the cleaning suit helmet, suggesting a beautiful world that anyone sent outside would surely want to share with the silo, by diligently cleaning the lens!
Armed with that truth, Juliette pointedly did not clean (triggering groans from the cafeteria audience). She then headed up the small hill, never succumbing — as both Allison and Holston did — to the apparently toxic atmosphere, thanks to being bound with the good tape. She knelt beside where Holston's body should be, ignoring the mirage of green flora to give him back his star. That small gesture alerted the mayor inside that she truly knew what is what.
Jules resumed her march up... and over... the hill, at which point her helmet display flickered out and revealed to her the truly barren wasteland stretching out into the horizon. In the far, far distance are buildings. But the miles and miles surrounding here are dotted with the outlines of many other silos.
Revisiting Juliette's mindset during that closing sequence, Ferguson remarked, "It's constantly the lie within the lie" — that for her character the struggle through Season 1 has been "not knowing what is the truth and following one route, one road, then realizing you're actually on the completely wrong track."
What Juliette does next, where she goes, promises to have repercussions for "not one person," says Ferguson, but "an entire human race, obviously." In other words, "The stakes are ridonkulously high."
Luckily, Silo fans will absolutely get to see what happens next, since the series was officially renewed midway through its freshman run and in fact has been filming in London for a few weeks.
"We're doing it! I'm happy it was greenlit," Ferguson told TVLine between shooting scenes for Season 2. "And talking from a producer point of view now, the scripts, everything that we managed to get in place before the [Writers Guild] strike.... People worked really hard, and the fact that they were able to do it with the means that we have was phenomenal. And it's looking insane."
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