Summary<\/p>\n
Silo\u00a0blows its fiction wide open with crucial reveals about Silo 1, which pulls double duty as a perfect setup for the fourth and final season.<\/p>\n
By\u00a0Silo<\/a>\u00a0standards, \u201cTroy\u201d isn\u2019t an especially eventful finale. Sure, plenty happens in it, but most of it was fairly easy to predict<\/a>, even if the details might not have been entirely clear. The opening credits don\u2019t even roll until 25 minutes in, and only one major thing has happened by that point. But none of this is really the point. Season 3 has been building to the crucial reveal here for its entire runtime, and with it all out in the open, none of this is really an ending. Instead, it\u2019s a brilliant setup for the war to come \u2014 a now-rogue Silo 18 against Silo 1, with a potential wildcard double-agent stuck somewhere in the middle.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps more importantly, it leaves a lot open to interpretation. It doesn\u2019t fill in all the blanks, just lets us see the general shape of the problem. And it\u2019s a big one. Silo 1\u2019s power is much more than we anticipated, and the people running it are more ruthless than we imagined. We don\u2019t know quite how they got that way, but we can guess. We don\u2019t know the exact details of anything. But we now know enough to make some pretty big assumptions, several of which I\u2019m going to make here.\u00a0<\/p>\n We Were Wrong About the \u201cTroy\u201d Thing<\/p>\n In my predictions piece, I speculated \u2014 rather cleverly, I thought \u2014 that the title of Episode 8 had a double meaning, and was perhaps referring to Helen and\/or some kind of horse-style subterfuge. You can make a case for the latter, which we\u2019ll get to, but Helen isn\u2019t even in the episode outside of extremely brief flashback visions. Troy is a person, and that person is Daniel.\u00a0<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know why Daniel is suddenly called Troy, but we can guess. His memories of Helen have been (almost) entirely erased. He\u2019s a \u201cSpecialist\u201d in Silo 1, which is to say a kind of fixer who is woken up from cryosleep periodically to fix problems with ruthless efficiency. The problems seem to almost always involve Silo rebellions. In the opening scenes of this finale, he\u2019s woken by Victor to address another \u2014 the rebellion in Silo 17.\u00a0<\/p>\n It has been seven years since Daniel\u2019s \u2014 I\u2019m not going to keep calling him Troy \u2014 last assignment. Charlotte is still around as the senior drone commander, but her name is now Susan, implying that she\u2019s in the same boat as her brother. The way they operate \u2014 the way everyone in Silo 1 seems to operate \u2014 is extraordinarily callous. People are described as fugitives. \u201cSafeguard\u201d \u2014 in other words, mass murder \u2014 is used as a casual verb. A lethal death gas is referred to simply as a \u201ccompound\u201d. It seems part of Silo 1\u2019s operation is brainwashing the people inside it into being lunatics.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Purging Of Silo 17<\/p>\n We\u2019ve already heard about what happened to Silo 17 through Jimmy, but here we get to see it. And it\u2019s grim. Daniel allows almost 10,000 people to amass outside, and then orders Charlotte\u2019s drone teams to comprehensively butcher them all with gas and bullets. It\u2019s an unprecedented event, and even Charlotte is hesitant to participate in such butchery. Killing the rebellion leaders would force everyone back inside for cover, and the point would be made. But Daniel is adamant. When Charlotte refuses, he has her suspended and takes control of the operation himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n The massacre is horrendous, filmed largely in chilling thermal imagery, often cutting to the emotionless detachment on Daniel\u2019s face as he directs the murder of thousands and thousands of people. It\u2019s another day in the office. Thurman, who is Silo 1\u2019s director, even gives him an award for it. But she won\u2019t follow the Directive, which supersedes the Pact, when it comes to \u201cneutralising\u201d Charlotte. She\u2019s too important to Anna, and to whatever is coming at the end of \u201cThe Project\u201d. Even in this alternate reality, the higher-ups still pick and choose when the rules should apply.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even in his stone-cold Troy persona, Daniel often thinks about Helen, though he can\u2019t recall quite who she is. He asks Victor \u2014 it\u2019s implied not for the first time \u2014 and he makes a note reading \u201cWho is she?\u201d, promising Daniel he\u2019ll let him know the next time he\u2019s woken up. When Daniel is once again snoozing, Victor puts the note in Daniel\u2019s file, which contains loads of identical notes. This has been going on a while.<\/p>\n Camille\u2019s Face Turn<\/p>\n