It’s a pretty tricky thing for a show to reinvent itself midstream, but that’s exactly what Apple TV’s sci-fi post-apocalypse epic has done in Season 3, expertly splitting between two timelines. The first is the one we’ve been following since Season 1, with 10,000 people, hundreds of years in the future, living in a mysterious, broken down bunker (think “Vertical Snowpiercer” and you’ve got the gist). The second, introduced in the Season 2 finale, is set in the near future and presents a taut political thriller featuring a new cast and new characters. Does it all connect? Of course, but particularly with strong performances and taut pacing in the new half of the series, this isn’t simply a case of prequelitis. It’s chocolate and peanut butter, and it tastes great together.
To dive more into things, the series, showrun by Graham Yost, stars Rebecca Ferguson as Juliette Nichols, a genius engineer who has exited the Silo, discovered other Silos, and realized that there’s a lot more going on than she or anyone else thought. Specifically, thanks to a strange AI voice that is both present inside the Silo itself manipulating events, and also present at an enormous door at the base of the Silo, it’s clear that someone – or something – is making sure nobody leaves the bunker. Is it for their own safety? Control? We don’t know yet, but we do know that when we last left off in Season 2, Juliette and her frequent sparring partner Bernard (Tim Robbins) were trapped in a chamber and about to be flash-fried.
It takes a little while to get back to that moment for a variety of spoiler-filled reasons, but the important part here is that the confidence the show has depicted in trusting the audience to follow along in previous seasons continues with this storyline. When we start, we’ve jumped forward to a Juliette who is now mayor (somehow) and very out of her element, dealing with a loss of memory around the Season 2 cliffhanger event that, thanks to Ferguson’s as usual crackling performance, puts us right in her place. How did she get here? And how does she get out of this situation is the main thrust of the action of the season, though the theme is digging deep into something that Silo has played with but never really fully explored: memory.
That connects heavily with the past storyline, which finds Ashley Zukerman and Jessica Henwick reprising their roles as a Congressman named Daniel and a journalist named Helen, respectively. Thanks to a jaw-droppingly weird attack on Iran by US forces that only leaves Daniel’s sister, played by Jessica Brown Findlay, alive, the duo is forced to work together in what amounts to a John Clancy meets Robert Heinlein-esque political thriller that moves entirely differently than the regular Silo action, providing a pulse-pounding counterpoint to the slower simmer and intricate chess moves going on in the future.
Zukerman and Henwick, two pros, are more than capable of handling this sort of storyline that is as much romantic drama as it is political thriller. There’s a ton of heat between the two, and after Silo wraps up they should really look into making a few rom-coms together, because the heart and the humor are there even when they’re running through “Washington D.C.” (most of the season was filmed in the UK) or stuck in the back of a self-driving car with enemies closing in on all sides.
Not everything works, mind you. While the past storyline feels fresh and exciting based merely on the fact that putting characters on this show outside, with trees and grass and sun, feels wildly different, the plot does eventually slow down to head more specifically into prequel territory – though the eventual connections are hog wild, and feature a cameo I guarantee you wouldn’t guess in a million years.
On the flip side, with the rollicking good time in the past, the future set storyline seems a little stuck by comparison, a slowed down boil that aims to service too many characters while inevitably setting up the endgame for the final (already filmed) season of the series.
The good? After two seasons of sitting on the side as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Alexandria Riley as Camille Sims, the new head of IT and main contact for the AI, as well as Common as Robert Sims, step up considerably this time around. They’ve been mostly one note baddies before, but in the 10 episodes of Season 3 (the whole season was provided to critics for review) they get to run the gamut of emotions, and we see that Riley and Common are as capable of anchoring the show as Ferguson.
The bad? Unfortunately, the excellent Chinaza Uche, who plays Sheriff Paul Billings, is saddled with an extremely convoluted murder mystery that does eventually connect back to the main action, but keeps him and other characters moving in a plotline that mostly feels like busy work to flesh out the run time and provide exposition, rather than a compelling conundrum. With 10,000 (or so) people in the Silo, I understand the urge to add new characters and reconnect with old ones. But it’s frankly hard to keep track of all these folks, particularly when the main action and mysteries are exponentially more compelling.
The future-set storyline is also missing the off-kilter humor that Steve Zahn brought to last season, thanks to his rather lovely connection with Ferguson, who was stuck in his neighboring Silo most of the time. This isn’t a funny show, but most of the quips (those that there are) are stuck in the past storyline, leaving the future deadly serious. Occasionally, the show could use a little release valve on the tension, which it got last season and generally lacks here.
Those are quibbles, though, as Silo Season 3 sets up the final run of episodes in compelling and more importantly extremely thoughtful fashion. This is a sci-fi show that gives you big action set pieces and plenty of wild ideas, but most of all it’s exploring what it means to be human, and how much our memories (particularly this season) are part of who we are – both individually, and as a society. It’s grand science fiction on an intimate scale, and really, there’s nothing else like it on TV. Bring on Season 4.
Silo Season 3 premieres July 3, 2026 on Apple TV.
Silo Season 3 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of Silo technically premiere Fridays on Apple TV, though given time zones in the United States new episodes will hit the service at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on Thursdays. We’ve listed the Wednesday dates below, just for posterity.
Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in Silo Season 3, with premiere dates.
- Friday, July 3, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 1: “Who Are You?”
- Friday, July 10, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 2: “It’s All Good”
- Friday, July 17, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 3: “A Dark Web”
- Friday, July 24, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 4: “Whatever You Do, Don’t Go Home”
- Friday, July 31, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 5: “Memory”
- Friday, August 7, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 6: “The Drive”
- Friday, August 14, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 7: “Radio”
- Friday, August 21, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 8: “Gray Goo”
- Friday, August 28, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 9: “Farewell”
- Friday, September 4, 2026: Silo, Season 3, Episode 10: “Troy”
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