Now Streaming: SILO S3, Getting Back on a Revolutionary Track

Conveniently, the show's protagonist has lost all her memories from the previous season.

Silo S3
The first episode of Season 3 is now streaming on Apple TV. Subsequent episodes in the 10-episode series will debut every Friday. I've seen all 10 episodes in the first season, and the first three episodes of Season 3.

As Season 3 begins, Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) has lost all her memories. In Season 1 -- which I quite enjoyed -- she was an engineer in a giant, self-sufficient silo where thousands of people lived "under mysterious circumstances," to quote the official verbiage. As Season 1 progressed, she grew more intent on venturing outside the silo to see if the post-apocalyptic conditions had improved, though the silo's management viewed any such expressed interest to be, in effect, a punitive death sentence.

I watched the first episode of Season 2, in which Juliette attempted to survive outside the silo, but it was tedious and not intriguing at all, so I checked out. Nearly two years later, Season 3 has arrived, so I checked out the final episode of Season 2, in which Juliette finally made it back inside the silo, where a revolution broke out and many people died.

Juliette's chief adversary, Mayor Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) also died, which may explain why she has now been Mayor for three months. She is a celebrated hero for being the first person to survive outside and return alive, but her memory of her past experiences is now entirely gone, and she now talks in a halting, tentative manner.

Her surviving allies in the revolution are still waiting for her memories to return, presumably so she can restart the revolution, but their patience is growing short.

Written by Graham Yost and directed by Michael Dinner, Season 3 pursues a parallel narrative thread. Introduced in the final moments of the Season 2 finale, new U.S. congressman Daniel (Ashley Zukerman) and reporter Helen (Jessica Henwick) meet in the modern day. Daniel thinks it's a dinner date, but she means to ask him about something secret, which is not revealed before he walks out of the restaurant.

Now in Season 3, that storyline is fleshed out a bit from Daniel's perspective. His younger sister Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay) is a Navy aviator; Daniel suspects she will be involved in a secret retaliatory mission to bomb Iran. He seeks information from Someone Important (Laura Innes), leading to her daughter (Morven Christie), who works with her, feeding him bits and pieces, including the news that his sister survived a mysterious attack during the mission and suffered a traumatic brain injury.

The episode's pacing is more like the Season 1 premiere than the Season 2 premiere, which is a positive sign. Also, the idea that Juliette lost her memories makes it easier for viewers who have not seen the series before, nor read any of the book series by Hugh Howey that serves as source material, to jump on.

Episodes 2 and 3, however, slow the narrative pace. Everyone talks in a halting manner, like Juliette, with many word whiskers like 'hmm' and 'er' and 'uh,' which further puts a drag on things. And memory loss appears to be a dominant theme in both narrative threads, which feels unnecessarily repetitive, especially since the content of those lost memories remains frustratingly vague. So, I tapped out on watching the remaining episodes in advance. (Thus, this is NOT a review.)

The Season 3 trailer gives hints about where each of the parallel threads established in the first episode will go throughout this season. Season 4 has already been ordered, so I may jump back on board after Episode 3 to see how Season 3 develops, and whether it speeds up or becomes more compelling, story-wise.

Now Streaming celebrates independent and international genre films and television shows that are newly available on legal streaming services.