‘Silo’ Season 1 Ending Explained: Juliette Learns the Truth

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 1 of Silo.Apple TV’s riveting Graham Yost adaptation of Hugh Howey’s novel series Silo concluded with the episode “Outside” and gave eager fans answers they’ve been waiting all season for in the gripping finale. In the episode, tiny, apparently inconsequential pieces of information from previous installments played a much larger role in the outcome of Juliet’s ongoing investigation into George’s death. Making it an unpredictable hour of television and leaving the door open for more adventures in the future. Rebecca Ferguson knocks it out of the park in the final episode of Silo’s fantastic first season.

After viewing the footage on George’s (Ferdinand Kingsley) hard drive, Juliette (Ferguson) acts quickly and has a kamikaze plan to expose the Judicial’s lies. With security on every level and Juliette, Silo’s most wanted, it isn’t going to be easy and she’ll need help. The help is minor players in the series Patrick Kennedy (Rick Gomez) and hacker Danny (Will Merrick), they explain with a little help, they can utilize signal boosters on every level of the silo, and can transmit the footage to the Judicial monitor hub. Bingo. They travel through the garbage shute and easily access the boosters. In The Monitor Room, a raging Mayor Holland (Tim Robbins) demands everyone in the room look away, Sims is conflicted until the Mayor severs the connection. Is this enough to pique curiosity and stir up dissent?

Over the course of the season, the viewer realized paranoia is permeating every corner of the silo, the inhabitants are under constant surveillance, privilege, and power come with a hefty price tag and anybody can be your enemy. In the conclusion we finally understand why. The world outside is a dead zone, nothing could possibly survive it. What worked in the finale was the slow-burn build-up yielded exciting results which might take the plot in a brand-new direction for next season. A few call-backs to previous secrets exposed this year could be indicative of the direction the show takes on a future path: the government-sanctioned erasure of a race/culture, how for a price people turn the other way, and the silo’s “breeding” policies make sense at the finale’s conclusion.

RELATED: Rebecca Ferguson on the World of ‘Silo’ and How the Truth Can Cause Chaos

In ‘Silo’ Juliette Learns The Truth About Cleaning

Juliette is captured and in order to prevent a rebellion and repercussions for her friends, The Mayor waives her right to a Judicial hearing. He tells her she is a mortal threat to the future of the facility. He grants her five minutes to chat with Martha (Harriet Walter). She’s flanked by Sims (Common) and Mayor Holland and marched through the silo in shackles. The Mayor does breach silo protocol to show Juliette what happened to her lover, George. It turns out that George, to avoid being tortured, did take his own life. A crushed Juliette is next having her measurements taken for the space suit she’ll wear out to clean. In her cell, several people visit including the Mayor. He informs Juliette she was an accident and not a part of their breeding policy. Something the bureaucrat admits may have led to Juliette’s mother’s death, Juliette is prepared and tells them she is not afraid.

Juliette Discovers It Is No Greener on the Other Side of the Screen

And so Juliette is sent out to clean and many viewers expect it to play out like Holston’s (David Oyelowo) demise earlier in the season. Instead, a large crowd gathers and watches Juliette, she picks up the cleaning supplies and instead of cleaning, walks up to the camera and drops it. From her position in the suit, the outside is green and full of life, with birds singing. Mayor Holland expects her to collapse and die, like the others and she doesn’t. Martha managed to bind the suit with the good tape – remember Juliette was accused of stealing it by the Mayor? They couldn’t sabotage the suit. The sheriff badge gifted to her from Holston disrupts the vision of greenery and life. She’s looking at the world through a filter. The image before her alters and we see a vast wasteland, full of craters with doors of neighboring silos stretching out for miles in every direction. In the distance, the ruins of the city against the skyline. Julia starts to walk away from her silo into the great unknown.

What Happens Next For Juliette In ‘Silo’?

Juliette is a minor and major protagonist in the Howey novels directly following Wood, Shift, and Dust. Whether Graham Yost will offer us another straight adaptation seems likely considering how faithful he’s been to Wool. Without going into spoiler territory, Juliette does find other survivors in other silos with their own self-sustaining governments and methods of control. From here we’ll stick to the TV show – Juliette’s investigation has brought her outside, she’s alive, and she’ll find other communities of people in the silos. Do these people have an information network or a network of any kind between their bunkers? What happened to the earth – climate crisis, alien invasion, or nuclear war? Will we see the people from Juliette’s silo again? Will there be a rebellion of some kind?