Abhiroop Das
Created by Graham Yost, Apple TV+’s ‘Silo’ is a dystopian science-fiction series that follows Juliette, a resident of an underground silo that has curiously sheltered humanity for centuries. Over the course of three seasons, she goes from being an electrician to the silo’s sheriff, before making the big leap of stepping out. Once outside, her eyes meet the barren wasteland on its own terms, and Juliette has to go through hell and back to go far enough, and then come back in one piece. During this journey, she makes new friends and enemies alike, but it isn’t until her grand journey back home that things take a definitive turn. Armed with the truth about the silos, she is just about to enter when Mayor Bernard blocks her way instead. As a fire breaks out in this tight space, Juliette risks dying before her story can be completed. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Juliette Survives the Flames Because of Solo’s Special Suit
While season 3 episode 1 of ‘Silo,’ titled ‘Who Are You?‘, begins by skipping to a few months after the fire, revealing Juliette to be alive and well, the real explanation for this miracle comes in much later. Viewers may remember the fact that Juliette’s suit has been fitted with special adjustments by Solo, and one of these updates is increased fire resistance. Thus, when Juliette finds herself trapped in the burning autolock chamber, her suit is able to withstand that heat for a precious few seconds before help inevitably arrives. Bernard isn’t as lucky, though, as we simultaneously learn that his suit very quickly melted, leaving him with burn injuries that contributed to his eventual fate. Juliette doesn’t come out unscathed either, as we see that she has clear burn injuries on various parts of her body, but none life-threatening as of yet.
Though the immediate aftermath of the season 2 finale isn’t shown explicitly, it’s implied that Robert Sims’ team stormed the chamber and found Juliette and Bernard soon thereafter. Though Robert falsely claims that the mayor died at that moment, the rest of the story is likely true. Several people had to come together to bring an injured Juliette and Bernard several thousand steps down into the silo. Following that, Juliette was sworn in as the new mayor of the silo while she was unconscious at the hospital, becoming the first person to ever have this unique fate. What’s problematic about this, however, is that all of this happens without her consent or a systematic procedure. To top things off, Juliette doesn’t seem to remember anything from her past, disrupting the trajectory of this series.
Juliette’s Amnesia is Induced by Camille to Make Her Forget Her Role in the Story
Initially, we are led to believe that Juliette has post-traumatic amnesia and remembers neither the fire incident nor the entire story we have experienced over the course of two seasons. While the proverbial amnesia plotline is not an unusual direction for stories to take, here it is revealed to be a misdirection. We ultimately learn that it’s Camille who has been secretly giving her medication that erases memory. Such medication has already been teased to exist in season 2, with Solo proposing that it was used to systematically make people forget humanity’s past. In Juliette’s case, however, the range is much smaller, and while the medicine has been successful in taking over her mind so far, all it takes is a small crack in her psyche to bring in a flurry of memories.
While Juliette doesn’t have any special abilities, her mind still seems to be resisting mind control, as on her first day interacting with the silo as Mayor, she remembers the fact that she came in with a certain goal, and may have visited a different silo. The AI also seems unable to predict her responses, which is largely what makes her a fearsome foe. For now, Camille’s strategy is to slowly increase the doses, but what she doesn’t know is that Tom, the chef, is secretly connected to the flamekeepers.
At the end of season 3 episode 1, Tom deliberately makes the food inedible so as to leave Juliette with a piece of paper containing perhaps the only way she can get to the truth of this world, and why she has returned to it. From this point on, it is likely to be a battle of minds, with Juliette revisiting her own journey in a quest to bring down the system. While the practical reason for this amnesia arc is so that the climax surrounding Silo 18 can be delayed for a bit, it lends to uniquely dramatic moments of its own. Juliette, for instance, has no recollection of Knox and Shirley being her closest friends and allies, and the more she remembers, the sooner we are expected to return to the narrative intensity ‘Silo’ is known for.
Read More: Is Bernard Dead? Has Tim Robbins Left Silo?
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