‘Silo’ showrunner reveals season 2 gets ‘really scary’ with a failed rebellion, ‘dead silo’

Spoiler alert: Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) is not dead when Silo returns for season 2.

Okay, that’s not exactly a spoiler since the tough engineer survived the last moments of the season 1 finale of Apple TV+’s sci-fi series when she ventured outside after uncovering the vast conspiracy surrounding her silo, only to discover the existence of other silos close by. “Her face is on the poster, so we know that Juliette is not dead,” showrunner Graham Yost tells Entertainment Weekly.

She’s alive, yes — but when season 2 picks back up immediately, her problems are only getting worse as she must find a way to get out of the toxic air and safely into a new silo. “Juliette has a very difficult time getting into this other silo, and she’s looking for safety ’cause her suit is running out of air,” Yost says. “The wondrous tape that Walker [Harriet Walter] arranged for her to have her suit wrapped in, that’s going to fail. A lot of the episode is about Juliette just trying to survive and the engineering stuff she has to do to try to stay alive.”

But let’s back up, since the premiere turns back the clock earlier than you may be expecting for an origin story. “The premiere [follows] Juliette, but we actually don’t start with her,” Yost reveals. “We’re going to start back an undetermined — at least at first — amount of time ago, in another silo. We’re going to see a rebellion going very wrong.”

After thrusting viewers into this chaotic, violent rebellion, the premiere will follow the leader of the conflict as he convinces everyone to go outside of the silo. “He’s got this green flag and says, ‘Follow me to freedom. Let’s go outside,'” Yost says. “They run up and we cut from them just as they’re going outside to seeing that same flag sticking up out of the ground, out of the hand of a skeleton, and it’s God knows how many years later. In the distance is this person in a cleaning suit walking toward it, and it’s Juliette, who will follow the trail of bodies that will lead her into a dead silo.”

That’s when the show finally picks back up with Juliette needing to solve her next crisis. “Juliette tries to stay alive in an empty silo and starts to figure out the mystery behind it,” Yost teases. “At some point she gets a sense she might not be alone. Then at the very end of the episode there’s a twist.”

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Juliette won’t be happy to hear about another curveball heading her way, but viewers will have to wait a little to find out how she handles that new twist because the second episode relocates back to her former silo where another rebellion is taking shape. Yost says season 2 will finish adapting Hugh Howey’s dystopian novel Wool “in a slightly different way” as it explores how Juliette’s exit impacts her old home.

“There’s the beginnings of a call for rebellion, because Juliette went over the hill, so maybe it’s safe outside,” Yost explains. “And yet what we saw over in the other silo is what can happen if the rebellion goes wrong and all the people died, so that’s the basic tension of the season.”

Yost reveals that season 2 will be following two separate storylines as a result: “One is with Juliette in this other silo, and one is back in her home silo,” he says. “Juliette knows [what] could happen to her silo, and is there any way she could get back to them to help them to stop that from happening? Stuff’s starting to get really, really scary.”

Silo season 2 is expected later this year on Apple TV+.

A version of this story appears in EW’s complimentary Comic-Con 2024 Preview print edition, being passed out in San Diego throughout the convention.