The first two seasons of Apple TV’s hit science fiction series Silo are set in a dark world where 10,000 people are crammed in a massive bunker together after an unknown disaster made the outside world uninhabitable. The season 2 finale finally hinted at what happened, with a flashback to a near-future Washington, DC, abuzz with news that Iran had hit the United States with a dirty bomb. Season 3 spends a lot of time building up that plot, starting with a counterattack on Iran in the season premiere. While the show is an adaptation of the novels Hugh Howey began in 2011, Silo’s showrunner and stars say the author’s vision of the future now feels a bit too realistic.
“We had no control over when [season 3] was going to come out, that it would be during a war with Iran, but in the books there was talk of a mission to Iran, so we just kept that in,” showrunner Graham Yost told Polygon during a virtual interview. “One weird thing is we named the operation Righteous Hammer, and the bombing mission last June was called Midnight Hammer. It’s like, Well great. Now we’ve got to change that. That sounds a little too flip, and I apologize for that. It’s war, and it’s tough.”
“You talk about, ‘Do we change it?’” Silo star and executive producer Rebecca Ferguson added. “Do we change our storyline because of the situation in the world because it’s affecting everyone?”
Ashley Zukerman, who joined the show’s main cast this season as Congressman Daniel Keene, said Silo’s topicality was part of what attracted him to the role.
“The writers and Hugh Howey were just very on the pulse of what’s going on in the world in a way that I wasn’t,” Zukerman says. “AI is mentioned in our show before the AI boom that happened. It just made it feel like the writers really knew what they were talking about.”
Silo follows Howey’s book by incorporating other big sci-fi elements as the season goes on that move the story from a topical conflict to more speculative fiction. But Zukerman says Silo’s tone still resonates with the current conflicts.
“The show seemed to just ask all the same questions that I ask of the world,” he says. “I think the show is ultimately just about living in dark times and how you keep the light alive in yourself and in each other. That’s what’s beautiful about it. I think it’s just a very kind show. Everyone is just really trying to do their best. You can understand everyone’s point of view.”
Silo season 3 premieres July 3 on Apple TV.