Silo season 3 expands the story and tests its own cast

Season 3 of Silo begins streaming July 3 with a wider story and a more difficult structure for the people making it, according to The Verge. The Apple TV sci-fi drama is entering the first of its final two seasons, and its cast and showrunner described a production that had to track timelines, character knowledge and continuity with unusual care.

Showrunner Graham Yost told The Verge that even he lost track of details during filming. He recalled one case in which an actor noticed that a conversation about to be filmed should already have happened, and another in which the Japanese localization team flagged a subtitle that did not match the action on screen.

Yost said those issues were corrected, and he credited the broader production team with helping police the show’s internal logic. He told The Verge that the work requires many people to watch for mistakes and that he values the collaborative process.

A bigger story in season 3

Silo is set hundreds of years in the future inside a vast underground bunker holding 10,000 people, The Verge reported. The society lives in a vertical city divided by levels and occupations, from miners at the bottom to government officials near the top, with a spiral staircase serving as the main route through the structure.

The first two seasons initially framed the silo’s residents as possible survivors of an outside apocalypse, according to The Verge. Over time, the show revealed that their home was one of several isolated silos, each with its own population.

Season 3 adds a present-day storyline showing how that system began, The Verge reported. The premiere moves between the future timeline and a world closer to the current day, while Juliette, played by Rebecca Ferguson, is dealing with memory loss after becoming the first person to move from one silo to another.

Actors had to track what their characters knew

Alexandria Riley, who plays Camille Sims, told The Verge that directors often opened filming days by reviewing where the characters were in the story, what had just happened and what came next. Riley said the out-of-order shooting schedule made an already complicated plot harder to follow.

Ferguson told The Verge that the hair-and-makeup department also helped maintain continuity because it had to track visible details such as scars and burns. She said small changes could affect later scenes.

Common, who plays Robert Sims, told The Verge that the cast had support but still needed reminders about where their characters stood. He said he sometimes checked in with Riley, and The Verge reported that the two actors held separate rehearsals together.

Jessica Henwick, who joins the main cast in season 3 as present-day investigative reporter Helen, took a different approach. She told The Verge she read only her own scenes because she was a fan of the show and wanted to watch the season without knowing the rest of the story.

The books were not a simple guide

The series is adapted from Hugh Howey’s trilogy, with the first two seasons drawing on the first book and the final two seasons set to cover the remaining story, according to The Verge. The television version has changed parts of the books, including making Juliette more central and updating some plotlines to reflect current concerns such as AI.

Ashley Zukerman, who plays a congressman in the present-day storyline, told The Verge that reading the novels did not help him because the adaptation differs enough from the books. He said he instead focused on the scripts and then tried to set aside information his character would not know.

Yost told The Verge that four seasons had been the plan, leaving the team to decide how to fit the remaining material into a set number of episodes. The final two seasons were filmed back to back, and Ferguson told The Verge that while she would miss the job, she would not miss running up and down the silo stairs.

This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.