‘Silo’ Boss Graham Yost Confirms Season 4 Is Heading for War After That Brutal Sci-Fi Finale

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for the Silo Season 3 finale.

By the finale’s last half-hour, we finally get that answer. The Algorithm isn’t some all-powerful machine calling the shots from somewhere beyond Silo 18. There is actually a person behind it — and, as showrunner Graham Yost tells Collider in a Signature Q&A, that reveal changes how we can look back at everything Bernard (Tim Robbins), Camille, and the silo have been up against since the Apple TV show’s first episode. As Bernard puts it in the finale, “It’s a person. It’s human, and people can be beaten.”

And that person is Victor Crnkovich (Matt Craven), the doctor from the “Before Times” specializing in memory recovery and erasure at the Heidi Stensen Clinic. As Yost explains, the idea is that “it’s been the same voice all the time,” even if there has been “a different person speaking” throughout the history of the Silo Project. In other words, the seemingly untouchable force controlling Silo 18 has always had something very human behind it.

But it also puts Season 3’s focus on memory into a new light. Juliette isn’t the only one whose identity is taken from her; Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay) loses her memories, too, and eventually so does Daniel (Ashley Zukerman). Yost says the writers realized that “control of memory” was always part of how the people behind the Silo Project kept everyone in line. But as “Troy” gives us some of the biggest answers Silo has offered yet, Yost says the question heading into the fourth and final season is still a simple one: “Why?”

With Silo 18 having beaten the Safeguard and the truth finally starting to crack open, the fight is far from over. In fact, Yost teases exactly where all of this is headed: “Here comes war.” Collider spoke with Yost about the Season 3 finale’s biggest reveal, how it reframes the Algorithm, Victor’s tragic role in the Silo Project, and what “Troy” sets up for Silo’s final season.

Graham Yost Teases What’s Coming in ‘Silo’ Season 4

After Juliette spent Season 3 reclaiming herself, Yost says there is still plenty left for Silo to reveal in its final season.

Image via Apple TV

Image via Apple TV

COLLIDER: have to tell you something: I’m not a huge fan of sci-fi, but I love this one. I feel like it’s so much more than sci-fi. This season specifically feels like it’s the thesis that argues that it’s a story rooted in humanity, and I just love that you’ve done something so beautiful, and now we’re going to get the final season. What’s something that you’re so excited for people to see when we get to Season 4?

GRAHAM YOST: Well, we’ve always talked that in the various silos, the musical silos are five, six, seven, eight, so the fourth season is all music. It’s singing and dancing. No, I’ll say two things about Season 4 that are not spoilers. One is that we’ve given a lot of answers in Season 3 to some of the big mysteries: how it started, who started it, all of this stuff. There’s still some stuff to come out — and there’s some stuff that doesn’t come out until the final episode, I’ll say that.

But the other thing is Season 3, because we needed to do something with what Hugh [Howey] gave us in the middle book, which had no Juliette in it, so we came up with this other story; it took a while for Juliette to reclaim herself.

I already got goosebumps when you said that because I love Juliette. Rebecca Ferguson is an amazing actress, and the way she brings Juliette to life in this season specifically, kind of relearning everything that she had to get back to who she was. Talking about that finale, though, it does reveal that Victor has essentially been the man behind the curtain, like the human intelligence behind what everyone in Silo 18 has been understanding as the algorithm. What did you want that reveal to recontextualize about everything we’ve watched Camille and Bernard do this season?

YOST: That was the whole thing. When Bernard has that moment with Camille where he says, basically, “It’s a person. It’s human, and people can be beaten. We can beat people.” I thought that was a great moment.

You get a sense of it because there’s that last bit where it’s Troy, formerly Daniel, who was talking to Juliette, and it’s the same voice. So it is that sense that they figure out it’s been the same voice all the time, and they can kind of project back and imagine for the entire run of the silo project, it’s been the same voice. It’s just a different person speaking. And so, there’s more of that in Season 4.

Yost Explains Why Memory Became a Weapon in ‘Silo’ Season 3

Yost says the writers planted parallels throughout Season 3 to hint that Victor’s connection to the Algorithm ran much deeper than it seemed.

Image via Apple TV

We spend the season watching Juliette have her memories taken from her, and then in the Before Time, Charlotte loses hers, and ultimately, now Daniel has the same issue. Were you deliberately building Season 3 around memory as a form of control, and by extension, identity as something those in power can rewrite?

YOST: Yes. But in a way, I don’t know if this is really the right use of the word retconned, but we started with one thing and moved backwards, which was: in the books it’s Donald, we made it Daniel, he’s in the silo, and it’s hundreds of years later, and he’s Troy. We know that there was a memory wipe in Silo 18 140 years ago during “The Rebellion,” which there was a rebellion then, but they handled it by wiping everyone’s memory. We felt, “Okay, so control of memory is a big part of what the architects of the Silo Project had planned, and so, therefore, we need to really address that. We need to go with that and make that the thing.” Then we started to find, “Oh, there can be parallels, and there can be echoes.”

So, there’s a thing in Episode 2 where Helen has pretended to be Daniel’s assistant and taken Charlotte out for a little excursion outside in her wheelchair, and then Charlotte freaks out, and you see Victor calming her down with this breathing exercise, and we realize, “Oh, that’s the same breathing exercise that Camille did with Juliette in the first episode.” It’s like, “Did it start there? Do we pay more attention to this Victor guy? I know it’s Matt Craven, and we know that Graham and Matt are old friends and will always work together. But other than that…” It’s kind of like, what’s going on here? And so we were looking for those things all the way along.

I will say that my very first idea for the voice of the algorithm was to use the voice of Douglas Rain, who was the voice of HAL in 2001. He’s no longer with us, but his voice exists. Could we AI that? And it was just going to be so complicated and so expensive, and it would also just take people out. They’d go, “That’s HAL.” It was going to be an in-joke within the project — “We’ll just use HAL’s voice.” And then it’s just like, nah.

Then we thought, “Well, what if it’s whoever we get to play Per Stenson?” Then we thought, “Let’s reach out to Colin.” Colin Hanks is what we call a friend of the family — anyone who worked on Band of Brothers — and our casting director in the States, Cami Patton, worked on Band, I worked on Band, Colin was in Band. We’re all part of this thing that will last together until we all die. This year is the 25th anniversary, and we’ve been seeing a lot of each other and just giving each other shit, and it’s just been delightful. But, so we reached out to Colin, he said sure, and then we decided, “Yeah, no, we can’t have it be Stenson’s voice because people will hear that voice and go, “That sounds like Colin Hanks.” It would throw us off.

So then we came up with the idea: what if it’s just an AI voice? Whoever is speaking can have an effect on how it sounds, but it’s still roughly the same voice. Long answer to a short question. Let’s keep going!

What Beating the Safeguard Means for Silo 18

Victor’s final moments show the real human cost of the Safeguard, especially after watching Daniel carry out Silo 17’s brutal fate.

Image via Apple TV

Victor does ultimately take his own life when he realizes Silo 18 has defeated the Safeguard. What does that moment tell us about what Silo 18 has actually accomplished? Is breaking the Safeguard the first time these people have actually generally broken the system, rather than simply surviving it?

YOST: Well, for Silo 18, it’s the first time. They’re following in a tradition of Silo 17, which capped their Safeguard, but then they went out, and they got killed by Daniel, by Troy. And that was also an important thing for us. We wanted to show the cost of something like this, which is, and Victor says it, “When we do the Safeguards inside a silo, we don’t have to see it. It’s antiseptic. It’s just done over there.” But to do it outside, that had a huge effect on him, because he likes Daniel. He knows he’s not Troy, and he sees this guy he likes do this horrific thing.

So, we talked a lot about why Victor takes his life. We thought there were a number of things. One was he says when Silo 18 capped their Safeguard, he felt relieved. But Victor, I think it’s just seeing Daniel do that. It was just, “No, I can’t go on.”

Bernard’s advice to Juliette is such a simple question, but it’s also something I don’t think any of us really thought about. He tells her to ask why. Then the finale gives us an enormous amount of information that we find out how the silos operate, and who’s behind them is arguably the bigger question behind it. What question do you want the audience to be asking when we’re looking forward to the next season?

YOST: Why. I think that’s the big question. Why? And Bernard had an answer earlier on, I think in Episode 8, where Juliette says, “We’re going to risk everyone’s lives to do this?” And he says, “Well, if we cap the Safeguard, then we can have a conversation. If they convince us of everything they’re doing,” he says, “We’ll uncap the pipe, and we’ll drink the waters of oblivion if their reasons are good. But we have to be part of the conversation. We have to be told. We can’t just be ignorant and say, ‘Okay, kill us if you want.’” So, what’s the why? That’s the big question of Season 4, and a big part of the end of Season 3 is to set that up, set up that here comes war.

Helen, Drew, and Charlotte, we finally realized in the writers’ room, are the source of everything. The entire story started when Charlotte reached out to Helen and said, “I have concerns.” And it was that simple act of, “This doesn’t feel right. I don’t know what’s going on,” with this mission that they had planned. And so, it all comes back to that. So, Helen Drew is critical to why Juliette is able to do what Juliette is able to do. The other thing we find, you’ll see in Season 4, is you will see what happens to Helen and Troy.

Yost Defends Camille’s Choices in ‘Silo’ Season 3

Yost says Camille “really was saving people,” even as protecting Silo 18 pushed her toward some of the season’s most brutal choices.

Image via Apple TV

I have to ask about Camille, also, because she began the season believing that she’s protecting the silo, but by the finale, she’s willing to gas the raiders in the mines to prevent Silo 1 from killing everyone. Do you see her as someone who became a villain this season, or someone who is increasingly monstrous only because she believed she was generally saving people?

YOST: Well, I think she really was saving people. I mean, she was put in an impossible situation. It’s a true Sword of Damocles hanging over her head, which is, “If I screw up, this silo dies,” because she knows that right from the beginning. So, the algorithm, it would have been Victor, says, “If you screw up, your silo dies.” So, it’s an impossible situation.

There’s that line where Bernard says, “I just thought I had to keep people from going outside. That’s what I was trying to do. But they can kill us. And your wife, she must be burning up from the inside.” So, he sympathizes with her.

Daniel and Helen’s Story in ‘Silo’ “All Comes Down” to Love

Yost says Daniel and Helen’s story is ultimately “a love story,” even after memory loss and the Silo Project tear them apart

Image via Apple TV

Daniel and Helen, again, another love story that I love so much. The fact that they were expecting a child and then the catastrophe literally separates them — how much of Daniel’s story going forward is ultimately a love story? Because he’s a man who’s trying to get back to the woman he loves.

YOST: It’s a love story. Yeah. It all comes down to that. I think you’ll enjoy it. We’re very proud of Season 4, as we are all of them. Season 3, we hoped it would work, and people would like it, and apparently they have. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people… I can’t read the forums of people who have only read the books, and then they’re like… We’re just doing our job.

Silo Seasons 1–3 are now streaming on Apple TV.

This interview has been abridged for length and clarity.

Silo

Release Date

May 5, 2023

Network

Apple TV

Showrunner

Graham Yost

Directors

Morten Tyldum, David Semel, Michael Dinner, Aric Avelino