‘Silo’ Season 3 Goes Bigger and More Political: Showrunner Graham Yost Breaks Down the New Direction
Apple TV’s sci-fi drama Silo is taking a major creative turn in its third season, expanding beyond the mysteries of the underground bunkers and exploring how the world ended in the first place.
Showrunner and executive producer Graham Yost explained that Season 3’s biggest change comes from its use of time jumps, with the story traveling more than 350 years into the past to explore the “Before Times” and uncover the events that led humanity into the silos.
According to Yost, the decision to move between different timelines was a risk, but one the creative team believed was necessary for the story.
“We rolled the dice a bit and hoped it would work and weren’t entirely sure, but felt it would,” Yost told Space.
The new season follows Juliette, played by Rebecca Ferguson, as she continues dealing with the aftermath of her dangerous journey outside the silo. While her story continues in the present timeline, the show also explores the origins of the disaster that changed the planet forever.
Yost said the team was not worried about confusing viewers with the large time gap because both stories still exist within the unique world of Silo.
“Even though it’s 350 years separating the two stories, it’s not like we’re going back to Elizabethan times. It’s Silo world, which is its own crazy time. It’s a place out of time,” he explained.
The shift in timelines also gave the production team a chance to create a different visual style for each part of the story. Yost revealed that the crew used different camera equipment and techniques to help separate the past from the present.
“I think they went to a different lens,” Yost said. “The choice was made to go from an anamorphic lens to something else, so there is a slight change and a slightly different framing.”
While Silo has always focused on mystery and survival, Yost revealed that the origin story explored in Season 3 has a very different tone. The early days of the apocalypse are being presented more like a classic political thriller, inspired by some of the most famous paranoid films of the 1970s.
“The origin story is a political thriller basically. We’re harkening back to ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ ‘The Parallax View’ and things like that of the ‘70s,” Yost said. “That sort of paranoid cinema.”
The showrunner added that this approach allows the series to feel more cinematic, especially when exploring the political decisions and hidden forces behind humanity’s collapse.
Meanwhile, the season is also expanding the stories inside the silos themselves. One major storyline focuses on Juliette’s experiences in the algorithm room, where Camille, played by Alexandria Riley, becomes a key figure.
Yost explained that Riley’s performance helped shape the direction of the storyline, saying the team knew they wanted to explore the character further after seeing her work in the first season.
“The answer to that was you cast Alex. She does such a compelling job that you’re just going to watch her talk to a wall,” Yost said.
Do you think the time jumps in 'Silo' Season 3 will improve the story?
With new timelines, a more political approach, and deeper exploration of the characters inside the silos, Season 3 appears set to expand the world of Silo in unexpected ways. The series is moving beyond just uncovering secrets and focusing more on the people, choices, and power struggles that shaped its dystopian future.
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