Warning: Spoilers for "Silo" season 3 ahead!
Apple TV’s "Silo" officially concluded its third season earlier this month and we're still catching our collective breath. It was perhaps the finest year yet for this dystopian sci-fi series based on the trilogy of post-apocalyptic books by Hugh Howey and executive produced by Graham Yost ("Speed," "Band of Brothers").
Fans spent the season learning innumerable truths to questions posed since the series debut in 2023 by swapping back and forth between the Before Times to learn the hows and whys of the doomsday bunker project, and the slow return of Juliette’s (Rebecca Ferguson) memory in Silo 18 some 352 years in the future.
But for all characters' lives altered over the course of this eventful season, no one had more of a redemptive arc than Tim Robbins' villainous IT Head, Bernard Holland. After poisoning Judge Meadows, starving the Down Deepers, and sending countless citizens outside to die, his horrific baptism by fire and resurrection to allow Silo 18 to survive a poisonous purging is what we will remember most.
"Yeah it was an incredible opportunity," Robbins tells Space. "When I first signed on to the project Graham [Yost] took me through the trajectory of the character. My job in the first two seasons was to set up what was going too happen in Season 3. To play a person that is all too familiar to us, which is the person in a position of power that in order to sustain their power, participates in a deceptive practice. No person really ever thinks they're doing a bad thing. No bad guy believes they're the bad guy. They believe they're the virtuous one that must take on the burden of responsibility and deceive in order for a greater good to occur."
Robbins and the incredible ensemble cast has been fully dialed in to this provocative show that's tested the full range of their considerable acting talents.
"What a great opportunity knowing full well that at the end of season 2, Bernard would have a revelation and a realization that his entire existence was built on a lie," he adds. "And to play that shattered world view, that collapsing reality, not only mentally and physically, but also spiritually. To be crushed and then to battle back from this physical and mental torture to get to a place where he can find redemption, where their actions can make up for their deceptions in the past."
Memorable sacrificial death scenes are what many actors live for, and Robbins' acceptance of his sentence to be sent outside Silo 18 after bargaining with The Algorithm, now exposed as a human being, is one for the ages. In Episode 9 titled "Farewell," sharp eyes will also notice that Bernard is sprayed with a chemical agent before he exited the airlock, and decontamination flames were ignited after he left, hinting that it wasn't lethal nanobot swarms that killed him.
"It was up there," Robbins admits regarding his on-screen demise. "It was one that was sad to do because I love the people on this show so much. But it was ignoble and courageous and heroic in a lot of ways. What he’s doing is he’s sacrificing himself for the greater good for the first time in his life. He’s showing true courage for the first time in his life. That’s a beautiful trajectory to play. You get the opportunity from time to time to do stories that are relevant to the world that you’re living in. But this is pretty special."
For Robbins, there existed an uncanny verisimilitude to the fictional lore of "Silo" and the real-life modern world that couldn't be denied.
"Because when I first read this script we were coming out of a lockdown," he recalls. "And here I was reading a story about a entire culture that was locked down in a very restrictive environment. That anyone who questioned this restriction was marginalized and excluded and actually thrown out of society. As I was reading it I was just stunned by how much it was speaking to now. The whole purpose and function of drama at its beginning was exactly that.
"The Greeks were telling stories about wars and mistakes men made that led to such pain in the society. They were telling them in an open forum with the citizenry of Athens witnessing it, to reach a catharsis together. An acknowledgement of mistakes. This is the greatest gift drama can give. To bring people to a place where they can move forward with a new understanding and new way of life."
The first three seasons of "Silo" are now available to stream on Apple TV.
