Silo Season 3 Episode 8 Finally Explains The True Purpose Of The Silos

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Warning: This article contains major spoilers for "Silo" Season 3, Episode 8, "Gray Goo."

Now that's how you reward the patience of fans who've been desperate for answers. "Silo" has earned plenty of comparisons with "Lost" over the years, not least of all because of its tendency to draw out mysteries and unanswered questions for as long as it possibly can. First, there was the matter of whether the outside world really is as dead and toxic as it appears on all the displays. Then, Season 2 took its time explaining the nature of the surrounding silos and how all those people ended up dead outside. And, finally, Season 3 is now getting around to the purpose and origin of all these silos.

While information had been hard to come by for quite some time (it took until last week to clue us in on where the heck these silos are actually located, after all), the dams are bursting and viewers are benefiting with a flood of juicy reveals. The latest one feels like a significant payoff to the show's most slow-burning storyline, unfolding throughout the flashbacks with Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) and reporter Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick). Nobody needs to be an expert on author Hugh Howey's books to have figured out this would eventually intersect with how the silos were first created. But the ultimate answer that our two shocked characters receive is as fascinating as it gets.

As explained by trillionaire savior Per Stensen (Colin Hanks) and Senator Rosalind Thurman (Laura Innes), this is slightly more complex than simply saving the world. These bunker enthusiasts have concluded that the end of the world is inevitable and won't come about by conventional means. Apparently, nanotech is the true enemy ... and the silos are our last defense.

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Never underestimate a trillionaire with lots of time on their hands. "Silo" hasn't exactly been subtle about its political commentary throughout Season 3 — remember that reference to an "administration with a hard-on for going to war with Iran" in the second episode? But the Elon Musk parallels with Colin Hanks' obnoxious Per Stensen are all but impossible to miss, as Episode 8 (ominously titled "Gray Goo") makes abundantly clear. When Helen and Daniel are finally shuttled to Atlanta to see their progress on the incomplete silos, Stensen and his political benefactor Senator Thurman finally lay their cards on the table.

So, this is how that nanotech subplot involving Daniel's sister/Air Force pilot Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay), his investigation with Helen into the circumstances of her mission gone horribly wrong, and the present-day storyline with Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) and her friends all come together. We learn that Stensen and Thurman have embarked on this secret (and absurdly costly) scheme to prepare "seeds" — 50 total silos that will house humanity's wealth of knowledge, resources, and, yes, the best and brightest people. Their goal? To repopulate the world after everything falls apart, which they believe to be an unavoidable fate.

What's even more shocking, however, is the revelation of why they believe the world will end. It's not about nuclear war (as we find out the "dirty bomb" supposedly dropped on the United States turns out to have been a cover-up), artificial intelligence, or any number of other obvious threats. Instead, it's the impending advancements in the field of nanotech, and this arms race has already become an all-out war between the U.S. and Iran. Suddenly, the dystopian future of the silos doesn't seem so far off after all.

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It's funny how things get passed down over time. What we sometimes treat with grand, mythological, and almost quasi-religious reverence almost always turns out to be anything but that. The same appears to be holding true in "Silo" Season 3, as the latest episode fills in all sorts of gaps regarding the creation of these hyper-advanced bunkers and, more importantly, the leading figures behind how they came to be. Throughout the show, Juliette Nichols and the rest of the inhabitants of Silo 18 have been conditioned to view the enigmatic Founders with awe, exacerbated by the fact that nobody even knows who they were, why they built the silos, and how the world ended up the way it did.

Of course, we now know that this surviving remnant of humanity has forgotten their own history thanks to the Vitamin D+ drugs introduced into their water supply (possibly multiple times in the past, as confirmed by the Mission diary last week), which means we're learning about the origin of the silos just as characters like Helen and Daniel are. Could we have already met the fabled Founders? Per Stensen and Senator Thurman aren't quite what anyone would have imagined, but they certainly seem like the ringleaders of this ambitious little venture — along with the near-silent fixer Henry (Reed Birney) and Doctor Viktor Crnkovich (Matt Craven), whose research into memory clearly laid the groundwork for the memory drugs that would eventually make their way into the Silo.

With two episodes to go before this season wraps up, there remain many more mysteries to be resolved. Judging by what we've seen, we're in for a spectacular finish. New episodes of "Silo" stream on Apple TV every Friday.