Silo Season 3's Scariest Scene Is Straight Out Of Fallout

The following post contains spoilers for "Silo" Season 3, Episode 9, "Farewell."

At long last, "Silo" Season 3's penultimate episode, "Farewell," is upon us. This is where we get the big answers and major developments we've been waiting for, some of which we never saw coming. For starters, this episode bids goodbye to Tim Robbins' Bernard Holland, the complex former head of IT in Silo 18. But before he goes outside to clean, he reveals that the mysterious Algorithm that's served as Season 3's big bad may be a person rather than an advanced AI.

Meanwhile, in the past, we witness what seems to be the end of the world on the silos' inauguration day. Specifically, we see Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) and Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick) attend the grand opening of the silos, with Helen heading down for a tour of Silo 18 while Daniel is assigned to a tour of Silo 1. Nothing suspicious about those two being arbitrarily separated, right? This is also where we learn that The Pact — which has governed the silos for centuries in the future — is actually just AI slop. Needless to say, it's obvious something is very wrong here.

And then the world ends. "Farewell" concludes with a nuke exploding over Atlanta in the middle of all this, seemingly proving that Per Stensen (Colin Hanks) was right to build the silos in the first place. In response, everyone is rushed to safety into the silos, leaving it unclear if more explosions followed or if this was an isolated incident.

It's a pretty dang horrifying scene of chaos and nuclear obliteration — one that recalls the very similar opening sequence from the excellent "Fallout" TV show.

"Fallout" is a stellar series full of horrific imagery, from its many messed-up mutant creatures to its hilariously absurd gore and everything involving Walton Goggins' Ghoul. Yet, nothing really matches the moment where the world ends. The show opens with Goggins' character (then known as Cooper Howard) at a kids' birthday party with his daughter when they notice a nuclear blast in the distance. The pair quickly flee on horseback together by riding down a hill in Los Angeles. Except, just when it appears all is well, another nuke hits, then another, and another. It's a genuine nuclear armageddon.

"Silo," on the other hand, doesn't go for slow, creeping dread or allow its characters to believe they might be safe in its answer to this scene. Instead, it's direct, full-blown, inescapable horror. There's no distant silent explosion before the loud bang, only hell itself being unleashed via a giant explosion so bright and loud it temporarily blinds and deafens Daniel. The resulting cloud is clearly inescapable as it grows and grows. This is it: The end has come. Nobody has time to wonder if other nukes are on the way since they're too busy fleeing the one that barely went off.

However, it's not just that "Fallout" and "Silo" feature practically identical imagery of a fiery nuclear armageddon. It's also the eerie timing of this flashback sequence in "Silo" Season 3's penultimate episode and how it lines up with the way the world ends in Prime Video's video game TV adaptation.

Here's the thing: Everything that happens at the end of "Silo" Season 3's penultimate episode is just too conveniently well-timed. We're meant to believe that the exact same day the silos — which are supposed to serve as humanity's last refuge from the end of civilization — open to the public (with huge crowds touring them), there just happens to be a nuclear explosion in the city where the silos are located. Sure, it's possible an enemy faction decided to attack right then for that very reason.

And yet, Per Stensen previously revealed that his plan was to "leak" the news about him building the silos around the time they were near completion. The idea was to convince everyone he was merely some weirdo trillionaire spending money on a vanity project that would probably never be needed. Then, on the exact day he's set to unveil his project to the world, he's proven right? Sounds too good to be true.

I recently wrote about "Silo" having a problem involving rich people, namely that it appeared to be making them seem like reasonable individuals with noble goals. Well, that all sort of goes out the window here. Indeed, it's quite likely Per Stensen had a hand in the bomb exploding over Atlanta on the day of the silos' inauguration, just so he could guarantee the silos would house the people he selected. This itself recalls another key moment from "Fallout" Season 1, in which it's revealed the end of the world was secretly engineered and scheduled by committee simply to raise stock prices. 

With just one more episode of Season 3 to go, the mystery of Per Stensen just became that much more important to "Silo."