'Silo' season 3 showrunner Graham Yost explains the time jumps and turning half of the show into a political thriller (interview)
'We're harkening back to 'Three Days of The Condor,' 'The Parallax View,' and things like that of the '70s.'
by Jeff Spry · Space
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Apple TV’s riveting sci-fi series, "Silo," is stretching its narrative legs for its third and penultimate season. Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) deals with amnesia after her fiery return to Silo 18, satisfying secrets are revealed, and we strap in for temporal jumps 352 years back to the "Before Times" to figure out how the apocalypse arrived.
"We rolled the dice a bit and hoped it would work and weren’t entirely sure, but felt it would," Executive Producer and Showrunner Graham Yost tells Space regarding the new season's time shifts. "After the fact, I heard some of the quibbles about too much time in 17, but we made our best guess on that one as well. What we did feel was that cutting back and forth was not a real problem. 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.
"So when I saw the first episodes, I felt like this is okay. Part of the good thing about being outside, being people in modern clothing and cars, is you know immediately when you are and where you are. That really helped orient the story."
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Silo — Season 3 Official Trailer | Apple TV - YouTube
After Juliette’s harrowing ordeal in Silo 17 last season, audiences were left hungering for answers heading into this new batch of ten episodes. Fortunately, they shine the light of truth on matters — both in the doomsday bunker and back when Earth was still recognizable.
These time shifts allowed the production crew and cinematographers to tinker with the show’s visual style, including using different equipment to film each time period.
"I think they went to a different lens," Yost adds. "The choice was made to go from an anamorphic lens to something else, so there is a slight change and a slightly different framing. We've got the same production designer for both units, so there can be little flavors that Nicole [Northridge] would come up with that we don’t even realize are hints of what’s coming in the future. "
"But 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," explains Yost. "That sort of paranoid cinema. There are bits in there that let us feel way more cinematic because we equate that with cinema rather than television."
It's not all about the time jumps back to the past, though; Yost and his team have also been looking to up their game in the Silo's themselves, too.
"Then, in 18 with Juliette, the only expansion there was to spend as much time as we did within the algorithm room with Camille talking to the voice and making that interesting," reveals Yost.
"The answer to that was you cast Alex [Alexandria Riley]. She does such a compelling job that you’re just going to watch her talk to a wall. We knew how good she was from the scene she did in season one, and that's why this whole storyline developed, because we love her."
Apple TV's "Silo" season 3 premieres on July 3, 2026.
Watch Silo on Apple TV+:
Apple TV+: $12.99/month (7-day free trial)
Apple TV & Peacock Premium: $14.99/month