The Silo Season 3 Premiere Is A Huge Departure From The Books

Thank the Founders. This article contains major spoilers for the Season 3 premiere of "Silo."

Throughout both seasons of "Silo" thus far, the Apple TV series has taken a fascinating route to the start of Season 3 — especially compared to the circuitous nature of the original books. Our protagonist Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) has experienced the exact same arc as she does in her initial conception under author Hugh Howey, from an anonymous worker in Mechanical to Sheriff to Mayor. It's in the micro details, however, that the many changes made to the "Silo" source material become more apparent. Timelines have been subtly shifted around, certain characters have been given more complex motivations in order to play with our sympathies (such as Avi Nash's Lukas Kyle), and certain facts treated as a given on paper have instead been played as massive reveals.

All of this is par for the course when it comes to any adaptation, naturally, but the "Silo" Season 3 premiere appears to go off the beaten path much more dramatically than ever before. The fiery Season 2 cliffhanger ending is a (mostly) faithful interpretation of what goes down in the first novel, "Wool," but what comes next? We slowly learn that, three months after surviving the incinerator accident that apparently claimed the life of IT head Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins), Juliette has been elected Mayor and the rebellion has been resolved. Nothing about this comes as a surprise to any readers — until we realize that Juliette remembers nothing of the events of the Season 2 finale or even her friends and family.

This amnesia storyline is a complete and total addition to the show, but it still has its roots in a core theme from the books.

"Silo" appears to be teeing up quite an ambitious third season, with trailers promising to explore the origin of the silos, but the premiere makes it clear that it has one key topic in mind: memory. This becomes a focal point throughout the storyline set within the silo, of course, as Juliette wrestles with not remembering who she is or what life-saving message she was meant to deliver to the people she's fought so hard to protect. But it's also echoed in the portions of the episode set in the distant past (and basically our present day), as Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) witnesses his sister and Air Force pilot Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay) narrowly survive a traumatic accident of her own — while also losing all sense of who she was before.

While some may roll their eyes at the choice to essentially reset Juliette's progression as a character and revolutionary leader back to square one, it's not too difficult for book readers to guess where this is going. Although teased a few times in the show, the matter of characters being made to forget plays a significant role throughout the novels. (Fans would point to a book-exclusive figure named Mission, who similarly has his memory wiped.) In Season 2, we learn this was done on a mass scale by the enigmatic Salvador Quinn as a contingency measure that was meant to lull generations of survivors into peace by forgetting the details of past uprisings. By the end of the Season 3 premiere, we learn that our new IT head Camille (Alexandria Riley) has been drugging Juliette ... under orders from the disembodied, math-obsessed Algorithm.

It's a controversial twist that, while early, has the potential to pay off significantly.

Of course, this is ignoring the elephant in the room — that the biggest change made to "Silo" Season 3 is the presence of Juliette Nichols at all. Famously, the second book in the series (titled "Shift" and which is technically a collection of several novellas) drops its ongoing story altogether to jump back into the past and explore how the silos came to be in the first place through the eyes of a young Congressman named Donald (renamed Daniel in the show and played by Ashley Zukerman). It's a bold move that evokes what the video game sequel "The Last of Us Part II" does halfway through and what HBO's adaptation plans to do in the upcoming, Abby-focused third season. In this case, however, "Silo" would've shot itself in the foot by taking someone as talented as Rebecca Ferguson – to say nothing of the rest of the supporting cast — and sitting her on the sidelines for an entire season.

Instead, "Silo" takes a clever approach by bifurcating the season between past and present. After that epilogue introduced Daniel Keene and savvy reporter Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick) in the final moments of Season 2, Season 3 weaves this flashback narrative right alongside the continued developments at the silo. The premiere alone is thrilling from a lore perspective, as we further explore the political quagmire that (may have) led to Iran setting off a dirty bomb in the United States and the ill-fated retaliatory mission that leads to Charlotte's harrowing accident. But even thematically, it's clear that her and Juliette's predicaments will be connected.

To what extent remains to be seen, but we'll find out as new episodes of "Silo" stream on Apple TV every Friday.