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‘Silo’ Season 3 Episode 9 ending had a surprise cameo fans may have missed

‘Silo’ Season 3 Episode 9 features a surprise Peter Gabriel cameo as a nuclear explosion and major twists push the story toward its finale

You know you are in good hands when a Peter Gabriel classic comes in handy to score your finale. ‘Silo’ Season 3 episode 9, titled ‘Farewell,’ sees the series heading towards its conclusion with a nuclear explosion, the heart-wrenching parting of two lovers, and an appearance by Gabriel himself.

The episode follows two timelines. The first takes place in the present and features Silo 18. Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) finally comes face-to-face with The Algorithm and Camille Sims (Alexandria Riley), and then volunteers to go outside and clean. At this point, we know that almost everyone ultimately succumbs to the toxic environment outside. Meanwhile, Juliette’s (Rebecca Ferguson) faction takes advantage of the moment and proceeds with their plan to stop The Safeguard.

The second timeline returns to the Before Times, when the underground project is nearing completion, and the silos are opened to outside civilians. But the episode saves its most significant trick by featuring a live performance by Peter Gabriel.

The singer performs a stripped-back version of ‘Here Comes the Flood’ just before a nuclear explosion lights up the sky. Daniel is pulled into Silo 1, while Helen’s fate outside Silo 18 remains unknown. The most surprising twist, however, has to do with Per Stensen (Colin Hanks). In the last episode, he also explained that silos were being built in preparation for an existential threat involving nanotechnology, explicitly distinguishing it from nuclear war.

The show also reveals details about the level of preparedness of the silos, as the structures were designed to withstand a 30-tonne nuclear explosion detonated 3 km away, with the 25-tonne doors keeping away particulates as small as 50 nanometers. 

Meanwhile, the reference to Gabriel’s song was not random, as showrunner Graham Yost told Mashable, it was intentional. During Season 2, Solo/Jimmy was able to lure Juliette to the door of the vault by playing ‘Red Rain.’ So, the producers of the series felt that they should incorporate Gabriel’s music into the location of Silo 17 at some point.

Yost noted that there is a possibility that Jimmy was related to the Gabriel family somehow, and even mentioned that Gabriel was able to bring his son and his son’s girlfriend to the set, with both of them visible in the series. The choice of this particular song, however, was disliked by Reed Birney, who claimed that it was “a little on the nose,” and Yost agreed.

Interestingly, the song has symbolic weight, as Gabriel wrote the piece after leaving his band Genesis in 1975, following long hours spent on a shortwave radio, listening to whatever was on the airwaves. As such, he felt that the track was about the breaking down of barriers and the lifting of veils, a sentiment shared by several characters in the series, who are currently in the midst of an apocalyptic event. With the season finale set to air on September 4 on Apple TV, ‘Silo’ has one more episode to explain who exactly pulls the strings from behind the scenes.