Exclusive: Silo creator Graham Yost on Season 3, Juliet's arc, and what comes next

Based on Hugh Howey’s bestselling dystopian trilogy, the Apple TV+ series, Silo, follows Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson), an engineer who begins questioning the rules, secrets and carefully controlled history of the underground society she calls home. Across two seasons, Silo has evolved from a mystery-driven sci-fi thriller into a larger exploration of power, information, memory and the origins of the world its characters inhabit.Season 3 takes the story further by adapting elements of Howey’s second book while also expanding beyond it. For showrunner Graham Yost, some of the biggest departures from the source material were driven not by contemporary events, but by the practical demands of telling the story on screen.In an exclusive chat with India Today, he tells us why they made a few changes and why answering questions each season was important for them creatively.“It’s not so much that we felt driven by current events or changes in the world, or even technology, as just certain story things,” Yost explained. “Our first two seasons covered the first book in Hugh Howey’s trilogy, and Season 3 covers the second book. But in his book, Juliet doesn’t appear until the very end. We’ve got Rebecca Ferguson, and we’re not going to do that. We wanted to have her right from the beginning.” That decision, he said, gave the writers greater freedom to expand Juliet’s story and rework the origins of the Silo. The adaptation also makes changes to characters and their identities, including Donald becoming Daniel. “We changed some names and genders for story reasons,” Yost said, adding, “We wanted to build out Daniel and Helen and make them central to the story. We enjoyed the idea of a political conspiracy thriller — they’re trying to figure out what’s going on, with some big twists along the way.”Memory, meanwhile, became one of the season’s central themes, particularly in Juliet’s journey. “We realised early on that the season would be about memory, and that they would try to control Juliet by erasing her memory,” he said. “How does she get it back? What happens? That became a way for us to tell the story.” Keeping the science fiction humanFor all its world-building, Silo works because audiences care about the people living inside it. Yost believes maintaining that emotional connection is a collective effort involving the writers and actors.“I wouldn’t say it’s an easy job, but it’s a job I love, and I get to work with incredible writers,” he said, adding, “All the writers have contributed in that way. And the actors are part of it too. They’ll say, ‘I said this in Season 1, so let’s not forget that.’ And we’ll say, ‘You’re right. Let’s change that.’”Yost recalled Rick Gomez, who plays Patrick Kennedy, suggesting a change after reading a draft of an upcoming episode. The writers followed his instinct, and Yost believes it improved the episode.“It’s all these people rooting for the best possible version,” he mentioned. “We do try to make it as humanly real as possible because it’s an insane situation — people living underground in the future. I think good science fiction does that," he added.He compared the approach to one of his favourite fantasy franchises.“I’m a big Lord of the Rings fan. I feel for the Hobbits. We’re with them. We care about Merry and Pippin. What’s going to happen to them? What’s going to happen to Frodo? That’s part of the job,” Yost added. "We had to give answers every season"With Silo now well into its run, the challenge is no longer simply establishing its world but ensuring that the mythology continues to evolve without losing its emotional core. Yost said the writers have approached each season with one fundamental rule.“We knew that we had to give answers every season, and we had to raise new questions every season. Getting into the origin story in Season 3 felt like a good shot in the arm for the audience,” he admitted.The season also gave the team an opportunity to work with a new ensemble, including Ashleigh Murray, Jess, Laura Innes, Reed Birney, Matt Craven and Morven Christie. “We got a kick out of writing those scenes, filming them and then seeing the cuts,” Yost said, adding, “It was like, yeah, this is fun.”That sense of enjoyment, he believed, is essential to keeping a show like Silo from becoming weighed down by its own mythology. “It has to be as true as possible, as real, and it also has to be fun. It has to be entertaining. You need to have Juliet doing something crazy at some point,” he laughed.And while Juliet spends much of Season 3 recovering, Yost promised that viewers will see a more familiar version of her in the next chapter. “Juliet took a long time to recover herself in Season 3. But by the end, she’s Juliet. Season 4, she’s Juliet from the first shot right to the end,” he asserted. Why Yost avoids reading reviewsSilo has also become the kind of series that generates theories and intense audience discussion. But Yost revealed that the creative team cannot simply react to Season 3’s reception while making Season 4 — because the next season was already completed months ago.“We’ve already finished filming Season 4 four months ago,” he revealed. “In order to get it to come out the year after Season 3, we had to do that because it takes a year to get all the visual effects done. So we can’t respond to the reaction to Season 3," he said.Instead, the writers have to trust the story they are telling and their interpretation of Howey’s books. “We have to just trust that this story we’ve invested in — these books by Hugh Howey — we believe in them. We believe in the story, this cast, this crew and these writers. We’ll just go and find our way," Yost said.As for reviews, Yost has learnt that sometimes the healthiest approach is simply not to look. “If I see a whole list of the latest reviews, my eye will immediately go to one that’s kind of like, "Meh." So I try not to read them,” he admitted.Instead, he saw the growing conversation around Season 3 as the more meaningful response. “To me, the biggest feedback we’ve gotten on Season 3 is that you and I are talking now,” Yost said. “We’re very grateful for that because I think we’re very proud of Season 3. We’re also very proud of Season 4, and I think this helps set that up.”Season 3 of Silo is currently streaming on Apple TV +.- EndsPublished On: Sep 8, 2026 11:10 IST