Silo – Season 2 Episode 8 “Book of Quinn” Recap & Review

The Book of Quinn

Episode 8 of Silo season 2 starts with Juliette realizing she and Solo may not be alone. She notices evidence of sabotage and grabs an axe from the metal stairs, before slowly ascending the stairs. The thing is, she’s also wrestling with acclimatising to the sudden change in pressure after being underwater, and that doesn’t do her any favours. So naturally, she needs to head back into the water again to try and stabilize herself.

When we return to her later in the episode, she comes back up and, unfortunately, comes face to face with a strange figure dressed as a raider. They end up shooting her with an arrow, after claiming they’ve killed Solo.

Juliette gets herself patched up before fighting back. However, it turns out there’s more than one scavenger here and, armed with a bow and arrow, the woman forces Juliette to step back.

Meanwhile, Shirley speaks to Paul Billings up in the cafeteria, and questions his loyalty to the Pact and the Silo. She entertains the idea that all of this is a lie, but he knows that if they turn away from the pact and try to go it alone, it could cause outright chaos and disaster. Shirley though doesn’t agree, and believes there are times where you need to put your foot down and call bullshit.

Martha Walker gets a message on her computer, telling her to help with groundwater removal. Of course this is a trap, which Shirley is quick to tell her as she leaves, but this stubborn woman doesn’t care. She finds Bernard there and he makes his play. Bernard uses Carla, and the warning of eternal pain, to make Martha his mole. She goes for it, under the guise of achieving “peace” and is allowed to see Carla. 

Martha though, realizes she’s been played and she’s forced into turning on her camera and staying in her studio no matter what. Shirley shows up while she’s in her office and now knows there’s a snitch down here but doesn’t know who.

Lukas uses the Wizard of Oz book, alongside the cypher, to try and decode what message may be hidden with Salvador Quinn. From here, he discovers that his direct descendant, Terrance Penbrook, could be the solution. He uses his authority to bust into Penbrook’s place and wants some papers, books or relics taken from Quinn’s archives.

Penbrook has no love lost for the man, and has been trying to erase him from his memory, given he’s a stain on the Silo’s history. Getting nowhere with the family (despite receiving some solid advice about not acting like a tough guy), Lukas returns to Bernard.

The pair talk about the revisionist history and here, Bernard talks about the truth. It turns out Salvador Quinn is actually a hero, and he single-handedly saved the Silo. You see, he cut access to the servers and got rid of all the relics and history on purpose. He then blamed the rebels after putting a drug in the water to make everybody forget. Over the course of weeks, months and years, this was all forgotten, and they had 140 years of peace… until now.

Lukas returns to Penbrook and apologizes for his initial hostility. He retorts Bernard’s story about Quinn and how he saved the Silo from certain doom. Turns out Judge Meadows also came here before she was Judge and was similarly looking for a book. It was an old copy of the Pact that Meadows exchanged, and this could well be where the answers lie.

Martha decides to turn her back on Mechanical, refusing to entertain their idea of raiding the medical supplies and demanding they instead stage a rescue mission to get her beloved back. They know this is a suicide mission though and refuse.

Unfortunately, this also means the initial plan to break into the medical supplies turns into a trap, as the handful of those from Mechanical are ambushed and quickly arrested.

Meanwhile, Paul’s wife confronts her husband about the old-world page. He tries in vain to tell her he was shielding her from this, given how dangerous it all is, but eventually he concedes. He hands over the page and explains he has no idea what happened to the world, but it does give them hope.

Meanwhile, Lukas looks over the old Pact and manages to decipher the message. Eventually, it spells out “If you’ve gotten this far you already know the game is rigged.” When he leaves the room, Sims happens to be there. He finds the Pact belonging to Judge Meadows and warns him. He knows that Bernard is just going to throw him back in the mines when he’s finished with him, so he needs to be careful and watch himself.

The Episode Review

Silo returns with another episode that feels rather predictable by this point, like we’re just waiting for something big to kick off, given this rebellion has been drawn out for a while and it feels more like a Cold War than anything else.

However, Martha working with Bernard is big trouble, and the others are not going to be happy when they find out. However, the more intriguing part of this stems from the various pockets of rebellion from the supporting characters, especially that of characters like Sims and Lukas, who are starting to find out more but pretty slowly, given the pacing of this show.

Still, we’re getting into the business end of this one now, and the ending hints that things are about to kick off in a big way.