How a Tiny Pez Dispenser Became TV’s Most Important Story Breadcrumb on ‘Silo — IndieWire

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

Created by Graham Yost and adapted from Hugh Howey's trilogy of novels, the series chronicles humanity's last remaining survivors who are confined to a massive underground city. In the closing moments of Season 2, however, we jump back to a time before the apocalypse in Washington D.C., where Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) and journalist Helen Drew ( Jessica Henwick ) share a "date," discussing past accolades, politics, and dirty bombs, before Keene leaves her with an unexpected gift: an unopened duck Pez. Related Stories Nick Antosca Made 'Cape Fear' His Own with Scorsese and Spielberg's Blessing — and Their Notes 'The Morning Show' to End with Season 5 in 2027

The scene set them up for Season 3 (and Season 4), where Daniel and Helen's adventures in more contemporary times offer clues to the Silo 's existence. "I wish I could say we planned it all from the beginning," Yost told IndieWire of the Pez dispenser's importance. "But there have been so many developments in the writing of the show, you've got to sort of moderate or modulate your Pez usage, or it's going to be too much."

What has been moderating the early events of Season 3 is Juliette's memory loss, thanks to Camille Sims (Alexandria Riley) giving her "medication" designed to make people forget — aka the forgetting pills. But in the third season's fifth episode, "Memory," writer Katherine DiSavino and director Aric Avelino weave between past and present, revealing how Juliette's rescue changed the Silo while she (and everyone not named Camille) races to recover the memories to prevent a catastrophic threat of poison that could kill everyone inside.

Below, star Rebecca Ferguson , showrunner Graham Yost , and ep director Aric Avelino unpack the emotional decisions behind Juliette's transformation and how the Pez dispenser grew into "Silo's" biggest narrative revelation.

For Ferguson, who is also an executive producer, she had to conceal two seasons of carefully laid character development and plot points to pull off the performance of a Juliette who's lost her hold on herself. But it was also a bit of a gift to play a familiar character through a new lens.

"What's interesting is, you can wipe memory, but there is something embodied. It's like people who have been in a car accident and their body will have a memory of the crash. It's the same with Juliette. You can start wiping her memory, but there's a DNA in her that will conquer. That is her constant curiosity. It doesn't matter how much you reverse and take away from the before time with her; she will still question why something's off, even in the new," Ferguson told IndieWire.

However, translating those ideas into performance demanded a more grounding connection to the character. "One of the first days we were filming was me as the Mayor, and I was in my dress, and they put heels on me. I started walking in the outfit, and I had to cut myself. I was like, cut, cut, cut. This is not right. I wouldn't do this. I asked if [the camera] could see my feet? They were like, 'No.' I was like, 'Great. Can you get my boots? I need my boots because my boots would kick me into character,'" Ferguson said.

The boots — bigger and heavier than heels — helped Ferguson walk a certain way, which helped her wordlessly maintain something of the core of who Juliette is, even when she can no longer consciously access that same sense of self. "That was one thing I really had to focus on a lot was to stay true to who she was," Ferguson said.

Those hints are important, because Avelino told IndieWire that a lot else has been stripped away from the Silo's greatest engineer. "Juliette is missing the empathy that she has for these other people, but the other people have it for her. It puts her in a fish tank, and the places where she would normally stride in no longer feel familiar," Avelino said. "But then what helps the audience is, you have everybody else looking at Juliette like she's an alien, but it's like, 'No, this is your place. You love this place.'"

As Episode 5 alternates between Juliette's rescue from death in the past and security chief Robert Sims' (Common) discovery of the fact that Camille's placed Juliette on memory-suppressing drugs to better control the Silo. This puts the series' resident heel in a bind. Sims, his family (especially his son), and the show's best leather jacket he wears could stay in control, or triggering Juliette's suppressed memories could save the Silo.

Yost mentioned Sims' arc as a father was baked into the story from the start. "We landed pretty early that what unites Camille and Robert is their love for their son, in this hope for a dream that he could live outside someday," Yost said. "The big turn in Season was motivated by a sense that they are no longer operating on limited information."

Some of that newfound information arrives when it's revealed that former mayor Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) is still alive; don't ask — and has been in hiding thanks to Sims. In a defining scene, Bernard tells Sims and Martha (Harriet Walter), Juliette's mechanical wiz mentor, that relics might unlock Juliette's forgotten memories. The camera intercuts between the characters, lingering on Sims as he realizes Bernard has been keeping secrets about the Silo.

"What's happening in that moment between Bernard and Sims is you have these two guys who have worked with each other for years, and one of them has been devoted to the other. But Robert is finding out that there's so much more that was not told to him by the person he's been in service of, which is a bit of a painful reveal," said Avelino. "So if you look at the eye lines while Bernard is telling the story, it starts with Martha, then goes to Sims because it's kind of a confession saying, 'Yeah, I knew a whole lot more than what I had been sharing with you.' And so that moment hangs in there, in part, because there's this almost like an apology from Bernard to Sims."

The reveal found its rhythm ...

How a Tiny Pez Dispenser Became TV’s Most Important Story Breadcrumb on ‘Silo — IndieWire | AIPROPX