Rebecca Ferguson may have commanded the screen as the Reverend Mother in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies or sniped someone’s head off as the magnetic Ilsa Faust in the Mission: Impossible series, but on Apple TV+ she’s leading an equally gripping story of survival and rebellion. Silo, the dystopian sci-fi series created by Graham Yost, has quietly become one of Apple’s most acclaimed originals — and now, ahead of Season 3, it’s surging back up the streaming charts.

Months after the Season 2 finale, Silo has re-entered Apple TV+’s top 10, sitting at #9 this past week. It’s a rare feat for a series between seasons and shows the growing word-of-mouth traction around the show. Critics have been just as supportive: Season 1 earned an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, while Season 2 climbed even higher to a stellar 94%.

Adapted from Hugh Howey’s bestselling novel trilogy, Silo is set in a future where humanity survives in massive underground silos, sealed off from an outside world deemed uninhabitable. Ferguson stars as Juliette Nichols, an engineer whose investigation into the suspicious death of a colleague sets her on a dangerous path of uncovering the truth about the silo’s origins — and the reality of what lies beyond its walls.

Season 2 pushed the story even further, with Juliette finally glimpsing the barren surface and discovering other silos in the distance. The finale left fans with more questions than answers, setting up a high-stakes continuation.

How Will Silo Finish?

Apple TV+ has already committed to giving Silo a full story arc, with Seasons 3 and 4 on the way. Season 3 has wrapped production, and Season 4 will serve as the conclusion to the saga. Ferguson herself teased that the adaptation is sticking close to the books’ structure:

“I believe that the show has an ending, and I know when that is. So that’s the answer. You will find out when the show is done. To be honest, I don’t think it’s a secret. The books are the books. It’s three books, and the three books are divided into four seasons.”

Joining Ferguson in the cast are Tim Robbins, Common, Steve Zahn, Harriet Walter, Chinaza Uche, Avi Nash, Alexandria Riley, Shane McRae, Remmie Milner, Billy Postlethwaite, Rick Gomez, Clare Perkins, Caitlin Zoz, Tanya Moodie, and Iain Glen..

Silo Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming now on Apple TV+. Seasons 3 and 4 are in production now and will premiere in the near future.

Manifest became a streaming hit following its Netflix debut. A central mysterious plot that explores the ramifications of an otherworldly event that affects a handful of people is one of the most appealing formulas in TV. With the show having been rescued by Netflix for a final season, it’s now been two years since its finale. If you were left craving more, a 2004 USA show made the most of this same sci-fi formula. René Echevarria and Scott Peters’ The 4400 recounted the story of 4,400 people who went missing in different periods of time, then one fateful day reappeared together at Mount Rainier through a ball of light. While the show lasted only four seasons, its relevant message is worth revisiting.

The Expanding Power of ‘The 4400’ Finds a Way to Feel Personal

The 4400 is a story of major scope that still feels personal. Since the returned start developing superhuman abilities, the National Threat Assessment Command (NTAC) gets involved in tracking their lives post-return. Through the eyes of Agents Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch) and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie), we slowly uncover the story of several of the returned. Tom’s son Kyle (Chad Faust) ended up in a coma after hanging out with his abducted nephew Shawn (Patrick Flueger), so he shows an immediate interest in taking part in the investigation of the returned. Diana is paired up with him and shows a heightened interest in the returned as people, not just as subjects of study. That’s why she takes in the youngest of the returned, Maia (Conchita Campbell), whose precognition powers have freaked out everyone around her.

By placing Tom and Diana front-and-center, The 4400 has an air of The X-Files’ Murder and Scully to it. As they get to solve their week-to-week cases regarding the returned, they start to unfold the expanding consequences that the powers of the 4400 have. First, they discover a ripple effect that takes the world in a better direction every time they make use of them. Then, by deepening their entanglement with the returned, they become the liaison between the masterminds behind their abduction and the rest of the human race. As their influence expands across the globe, the 4400 create a religion, develop a substance to give powers to Earth’s population, and get to the bottom of the mystery regarding who took them away.

‘The 4400’ Is a Story About Survival That Resonates With Our Political Climate

Almost 20 years ago, The 4400 dealt with an issue that is of the utmost relevance nowadays – the refugee crisis. After being returned, the 4400 are exposed to a world that doesn’t understand them or have a place for them anymore. The expected generational clash isn’t exclusive to those who disappeared half a century ago; it’s also present for those who were abducted three years before. That’s how fast the world keeps changing ever since the 21st century kicked in. The process of readjustment is a harsh one, at times triggering their abilities in less-than-ideal ways. But this pushes the 4400 to forge new paths where they can really fit in.

The 4400, very much like any marginalized community nowadays, face the rage of a growing conservative community against them. By reclaiming their place in the world, they become the target of people who place their fears upon them. At several points during the show, they are doxxed, they are attacked by terrorists, and they are persecuted by the government and placed into camps. If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because this is a story we’re destined to repeat if we don’t learn from past mistakes.

After Its Cancellation, The Story of ‘The 4400’ Continued in Further Media Projects

Ever since its first season, The 4400 dealt with agents from the future that tried to change the course of the world through its past. Sadly, what those agents couldn’t prevent was the show’s inevitable cancellation. Declining ratings, budget constraints, and other issues stemming from the 2007 WGA strike, were the reasons attributed to the show not being renewed after its fourth season. Perhaps this was for the best, as the show’s scope was widening by the minute, but its budget didn’t seem to be able to catch up with what the story demanded.

Still, The 4400 found ways to keep telling its increasingly intricate story. Two sequel books were written to cap off the original saga – Greg Cox’s Welcome to Promise City and David Mack’s Promises Broken. Both of them continue the story of promicin – the substance made available to the public to develop abilities – and the transformation of Seattle into Promise City, the main command post for 4400 and promicin-powered people. The consistency of keeping Tom Baldwin and Billy Campbell’s Jordan Collier as the center of these books’ focus makes it feel like we’re truly reading Seasons 5 and 6 of the show.

‘The 4400’ Featured a Mix of Past, Present, and Future Legendary Actors

The same way time-displaced people converged in The 4400, legendary actors from the past, present, and future collided in the show as well. From E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial fame, Peter Coyote brought to life a relentless but corruptible leader in NTAC director Dennis Ryland. Known for her many contributions to the sci-fi genre, and fresh off Firefly and Serenity, Summer Glau joined the cast from the second season on as mind-controlling returnee Tess Doerner. Lastly, peaking into his stellar future, The 4400 showcased Mahershala Ali in one of his earliest roles. As Richard Tyler, Ali portrayed a returnee with telekinetic abilities, but whose moral compass ends up being his greatest power.

Just like Manifest, the magic of The 4400 relies on its twists. In just four seasons, the show rebooted the world as we knew it – never losing sight of its personal angle. Thus, this sci-fi tale always kept its resemblance with real life. Through its fleshed-out characters, The 4400 managed to stay relevant and relatable during its complete run, making it an essential watch (or rewatch, for those of us who were there the first time).

The 4400’s season one is currently available for purchase on Prime Video in the U.S.

Give James Cameron three years to tinker with the same world, and everything is going to get bigger and better. That’s the main takeaway in this first trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in Cameron’s mega-blockbuster sci-fi series. Everything in this trailer takes what we expect from Avatar and brings it up a notch. The action is bigger. The sets are more elaborate. The characters are more emotional. And, if we’ve come to learn anything from Cameron and this franchise, it’s sure to all come together in an even bigger way.

The trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash debuted exclusively in theaters with The Fantastic Four: First Steps, but if you didn’t see Marvel’s latest, it’s now online. Check it out.

As a first trailer, this does a great job of teasing the story and visuals while also not explaining much of it. For example, clearly there’s a lot going on with this new Fire tribe we’ve heard so much about. But there are also issues with Jake (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and their remaining children Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton). That throughline with Spider (Jack Champion) and his now Na’vi father Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is also still lingering. Plus we get visuals of new places, our favorite whales, and so much more. But how does it all link together? We don’t know.

Basically, at this point, Fire and Ash just looks like the next evolution of Avatar, and we are very much here for it. You do, however, get the sense that with two more movies to follow, and the fourth one not scheduled for release until 2029, Cameron is going to make this his Empire Strikes Back. I’m sensing a big-time revelation or cliffhanger here. We’ll see how it goes.

We’ll find out much more in the coming months, but, for now, are you excited for Avatar: Fire and Ash? Are you still a fan of these unique visuals? Let us know below.

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