Entertainment
If You Love ‘Silo,’ Prime Video’s 2-Part Sci-Fi Hit Is Your Perfect Weekend Binge
There’s a very specific kind of sci-fi hangover that Silo leaves behind. It’s truly all about wanting to watch something else that keeps putting you in that uncomfortable position of living in a world where everyone (including the government) is lying, and that curiosity is dangerous because you could potentially unearth truths that others have hidden from you through deliberate acts of deception.
If that itch needs to be satisfied while waiting for Silo to return, Fallout does a much better job than it initially appears to; underneath the bright colors and comic angst of Fallout, there is a significant amount of the same thematic material that has been so compellingly present in Silo that will help keep you above water while it returns.
‘Fallout’ Is About Life Inside a Lie
Prime Video’s Fallout is set more than 200 years after a nuclear war wiped out the world as we know it. Some people survived on the surface. Others were sealed into underground Vaults, where generations grew up believing they were humanity’s last, best hope. That belief, of course, is a lie.
The show follows Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), a relentlessly optimistic Vault dweller who’s been raised on politeness, rules, and the idea that the Vault system exists to protect people. When her father is kidnapped, Lucy is forced to leave that controlled environment and step into a wasteland that doesn’t care how well she followed protocol.
That basic setup will sound extremely familiar to Silo fans, and that’s no accident. Like Silo, Fallout is obsessed with how societies maintain control long after the apocalypse is over, and how much information you have to erase to keep people compliant.
On a tonal level, Silo and Fallout couldn’t look more different. Silo is muted, grim, and deliberately slow while Fallout is colorful, chaotic, and frequently funny, but structurally, they’re pretty much cousins. Both shows begin inside sealed underground worlds where residents are taught a carefully edited version of history. In Silo, the outside is framed as deadly, and in Fallout, Vault dwellers are told they represent civilization at its purest. In both cases, leaving home means discovering that the truth is far more complicated — and far more damning — than anyone in power was willing to admit.
Lucy’s arc mirrors Juliette Nichols’ (Rebecca Ferguson) in ways that feel intentional without being derivative. Neither character starts out as a revolutionary. Instead, they’re rule-followers, problem-solvers, and people who believe, at least at first, that systems exist for a reason. Watching that faith erode piece by piece is the engine that drives both shows.
‘Fallout’ Season 2’s Most Disturbing Moment Reveals What the Show Is Really About
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The Big Difference Between ‘Silo’ and ‘Fallout’ Is Tone, Not Substance
The easiest mistake to make with Fallout is assuming it’s “lighter” sci-fi. It isn’t; it’s just messier about how it presents its ideas. Where Silo buries its commentary under silence and bureaucracy, Fallout dresses its critique up in retro-futurism and violence. Corporate greed, manufactured morality, and institutional rot are all front and center — just filtered through irradiated deserts and absurd side characters.
Walton Goggins’ Cooper Howard, a former actor turned ghoul bounty hunter, embodies that contrast perfectly. He’s funny in a way that hurts, cynical without being hollow, and deeply tied to the world before it ended. Through him, Fallout makes it painfully clear that the apocalypse didn’t create these power structures — it just froze them in place.
With two seasons available, Fallout is a genuinely satisfying binge. It layers its mysteries gradually, builds out its world with confidence, and doesn’t rush emotional payoffs just to hit spectacle beats. Like Silo, it’s a show that understands the appeal of controlled information — who has it, who doesn’t, and what happens when the wrong person starts asking the right questions. The difference is that Fallout eventually pushes beyond its bunkers, expanding its scope in ways Silo deliberately avoids, which makes it feel less like a pressure valve: familiar enough to scratch the itch, different enough not to feel redundant.
If Silo pulled you in with its atmosphere, its conspiracies, and its slow dismantling of authority, Fallout is an easy recommendation. It’s proof that post-apocalyptic sci-fi doesn’t have to look the same to ask the same uncomfortable questions — and that stepping outside the bunker is still the most dangerous thing a character can do.