Silo showrunner Graham Yost breaks down episode 9s bombshell ending and surprise musical guest

Silo Season 3, episode 9 ended not with a bang, but with a nuclear blast that shook the show to its core.

In the episode's final sequence, congressman Daniel (Ashley Zukerman) and journalist Helen (Jessica Henwick), now expecting a child, visit the silos on their first day open to outside civilians.

The event is ritzy as can be, complete with beautiful landscaping around the Silo entrances and a surprise Peter Gabriel concert.

But something about it feels off.

Why is shady operative Henry (Reed Birney) so intent on separating Daniel and Helen? Why won't Daniel's sister Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay) respond to Daniel's texts? SEE ALSO: 'Silo' Season 3, episode 9's shocking ending, explained The wrongness comes to a head as Daniel and Helen try to reunite with one another.

Just as they catch sight of each other on the berms ringing their respective silos, a nuclear bomb explodes in the distance.

As the blast races towards them, Daniel is dragged back to Silo 1, and Helen's fate is left unknown. (Given that her Pez dispenser winds up in Silo 18, I'm betting she made it back inside.) It's a harrowing sequence that finally reveals the calamity that blighted the area around all the silos and sets the stage for a potentially game-changing finale.

Mashable spoke with Silo showrunner Graham Yost about the show's latest explosive twist, as well as AI 's role in writing the Pact, Peter Gabriel's surprise concert, and whether Jimmy (Steve Zahn) could be one of Gabriel's long-lost descendants.

One detail of this episode that cracked me up but also gave me a bit of an existential crisis was the reveal that Anna (Morven Christie) and Victor (Matt Craven) "wrote" the Pact, which is such a foundational text for Silo residents, using AI.

Tell me about including that detail, and how it speaks to the Founders' attitudes toward the Silo dwellers.

Graham Yost: I'll say, I don't use AI.

But whenever I use Google, I'm using AI now, because I can ask a very specific question like, "How old was FDR's Secretary of State in 1940?" and up it comes.

I don't have to find out who he was and then look at his life and do the math.

So we all use AI now to a degree.