About 18 months ago, I praised a new AppleTV+ series for its “frequently elegiac and hypnotic” tone. With its return, I renew that compliment. Despite growing in scope and ambition, Silo Season 2 remains committed to its quiet, insular brand of sci-fi. That’s very much a positive.

The decision to split the action this season between Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) in exile in the apparently ruined, abandoned Silo 17 and the rest of the cast back at home base is more of a mixed bag. The cross-cutting action isn’t new; Season 1 also bounced between characters, levels, and subplots. However, separating the show’s two most compelling characters—Juliette and head of IT/Mayor Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins)—does deny the audience some great verbal sparring.

That doesn’t mean Silo Season 2 lacks for great interactions for either, though. Juliette quickly discovers that 17 is not as abandoned as it seemed. A man, Solo (Steven Zahn), lives in that Silo’s IT vault and refuses to leave. Zahn’s vacillation between laid-back vibes and sharp temper matches Ferguson’s mix of resentment and buried empathy well. You know the performers are in the pocket when they can sell a version of the “How did you get the name Solo?” from that Star Wars spinoff with sincerity and sadness.

Robbins, in his best part in at least a decade, has more than enough costars to parry with. Common doesn’t have the biggest range. Nonetheless, as the head of Judicial/the Mayor’s enforcer Sims, he finds a part well calibrated to what he can offer. Judge Meadows (Tanya Moodie), Bernard’s former second, has a last gasp of fight in her. It’s enough to reject everything she’s spent her life protecting and covering up for, something she does with a flinty weariness. Her early scenes with the still very dedicated to the process Bernard have a melancholy spark. They accurately read as two people who know they’ve both changed too much to still be friends.

The best among Bernard’s foils, though, is Paul Billings (Chinaza Uche). After being the rule follower with a secret supporting/spying on Juliette last year, he emerges in Silo Season 2 as someone who can no longer ignore the truth staring him in the face. Despite his dedication to the Pact—the Silo’s Bible, Constitution, and possible prophetic document all rolled into one—he begins to choose people over dogma. Still, he insists, he didn’t change. It’s the powers that be that have gone so far that he can no longer simply obey.

As before, this season has a clear-as-mud palette that obscures without frustrating, somehow. It’s like the hushed, deliberative pacing has been extending to the visuals. It creates an almost subconscious sense of cohesion and order even as the silo marches ever closer to outright rebellion. It’s something akin to being wrapped in a soft, weighted blanket before being tossed into the middle of a boxing match.

My favorite aspect of the series remains how it navigates mis- and disinformation and conspiratorial thinking. Time and again, the system Bernard perpetuates reveals itself as corrupt. It’s as built on lies as the most suspicious members of the silo think. However, the doubters are rarely right about the deceptive system’s whats, wheres, and hows. The environment is poison. Death does wait outside the doors. Bernard and Co. are trying to protect the citizens from the surface. However, what they’re doing in the name of that is so much closer to home and more brutal to the silo residents. If one wanted to draw a comparison to real life, one might point to the recent “Democratic weather manipulation machine v. global warming” nonsense. That complexity makes for compelling television, giving viewers more information than most of the characters while leaving room for plenty of surprises and twists.

The dual structure also makes for interesting parallelism in storytelling. In the first episode of Solo Season 2, we see the lower denizens of Silo 17, like Mechanical and Agriculture, ally themselves with the sheriff to overthrow IT and Judicial and escape their home. Their success quickly turns to horror as they learn that regardless of the upper levels’ other sins, they weren’t lying about what awaited outside the doors. As the season progresses, that opening’s relevance grows and grows. History, even in Silo Season 2’s dystopian future, doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure feels like it may rhyme.

Silo Season 2 is currently descending beneath the Earth on AppleTV+.

Silo Season 2 Trailer: