What Tim Robbins Found So ‘Challenging’ About His Return to Silo Season 3

The following contains spoilers for Silo Season 3, Episode 4, “Whatever You Do, Don’t Go Home,” which premiered Friday, July 24 on Apple TV.

Many assumed after the Season 2 finale of Silo that Tim Robbins had ended his stint on the Apple TV sci-fi series. But as it turns out, it’s just the beginning.

At the end of the third season’s fourth episode, Robbins’ character, Bernard Holland, is revealed to be alive. He’d been kept in a hidden area since the Season 2 finale, when Bernard and Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) were trapped in a fire that presumably took Bernard’s life. The fire seemed to have had an effect on Bernard’s physical health.

Talking to CBR’s Katie Doll in an exclusive interview, Robbins cited Bernard’s damaged voice as a “challenging” aspect of returning in Season 3, mainly due to how they shot the season.

“It was challenging because we didn’t shoot everything in order. There were days when I had to be completely depleted immediately after filming scenes where Bernard was much further along in his recovery, or vice versa. A lot of it was simply tracking that arc of recovery.”

Regardless, Robbins welcomed the challenge with open arms. The Academy Award-winning actor, known for his acclaimed roles in Mystic River and The Shawshank Redemption, clearly isn’t afraid of taking on characters that require physical exertion. In fact, he thinks this is one of the many advantages of being an actor.

“Those are exactly the kinds of gifts I look for as an actor. I’m always drawn to characters who have secrets or who undergo significant change. This role allowed Bernard to change not only physically, but morally and spiritually as well. It was a beautiful gift to be able to explore all of that.”

What’s Next for Silo’s Bernard Holland?

Since the beginning of Season 3, Silo 18’s entire population believed Bernard succumbed to his injuries from the fire. While Silo has yet to explain how Bernard survived, or how Robert Sims (Common) kept his survival a secret, as Robbins teased above, it sounds like the antagonist will go on a redemption arc of sorts.

Bernard’s survival is a drastic divergence from Hugh Howey’s Silo novel series, which the show is based off of. Bernard and Juliette’s final standoff in the airlock is similarly played out in the first act, titled Wool. Bernard is killed when the cleansing fires are released to sanitize the airlock, taking Lukas’ place when Bernard confessed to George’s murder.

That said, the decision to keep Bernard alive in the TV series is one of the few major changes from the books in Season 3. His transformative arc could be a way to instill Silo‘s message about trusting in people, rather than keeping them in complete ignorance. Redemption might be a long ways away for Bernard, but this could be the first step to him finally stepping onto the right side of history.

New episodes of Silo premiere every Friday on Apple TV.