Silo Season 3, episode 4s ending explained: What happened to Bernard?

Every time somebody journeys down to the depths of the silo, they seem to find something mysterious. Last season, it was the robotic voice of the algorithm. This season, it's Bernard (Tim Robbins).

But hang on a minute, isn't Bernard dead?

Well, that's what we were led to believe back in Silo Season 3, episode 1. But it looks like there may be more to the story...

What happens at the end of Silo Season 3, episode 4?

Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) spends most of episode 4 on the run after Camille (Alexandria Riley) tries to have her murdered in her hospital bed. With the help of her nurse (Jacqueline Berces), Juliette manages to escape, only to run into Sims (Common) waiting for her in the pump room. She runs away before he can tell her what he wants to say, and with the help of her friends in mechanical, she finds her way back down to the very bottom of the silo, where Lukas Kyle (Avi Nash) discovered the tunnel in Season 2.

Lukas isn't down there, though. Instead, Juliette hears a person coughing, pulls back a curtain, and sees her former nemesis, Bernard. He's badly burned, and lying in a bed.

"Hello, Juliette," he rasps.

How is Bernard still alive?

Okay, so a quick recap: Back at the end of Season 2, Bernard and Juliette were trapped in the airlock together while the anti-contamination fire burned its way through the confined space. Juliette was wearing a modified fire suit; Bernard wasn't. He managed to throw himself to the ground pretty quickly just before the fire started to burn, but his survival was looking questionable at best.

Then, in episode 1 of this new season, we were told he was dead.

"The flames melted holes in his suit, and the poison got in," Sims tells Juliette, while we see shots of what he's describing. "We couldn't take a chance with a farm burial. The stairs were evacuated. No one was allowed into the central shaft. It took six porters six hours to get him down to the incinerator. Bernard can't help you. Because I watched him burn."

So, what really happened? Well, it seems clear that somebody lied to Juliette. Bernard clearly was badly burned, and the shot of him being moved down the staircase could well be real. But we now know it wasn't his body that was sent into the incinerator.

The person most likely to have lied about Bernard, it seems, is Sims. But if he faked Bernard's death, why? What's the benefit of hiding the former head of IT down in the silo's depths? Could it be that he's actually changing his allegiance?

Silo Season 3 is streaming now on Apple TV, with new episodes dropping every Friday.