Yahoo News Silo is better than The Last of Us in one very important way
Silo spoilers below
The passion viewers had for the debut season of The Last of Us was overwhelmingly positive and we're hardly scratching our heads wondering why: to watch is to become absorbed into an atmospheric world. The characters and their story arcs were beautifully written and inclusive of meaningful queer romances through the pairings of both Riley (Storm Reid) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett).
The show was filled with heart, yet it never lost sight of the fact that it was a post-apocalyptic thriller. Its world-building was so gorgeously handled that we can't help but be disappointed that the same careful treatment wasn't awarded to its racial diversity.
This might be a hard realisation to accept given that we had some stunning performances from the likes of Storm Reid, Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Woodard, but it's true. A few well-placed Black characters don't make up for the fact that the overwhelming remaining population of the world happened to be white. At best it's an oversight, at worst it's lazy.
That isn't to say that non-white characters weren't awarded meaningful screen time: there were Joel's biracial daughter Sarah (Nico Parker), Marlene (Merle Dandridge) and Tommy's wife Maria (Rutina Wesley).
Although as we type out this list of Black characters a few things become glaringly obvious. One, the fact that we can type out a list of the Black characters highlights the disproportion. It would be a struggle to do so in reverse.
And two, the sheer amount of cannon fodder amongst those Black characters. RIP to the 90 per cent who became collateral damage in this destabilised society.
The other thing that those on a quest for more racial diversity must ask themselves is, where are all the other races?
In its effort to seem more diverse, the entertainment industry seems to have fallen into the hole of picking and choosing which underrepresented group gets their allotted screen time before shoving them front and centre.
Sadly, because we are so used to a predominantly white cast, we perceive this as inclusivity when in fact it is merely the illusion of racial diversity, the key to which is that word: diversity.
In this respect Silo has a leg up on The Last of Us.
Not only does the story contain Black characters with emerging storylines that appear, three episodes in, integral to the plot, it has also created a post-apocalyptic world where one of the side-effects of mass extinction isn't the erasure of the global majority.
One scene that perfectly illustrates this is the moment in which mayor Jahns (Geraldine James) goes to meet 'the people.'
'The people' are a multicultural blend of survivors, their white, Black and Brown faces staring at her with hope. Admittedly there is a little residual 'ick' with the scene's echoes of the white-saviour complex.
Indeed it would be a dealbreaker if we hadn't seen other non-white characters holding positions of power, Holston (David Oyelowo) being one of them and Sim (Common) being the other.
The show's racial inclusivity also comes into sharp focus every time the community gathers together.
Especially when they gawk at the latest cleaner (aka the exiled) as they trot out into the poisoned outside world and begin clearing grime off the camera sensors, giving those on the inside a view of what remains outside.
In those moments we see, even more clearly than those in the silo, the blend of races living amongst one another, gathered together in a shared experience.
The Last of Us had the perfect opportunity to do something similar when Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie entered Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Maria's commune. There were a few ethnic faces dotted throughout the community but those people disappeared behind the throng of white characters.
They aren't the only ones guilty of insufficient racial inclusion. House of The Dragon followed a similar brief, with Corlys Velareon (Steve Toussaint) and his family bearing almost the total weight of representation.
While it has been edifying to see a multicultural society within Silo, we dare to ask for a little more.
We dare to ask that Blackness (through the characters of Holston, Sims and Rashida Jones's Allison) not be held up as the 'poster-boy race', and that we hear the stories of other underrepresented races front and centre too, because even in the Silo there's room for all of us.
Episodes 1-3 of Silo are available to stream now on Apple TV+ with new episodes airing every Friday.
You Might Also Like
