Silo: parents' guide
Best for ages 15 and up. Rated TV-MA.
A tense, slow-burn mystery for teens who like puzzles and dystopias, with little sex but a lot of swearing. Thousands of people live in a vast underground bunker run by leaders who hide the truth about the poisoned world outside, and an engineer starts asking questions. Expect murders, poisonings, mass killings and constant dread rather than gore. F-words are frequent from the first episode. Suicide is a recurring thread, from the heroine's mother to people who choose to go outside to die and a character in season 3, which puts it at about 15.
What's in it
Violence
ModerateFistfights, stabbings, poisonings and shootings, including a flashback rebellion where rebels are gunned down and thrown from a bridge. Season 3 adds a mass execution by drones and poison. A self-surgery and a rabbit's heart operation show blood.
Language
StrongFrequent and strong. Plugged In counted more than 10 f-words in the first episode alone and four in the season 2 opener, plus s-words, 'son of a bitch' and 'asshole.'
Sex and nudity
MildMostly talk: frank conversations about sex, a married couple who win a lottery to try for a baby, kissing and a love triangle. Neither Common Sense Media nor Plugged In reports nudity or sex scenes.
Drinking, drugs and smoking
NoneNeither Common Sense Media nor Plugged In reports any drinking, smoking or drug use worth noting; substances play essentially no role in the story.
Scary or intense scenes
ModerateSteady dread about surveillance, disappearances and the toxic outside, where corpses lie in view. Explorers find skeletons and hanged bodies in an abandoned silo. The heroine's mother, said to have lost a baby, took her own life, and main characters die suddenly.
Sensitive topics
- Suicide
- Death of a parent
- Death of a child
Worth talking about
The silo's rulers insist that lying to everyone keeps them alive. Ask whether a leader can ever be right to hide the truth, and what happens when people stop asking questions.
On our lists
Similar picks around 15+
Checked October 13th, 2026 against Common Sense Media, Plugged In, Wikipedia. The age is our judgment, not an official rating, and every family draws its lines differently: read the notes, not just the number. Spotted something we missed? Tell us. How we rate.