Silo's Orla Kent Murder: Why Mike Davidson's Guilt Is Still Just One Man's Word

Silo has handed us a three season murder case, and by the end of the investigation we are told that Orla was killed by a man who was maybe two minutes away from a cleaning suit of his own: her own boyfriend, Mike Davidson. The reason given is that Orla caught him stealing out of supply. Ed Harwood named him going by what his own daughter, Glenda, told him, and Paul Billings and Hank took that name and arrested Mike. The episode where this comes out is called Gray Goo, and that episode had a mountain to carry, so Orla was never going to be the center of it.

I do not think we should close the case yet based on hearsay from a man bargaining for his own neck. So I want to follow the case again, sort the evidence properly, and weigh it against the suspect before we decide to prosecute him in front of a jury, who by this point is locked up in detention, which is funny if you think about it. But however it may be, justice has to be served the right way.

The Hidden Lift Proves a Theft Ring, Not a Murder

There is a hidden lift down in construction supply, behind a door that was built to not look like a door, and Knox, Paul, and Hank found it. Somebody drew it, somebody welded it, and somebody hauled material through it. It sat there the whole time while the entire silo tore itself apart over rations. That proves a carefully organized, long running theft operation existed inside Silo 18 during the rebellion, run by people with enough standing to get something like that built and enough standing to keep it quiet.

This proves the conspiracy is far bigger than anyone imagined at the start. But all of this does not tell us who killed Orla. How can a theft ring be linked to the murder of a girl? Knox pulled the strongest piece of evidence in the whole case out of that wall, and it is completely silent on the actual question of who killed Orla. The investigation that led to the theft operation does not, on the surface, answer that question at all.

The Blueprint Is Confirmed, Not the Crime

Knox's father, officially dead for years, is exactly the kind of witness who will not hold up in most cases. The reason he has been dead is that he sold Harwood an idea and something else came out of it. Draw it up, and I will give you a new life is roughly how he tells it, like the two of them were just running their mouths one night and it evolved into something. That means Gus is testifying about his own crime.

Paul plays it right. He tells Gus that unless Gus killed Orla Kent, he does not care what else the man got up to, which is a brilliant way to get someone to stop protecting himself and instead give up someone else. Gus drew something, though he does not know for certain it ever got built. He is a designer who, having been paid for his work, faked his own death, and if what he said is true, he was nowhere near any of it afterward to actually know what was built out of it. So while he confirmed being the hand behind the blueprint, that still does not answer the murder case at hand.

Cornered, Harwood Trades a Name for His Own Life

When the law caught up with Ed Harwood, the hidden lift was already discovered, a dead witness turned out to be alive and talking, and a supply theft operation was already exposed. He knows exactly what is waiting for him: the mines until he dies down there, or a walk outside. Those are his two doors, and Paul more or less says it to his face. That is when Harwood realizes he has to open his mouth and say something.

The story he produces clears him, clears his daughter Glenda, and produces a third man we can hold responsible for Orla's death, even though that man is not in the room to clear his name. Harwood says this man was stealing, and when Orla caught him, he killed her. Should we take Harwood at his word? Is he lying? For now we cannot prove that he is. This is a strong witness statement, and I am not a lawyer, but this could surely hold up in court before a jury.

So why say this now, at the exact moment he realizes he has to say something to clear his own name and his daughter's? No father puts his own daughter in a story like this unless the thing is true. But notice who he names: the one person in the story whose destruction costs the Harwood family absolutely nothing. He is trading this man for his own life and his daughter's, and Billings took the trade because it is better than having no answer at all.

Mike Davidson's Alibi Has Never Actually Been Broken

Harwood names Mike. The show has shown us that Mike Davidson is Orla's boyfriend, and going by the latest reveal, he was tangled up with Glenda before that. He was pulling things out of supply. But we were never given a scene where he was actually caught in the act. What we did get, back in episode four, was Mike sitting across from Sheriff Billings telling him he last saw Orla at work in supply, and that he did not go with her because he was busy exercising his dog.

That alibi landed a little too easily, which is why I flagged him earlier without being able to be insistent about it. Nobody has made him answer for that alibi since. Hank and Paul arrested him the moment Harwood gave up the name, and he still has not been made to account for a word of it. If you point at Mike as the culprit on that basis, you are sentencing a man on somebody else's word over an alibi nobody ever bothered to break.

There is no doubt he is a suspect, and the fact that he was in love with Orla makes it harder to admit he would kill his girlfriend over theft. Though if that is true, you can picture the moment Orla looks at him and sees who he really is, and he decides he has to take her off so she does not breathe a word of it to anyone.

Silo Has a History of Handing Us a Lie as the Official Story

Compare that to how this show normally does things. It will always show us upfront if someone is a terrible person. We saw it with Sims, with Bernard, and with others, all given to us right from the beginning. But somehow it decides to conceal the entire theft operation, Orla finding out about it, and her being killed for it, and leaves us to investigate and beat ourselves over it until we reach a final conclusion.

George went over a railing, and the official story was suicide. Holston walked out because grief made him do something stupid, that was the story. Juliette Nichols, a mechanic, became a criminal because the machinery decided she needed to be one. Every single time this silo has told its people what happened to somebody, there has been a hand on the scale, not always a wicked hand, sometimes just a frightened one, or a tired one, or one that justifies itself as being for the good of ten thousand people.

Right now Camille is running IT, she is the one who has Jules in a cell, and the system has been too corrupt from the beginning for anyone to believe it has become reliable, that it serves justice. There is nothing like justice in this story when the people overseeing the whole operation are lying and conspiring, and Orla's case is no different. Orla is not in the books, so we cannot weigh this against a source, she was invented by the show, and the whole conspiracy came from the Apple writers' own decisions, who decided who did it, how we would find out, and decided we would find out from a liar.

The Case for Believing Harwood Anyway

By the time Harwood names Mike, he has already lost. The lift is found, Gus is talking, the theft is established. Lying about the murder at that stage gains him almost nothing and risks everything, because if Billings later catches him in it, the trade is void and he is out the airlock anyway. Men in that position usually shed the small lies to protect themselves from the bigger consequence.

It is also not as if the accusation is absurd. A thief caught by his own girlfriend is about the most ordinary murder motive there is. Most killings are not conspiracies, most killings are somebody panicking. Just as he is a suspect, it could probably be that Mike did it.

Why the Case Is Not Closed Yet

But because this is a murder case, we have to hold it up against the evidence. The theft has been established, but there is still no physical evidence connecting Mike Davidson to Orla's body. What we have is one accusation, made under duress, by somebody it happened to help enormously. That is why at the start I said we cannot close the case just because we have been given a name, and right now the show cannot close it either.

That means we have to follow the case into the next episode, and maybe new evidence will link the crime to Mike, or new suspects and new witnesses will turn up that prove Ed lied, which would not exactly be new for him. By the end of it, probably Sims will be out of detention and we can run the case properly, and whoever is found guilty gets sent out to clean.

Should Mike Davidson be convicted on Harwood's word alone, or does his alibi deserve a proper hearing first?