If you made it through Silo Season 3’s penultimate episode without sheding many tears, I simply can’t relate.

Both timelines — Silo 18 and the Before Times — brutally yanked at heartstrings, delivering a major character death, mass destruction, and of course, Vitamin-D. Amidst the chaos that unfolds in the past and present day, Silo says a heartbreaking goodbye to a character who’s been with the series since Season 1.

So who dies in Silo Season 3, Episode 9, “Farewell”? Decider breaks down the emotional farewell scenes and shares quotes from interviews with creator Graham Yost and two of the show’s stars below.

Silo Season 3, Episode 9 spoilers ahead.

With the stakes sky-high in Season 3’s penultimate episode, Bernard (Tim Robbins) turns himself into Camille (Alexandria Riley) and tries to cut a deal with The Algorithm that will save his life, make Camille look good, and hopefully help avoid another Rebellion. Despite his clever plan, The Algorithm refuses, says “Goodbye Bernard,” and Camille sends the former IT head out to clean for all his crimes against the Silo.

Though Bernard ended Season 2 willingly going out to clean, after his second chance at life and newfound sense of community with Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) and friends, I’m sure he happily would have continued his redemption journey in the Silo. Knowing that his cleaning could be the distraction his pals needed to carry out their crucial plan, however, he selflessly surrendered. And despite Camille revealing that Bernard tried to starve and posion Mechanical during the rebellion, Juliette still feels for him. She knows he’s changed for the better, and she’s gutted to see him in the same position she was in at the end of Season 1.

Before Bernard goes out to clean, Juliette joins him in the infamous cell, where the two share a touching heart-to-heart. Though she lightly ribs him by repeating what he told her before she went out to clean, she wracks her brain trying to think of ways to save him. Before they part, Bernard shares these powerful last words: “The most important thing I can leave you with is this: That voice in the wall, I always thought it was a machine. An entity of some kind. A higher intelligence. It’s not. Somewhere in Silo 1 is a person. Flesh and blood. No different or better than you and me. A person deciding our fates… But you can stop them, Juliette. You are the one their numbers missed. I know you so dont want to be a leader, so you don’t see this. But you are more than a disrupter. You are a unifier. Your team proves that. They believe in you. And I believe in you. All of you.” BRB, sobbing!

“What I like is the turn that his character goes through. Realizing. Because what I like about the show is you believe that people are evil, but life isn’t that simple. People do things to protect themselves and to protect the greater good as well. And when you when you understand the flip side of it, he becomes so vulnerable; this character who we’ve dreaded,” Ferguson told DECIDER over Zoom. “I think [Tim Robbins] played it masterfully. And I remember in the shot there we were on him, and I burst out crying because it was so emotional. I remember thinking, ‘This is a great moment for me. Where the fuck is the camera? I’m really crying right now and it’s real!’ It was so selfish. But I was like, ‘I am amazing right now!’”

“The scene was Episode 9, Scene 30, and that became the most fraught scene of the season,” Yost added. “I get notes from Rebecca. I get notes from Tim. We’re going back and forth. People are trying different things. It was an important scene, and it’s a flip on the scene that he has with her in Season 1. But I was like, ‘Just get this scene done. I’m sick of the scene. If I could cut this — No, it’s a great scene. Everything that they came up with justifying their own character’s reasons and holding them so tight. It was great to write for Tim. And if that’s a very emotional scene, there’s a slightly cheesy line earlier in the season that I loved, where one of them says, ‘I hate this. I hate not hating you.’”

After the moving full-circle moment with Juliette, Bernard bravely walks back into the airlock that almost burned him alive, stops to shake Robert’s (Common) hand, and ascends the stairs without a suit. As Juliette and the Silo watch through the cafeteria screen, he scales the hill where so many before him have fallen, breathes the outside air, gets a nosebleed, and slumps down against a tree. He looks up to the sky, imagines the old world with green leaves and blue skies, and peacefully passes, marking the devastating end of a Silo era.

“It was surprisingly emotional. I’m not talking about the scene itself, just because, of course that’s emotional. But playing a scene where you’re dying, and not that you’re only dying, but that you’re leaving the show — I’m not in Season 4,” Robbins told DECIDER over Zoom, confirming that we won’t see Bernard in Season 4 flashbacks.

“Going out to clean, it was an emotional scene of course, but it was also about having the courage to do it as a character, which was something that he never had. Never assume that people in power have courage. In fact, the opposite is true most of the time. They don’t have the courage to stand up against what they are being told to do. The people that get more and more power are people that have compromised themselves, that have said yes, that have not resisted, that have been a good boy,” Robbins reflected. “The people that rise up are the courageous people. The ones that say, ‘No, I will not accept this anymore. No my morality will not accept your manipulation, your propaganda.’ Those are the people that, for me, are compelling characters. And that’s why I love what the arc was for Bernard. That he was able to get to a place that was redemptive, that was allowing for forgiveness, allowing for revelation, allowing for a new level of understanding and being.”

Despite his departure from the show, Robbins told DECIDER ahead of Season 3’s premiere that he was incredibly exciting to “play a completely different Bernard, who has not only changed physically with the injuries he sustained from the end of Season 2, but he’s changed internally. His whole moral compass has shifted.” And Robbins felt Bernard’s tearjerking final scene with Ferguson was the perfect way to conclude the project.

“I think [Rebecca Ferguson] is a tremendous actor and a lovely human being. It was a real joy to work with her,” Robbins reflected. “She’s part of the reason I did the show, so it was a great joy to be able to have those scenes with her.”

Bernard Holland had an undoubtedly complex relationship with the Silo. Because of The Algorithm he was in the wrong for so long, but his intentions — his desire to save the Silo and its people — always fueled him. And the role was an all-timer for Robbins, who delivered powerhouse performances through all three seasons. We’ll miss him dearly in Season 4, and though it was once impossible to imagine, we’ll even miss Bernard. Season 3 doesn’t cancel out past wrongdoings, but in the end, he’ll be remembered a hero. Here’s hoping Camille — who’s in the tough position he one was — is inspired by his bravery and can rise up in his absence.

Stay tuned for more Silo Season 3 coverage from Decider.