On Pluribus, You're Going To Miss Carol When She's Gone

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Pluribus, "La Chica o El Mundo."]

The first season finale of Pluribus opens with a massacre. Kusimayu (Darinka Arones), the young Peruvian who survived the apocalypse with her individuality intact, is absorbed into the hive mind that binds together the rest of the world. Technically, she's the first person on Earth to consent to her own Joining, trusting her family's promise that she'll be one with them in their bliss. But she might have been misled — not about the bliss, but about her family. As soon as Kusimayu is no longer her own person, her village is gone. The singers fall silent; there are no more meals to share; animals that were lovingly raised are left to fend for themselves. The Others smile blankly and say nothing as they pack up and clear out of the villagers' old homes. An entire culture has just been erased.

Pluribus doesn't play games with its audience. Speaking to the New York Times before the show's premiere, creator Vince Gilligan was coy about the premise of his new series but clear that it shouldn't be treated like a puzzle to be solved: "The twist on this one is that there is no twist," he said. Gilligan's showrunning career has evolved into an act of trust between his shows and their viewers, moving from the propulsive but detail-oriented Breaking Bad to the slower introspection of Better Call Saul, which, as a prequel, couldn't always surprise audiences with what happened and managed instead to surprise them with how. So far, the intrigue on Pluribus comes from the debate around what it all means. The show gets its unpredictability from its misanthropic hero, Carol (Rhea Seehorn), but the question that animates the story isn't just how she'll react to the new world order. It's how we, the viewers, would.

I've landed on horror. Pluribus began with the utopian declaration that the hive mind is "us," which suggested that the Others, who are literally all of humanity, could also be read as many individual stand-ins for the whole world, which loves Carol and is waiting to welcome her. It's a tender thought, especially as the show reckons with how much people need each other. But how can there be humanity without diversity? In the destruction of Kusimayu's culture, we see the bleaker implications of Pluribus' premise — the hive mind looks like a truly alien invader, validating the fears of both Carol and her fellow survivor Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga). While Carol worries that the Others will convert her against her will, Manousos treats them as thieves: two outlooks that connote colonialism, united by the idea of the hive mind as a conquering force that erases the people it encounters while claiming to fix them.

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The Others stop singing and chanting in Quechua before Kusimayu's body hits the ground. As the hive mind watches silently while she seizes, denying her any comfort, it becomes clear that everything the Others have done in her presence has been an act: not just the singing but what they wore, what they ate, and how they spoke to each other despite not needing to say a word. You might read kindness into this behavior. But you might also wonder where the performance ends. Depending on how far the Others will go to control their image in the eyes of the survivors, this scene — the cold open of the last episode of the first season — could be the audience's first time meeting the real Others.

It's tempting to think that Pluribus is finally explaining its perspective here. We've seen behind the mask, and now we know: The hive mind is untrustworthy, terrifying, fatal. Given how committed this show has been to ambiguity and moral complexity, I'm not sure it's meant to be that simple. That would almost be a twist, and Pluribus has no twists. Gilligan and his writers say they'd rather provoke discussion, unlike the hive mind, which sees all art through the same lens. But the chilling silence of Kusimayu's Joining is the most definitive statement about the Others this show has made yet. It might blunt the argument about whether the world is better off, but in exchange, it opens up a more interesting debate: Do the Others genuinely believe the world is better off? 

The hive mind supposedly can't lie, but it can mislead in other ways. This season's sixth episode, "HDP," found the high-rolling survivor Mr. Diabaté (Samba Schutte) living it up in Vegas, where the Others indulged his fantasies by role-playing as late celebrities and Bond villains. They can certainly act. They can also distract, by their own admission. This season's penultimate episode, aptly titled "Charm Offensive," radically redefined Carol's relationship with the Others, who returned to Albuquerque after abandoning her for 40 days: punishment for her attempts to reverse the Joining. In the guise of her appointed chaperone, Zosia (Karolina Wydra), they flattered and entertained Carol, who was too desperate for companionship to resist. When she called them out for trying to keep her busy so she wouldn't research the Joining, they admitted it, only to double down by kissing Carol and taking her to bed.

If it looks like manipulation and it works like manipulation, it's manipulation, even if the Others' motives are still up for debate. They justify controlling her by framing it as a means to a beautiful end, but by charming her with Zosia, they've effectively rewritten Carol's emotions — a temporary version of Kusimayu's permanent transformation. In the finale, Carol has basically become Mr. Diabaté, sleeping with the hive mind and clinging to their company, assigning individuality to Zosia to justify her feelings. In response, Zosia gets suspiciously good at referring to herself in the first person. Seehorn and Wydra are fantastic as Carol and the Others construct a fascinating new illusion around themselves. To some extent, the Others might really be thrilled by Carol, who offers them the vanishingly rare chance to be surprised. But there's a dangerous spark of possessiveness behind Zosia's eyes, and whole cultures are gone.

Only when Manousos shows up can we see the depths of Carol's denial. Pluribus has spent all season building up to the meeting between the last two independent thinkers on the planet, and when it finally happens, Carol isn't in her right mind. She's not the savior Manousos expects her to be. She's still a glorious hater, and so is he, and their diva-versus-diva showdown is Pluribus at its funniest. But it's sad to watch her stave off her intense loneliness by defending the Others, rejecting a real ally for a fantasy. Carol has been broken and reprogrammed. It doesn't help that the Others have driven a wedge between Carol and Manousos by implying that he's violent. Faced with the episode's titular choice — "La Chica o El Mundo," the girl or the world — Carol betrays herself by choosing Zosia, abandoning Manousos just as the Others recently abandoned her. 

Throughout the season, Carol's prickliness has sometimes felt like a test for the audience: If you really believe in free will, prove it. Embrace this provocative lesbian. Gilligan keeps steering into the skid when it comes to writing women more complicated than some of his viewers can handle. What the finale emphasizes is that a Carol who's been pacified is so much worse; if she's any less difficult, someone else suffers. Her anger is part of how she cares. For all of Pluribus' love of going against the grain, the show's bigger point is that individuality is a necessary part of being in community. Without disagreement, there's no music, no language. Carol and Manousos need each other as they are.

Even when Carol plays nice, it isn't enough for the Others. Zosia eventually confesses that they're still working to make Carol one of them — using stem cells made from her frozen eggs, a reminder that her womanhood is not incidental to her rage. The violation breaks the Others' spell on Carol, sending her back to Albuquerque to do some scheming, and it's a relief, because watching her lose her bearings is almost as upsetting as the cold open is. What the Others have to offer isn't togetherness; it's erasure, and the only logical response to their empty artifice is to be as authentically furious as possible. Long live Carol.

The Season 1 finale of Pluribus is now streaming on Apple TV.