Pluribus is a true slow-burn mystery series, but fans of Vince Gilligan’s previous work already know that their patience will be rewarded. Through six episodes, Carol (Rhea Seehorn) hasn’t come close to figuring out a way to undo the Joining that has transformed almost all of humanity into a hive mind. She’s managed to accidentally kill millions of the so-called Others by losing her temper on multiple occasions, and her perpetual bad attitude has driven them all—including her chaperone, Zosia (Karolina Wydra)—out of Albuquerque for the indefinite future. However, Carol is still making some progress. And in the show’s most recent episode, “HDP,” she makes two major discoveries that may prove to be crucial in her quest to save the world.
Two weeks have passed since we examined some of the biggest questions through the first four episodes of the show’s opening season, and while most of those still remain unanswered, even more mysteries have sprouted up since then. With only three episodes left, let’s lay out six more questions as Pluribus enters the final stretch of Season 1.
Will the Others respect Carol and the rest of the immune people’s wish to remain unjoined individuals?
“We will figure out what makes you different,” the hive mind tells Carol in the series premiere. “So we can fix it. So you can join us.”
Ever since Carol learned that the Others would be doing everything in their power to determine how to convert her—along with the dozen others who are immune to the alien virus—into their cheerful collective, Pluribus has been something of a race against time. Since Carol apparently has no say in the matter due to the Others’ “biological imperative” to spread their network, she would have to determine how to turn things back to normal before they could rob her of her individuality. In Episode 6, Carol learns that this horrifying transition might not be forced on her after all.
When Carol drives to Las Vegas to pay Koumba Diabaté (Samba Schuttle) a visit at the Westgate hotel, she’s prepared to present him with what she believes to be a stunning revelation about the Others. However, Koumba ends up being the one to deliver the real shocker.
“They cannot turn us,” Koumba tells Carol. “Not without our consent.”
“What do you mean?” she asks incredulously.
“It seems the only way to make the virus work on us is by tailoring it to our individual stem cells,” Koumba continues. “But to obtain those stem cells, they must first collect them from our bodies. Apparently, that involves sticking a large needle into the bone of the hip. Somewhat painful. And very invasive. Something they cannot do without our permission.”
This is, of course, a massive development that completely alters what was a key dynamic in the series and one of its greatest sources of suspense. At first, Carol doesn’t believe it. She immediately calls the hive mind, who confirms Koumba’s report in writing that appears on signage across from the hotel. Within moments, Carol is calling back to let her stance on the matter be known: “I am officially going on record that I do not consent. You will not lay a finger on me.”
It’s a huge relief for Carol, who can now focus on reversing the Joining without the added pressure of an unknown time crunch. But will the Others keep their word, or will they secretly continue to search for another, less invasive method of achieving their biological imperative?
More on ‘Pluribus’
One of the defining traits that Carol has discovered about her afflicted enemies is that they’re incapable of lying. Yet the Others aren’t always as forthcoming as they appear, and they have made exceptions to their otherwise rigid code of ethics when they’ve deemed it necessary.
Even in Episode 6, we see signs of the hive mind’s sometimes contradictory nature. After Carol’s suspicions about the Others’ cannibalistic ways are confirmed (more on that later), she reminds Koumba that while they were together in Spain, the Others claimed to be vegetarians. The same thought occurred to Koumba when he first discovered the hive mind’s problematic diet, and so he asked them about this discrepancy. “Technically, what they said was that they would prefer to be vegetarian,” Koumba explains.
The Others value all life, yet more than 886 million people died during the Joining. They might prefer to be vegetarian, but they’ll eat human remains if they have to. As Koumba told Carol, he informed the hive mind that he would not be giving his consent to extract his stem cells. But he chose a rather risky way to phrase such an important statement: “Regrettably, as of this time, I prefer not to.”
At some point, the Others may decide that, even if their preference may be to allow these immune individuals their autonomy, the hive mind’s biological imperative to convert them should supersede all other considerations. In Koumba’s case, his particular choice of words might entice them to make that decision for him sooner rather than later. For now, Carol should at least have some time to breathe and maybe even reconsider whether this noble endeavor of hers is still worth all the trouble.
Now that the hive mind has figured out how to integrate the remaining humans, how many immune survivors will willingly choose to join?
Carol and Koumba have already informed the hive mind that they won’t be signing up for the conversion, and it’s safe to say that Manousos Oviedo (Carlos-Manuel Vesga)—who’s very much out of the loop right now, as usual—will feel the same. But what about the other 10 immune humans left on Earth?
In Episode 2, Carol met half of this group (including Koumba) at her immunity summit in Spain, and all of them felt way better about their new brainwashed friends than she did. A young Peruvian woman named Kusimayu (Darinka Arones) already mentioned her wish to assimilate with the many—the Pluribus that now runs the planet—and to be one with her aunt and cousin. With the exception of Koumba, everyone else had family members with them who had already been converted. Laxmi (Menik Gooneratne), for one, still views the individual who used to be her son as the same little boy whom she was raising before all of this madness took place. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if Laxmi and the others have a different take on Joining than Carol.
One of the most interesting components of Pluribus is that the Joining—despite its apocalyptic introduction—has its pros and cons. This isn’t your typical alien invasion. The Others may soon increase their numbers without even having to deceive anyone.
How will the Others solve their issue of starving to death?
The news that the Pluribus has been consuming human remains is a shocking discovery—to Carol, at least.
When Carol arrives at Koumba’s Elvis suite to deliver the bombshell, Koumba reveals that he’s already known for a whole week. Hell, even the 8-year-old girl in Maseru, Lesotho, knew before Carol. As the grumpiest woman alive keeps on finding out the hard way, she’d have learned a lot more about the Others by now if she’d spent half as much time talking to them as she does endangering Zosia.
Carol doesn’t get to show Koumba her video evidence that the Others are storing human body parts alongside their other frozen foods; instead, Koumba shares a video of his own. In anticipation of Carol’s arrival, the hive mind recorded an explainer about their dietary philosophies and chose John Cena—or, at least, the individual who used to be known as the famed actor and professional wrestler—to be the one to explain why this new form of humanity has taken to cannibalism.
“As you know, we can’t purposefully kill, harm, or otherwise interfere with any form of life,” Cena says. “That limits what we’re able to consume. Because when we say ‘any life,’ that includes plant life. We can’t harvest wheat or corn or rice. We can’t pluck an apple from a tree. Once an apple drops of its own accord, well, we’ll eat it, of course, and gratefully.”
As Cena continues to ease his way into the real meat (so to speak) of the video, he describes that, even with all of the milk they gather from livestock animals and the millions of tons of preexisting processed food at their disposal, there are simply too many mouths to feed among the 7,348,292,411 joined humans. And so these hyperefficient beings have decided to mass-produce cartons for consumption that mostly contain of these stockpiled foodstuffs. Mostly.
“Additionally, each carton contains 8 to 12 percent of something we call HDP: human-derived protein,” Cena continues. “And yep, it’s pretty much what it sounds like. Nearly 100,000 people pass away each day due to natural causes and accidents. Those human remains, which would otherwise go to waste, are our source of HDP. We cherish the memory of these people and appreciate their sacrifice.”
However, as Koumba reveals after the conclusion of the video, there is another concern beyond the ethical implications of HDP: “What John Cena did not mention is that even with the HDP, most of the world’s population will starve to death in the next 10 years.”
Koumba and the 10 other immune people, who convene over Zoom twice per week (decidedly without Carol and Manousos), are eager to save them from this slow extinction event. Due to the Others’ limiting perspective on what they can eat, it won’t be easy to find a feasible solution that won’t require them to up their dosage of HDP. Now that the hive mind has all but solved the whole immunity oversight, its scientists can seemingly turn their collective attention to this creeping starvation crisis. But perhaps the more important question here is: Is this even a real concern to the Others at all?
We still don’t know much about the hive mind’s motivations or the original source of the extraterrestrial virus that has transformed the world’s population. What we do know is that their primary objective is to spread this virus—their “psychic glue”—to as many people as possible, even if it comes at the cost of many individual lives. With at least 13 unjoined humans still left on the planet for now, they might be more worried about adding them all to the Pluribus than they are about letting their already converted members die of hunger. Because otherwise, as Carol suggested in her own eloquent way, they could shift their perspective a bit and save themselves by simply choosing to “pick a fucking apple.”
The hive mind originally told Carol that it could take them months to figure out how to turn her into one of them. They ended up finding a solution (albeit an unworkable one, for them) in 11 days. If this is truly an existential crisis for the Others, something tells me that they’ll find a way soon enough.
How is Carol able to fall asleep anywhere and everywhere, all at once?
OK, I know there are probably some more pressing questions that concern the fate of humanity, but this is one that I find myself wondering at least once per episode. You may have noticed Carol’s remarkable sleeping habits by now. But if you haven’t, let’s take a break from all of these dire topics to marvel at the wide variety of places we’ve seen Carol catching some Z’s through the show’s first six episodes.
In the aftermath of the Joining, Carol—understandably—gets hammered. By the time we catch up with her the next morning in Episode 2, there’s some evidence of how she spent the night lying right in front of her:
(The most stunning part of this particular instance is that Helen’s corpse is still lying on the floor a few feet away from Carol. I don’t know how she was able to sleep like this, but it’s both very depressing and oddly impressive.)
After getting hammered—again—at the disastrous immunity summit later in the same episode, Carol wakes up somewhere beneath this mountain of pillows:
As you’ll see, more than half of these examples involve various amounts of alcohol or drugs, so maybe this isn’t much of a mystery at all. Here she is, slumped on the couch in Episode 4, following her introduction to thiopental sodium:
Still, it’s not always the case that she’s under the influence of some substance. Here’s Carol asleep in the driver’s seat of her police cruiser after a dramatic face-off with a pack of wolfdogs …
… and taking a nap in a hospital waiting room, completely vulnerable to her cheery enemies:
Carol is able to fall asleep in a hotel suite currently occupied by a man whom she believes to be a complete sleazeball, while she’s holding an unfinished glass of Champagne, no less …
… yet the one time we find her trying to sleep in her own bed at home, she needs to wear an eye mask to get the job done:
The shot above draws attention to the absence of Helen in Carol’s life, and it’s perhaps no surprise that Carol hasn’t wanted to sleep in their bed lately; she won’t even encroach on Helen’s side of it. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for Carol given, you know, the end of human civilization as we know it, and sleeping a lot can sometimes be a sign of depression. (And she sure has plenty of reasons to be depressed.) She may be sleeping in some strange places right now—and I’m frankly on the edge of my seat waiting to see where that might be next—but let’s let her get some shut-eye, wherever she can.
What other celebrities are left in the world besides John Cena?
Before Pluribus began its run in November, I had been eager to find out what Gilligan’s follow-up to Better Call Saul would be. Not once did I imagine we’d be getting an indelible image like this:
As Koumba tells Carol, he discovered the truth about the Others’ penchant for “milk” when he was hanging out with Cena the previous week. (“He was teaching me the sunset flip powerbomb,” Koumba adds.)
But beyond the HDP of it all, it really makes you (me) wonder: What other famous people joined the Pluribus?
Will Koumba soon upgrade his role-playing scenarios and have Denis Villeneuve direct him in the next James Bond film? Will he recruit Lewis Hamilton to give him some driving tips so that he can make better use of his extensive collection of Lamborghinis? Or, perhaps most likely of all, will Koumba bring back the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and make himself the sole member of the audience?
Whether it’s to appease Carol with a familiar face the next time the Others have some horrifying news to deliver or simply to indulge Koumba’s insatiable appetite, Pluribus has the potential to roll out any number of star-studded cameos in the season(s) to come. Who knows who might show up next.
So is Manousos really about to drive to New Mexico?
Carol’s Vegas trip yielded all sorts of new discoveries. Aside from everything regarding the hive mind, she also learned the unfortunate truth that the other immune survivors had been receiving her videos all along and chose not to respond to her. More than that, they all hang out together, and they specifically voted against inviting her to the party. What Carol doesn’t know, though, is that her videos made a tremendous impact on at least one person: Manousos.
Pluribus has been teasing a larger role for Manousos ever since Carol cursed him out over the phone in Episode 3. In “HDP,” the man from Paraguay finally embarks on the long journey to meet her in person.
Through six episodes, Manousos remains the most interesting man in the world—and the most elusive. After he watches Carol’s call to action in Episode 6, he leaves his self-storage facility for what seems to be the first time in the nine days that have passed since the Joining. He returns home to grab a bunch of items for his trip: food, clothes, boots, cash, a portable radio, a canister of gas, what appears to be a machete, an audio guide to learning English, and a bundle of travel maps of countries from South to Central America. And after some engine trouble to start and a brief encounter with the individual who used to be his mother, Manousos hops into his car and hits the road.
Given that Manousos continues to refuse any assistance from the Others, he now has to travel all the way from Asunción to Albuquerque on his own. With a little help from the internet, we know that there are about 5,247 miles between the two cities—and that’s just the theoretical distance by air. Attempting to drive that entire way could tack on thousands of additional miles to his odyssey. More concerning than that is the fact that his route will eventually force him to cross the notorious Darién Gap.
For context, this is how the Darién Gap—a dangerous, roadless stretch of rainforest located at the border between Colombia and Panama—is described on Wikipedia:
Consisting of a large drainage basin, dense rainforest, and mountains, it is known for its remoteness, difficult terrain, and extreme environment, with a reputation as one of the most inhospitable regions in the world. Nevertheless, as the only land bridge between North America and South America, the Darién Gap has historically served as a major route for both humans and wildlife.
Unless Manousos is secretly a pilot and has a plane stashed somewhere along the way or otherwise plans on traveling by sea, our guy is about to risk his life to meet up with the planet’s last living individual fantasy romance author. The next episode bears the ominous title “The Gap,” and it features an even more ominous description to accompany it: “Manousos begins a dangerous trek to meet Carol.” It seems safe to say that the Darién Gap is indeed his destiny.
Pluribus is entering the final third of the season, and Carol has plenty of new information to process as she tries to find a way to reverse the Joining during the loneliest chapter of her life in a deserted New Mexico. With Manousos hitting the open, perilous road, at least some help (and some company) is on the way.
