Carol Sturka, Pluribus’s crotchety queen, is on a one-woman mission to figure out what the hell just happened to Earth and its people, who suddenly became bound (enslaved?) by a psychic glue that turned them into a blissed-out, culty hivemind. Those of us watching Carol (played by the inimitable Rhea Seehorn) have turned to the internet’s hivemind on a parallel quest to figure out what will happen to our lovable (hateable?) lead and the rest of her world: Will she figure out a way to reverse the Joining? Is the hive going to use her frozen eggs to bring her into the fold? Has she actually been an asymptomatic member of the colony all along? Was the virus sent by aliens to kill humanity off and take over the planet???
You can turn to the boundless wisdom of Reddit or Daniel Chin’s ongoing Pluribus recaps to unpack these and other increasingly galaxy-brained theories. What I’m more interested in here is what creator and showrunner Vince Gilligan is saying through this show about the state of our world. As soon as the busy bees of the hivemind start doing Carol’s chores and promising she’ll feel the joy of their embrace oh so soon, it’s obvious this isn’t the same old Invasion of the Body Snatchers story we know and love. The prospect of peace, love, understanding, and human-derived protein brings up ethical and social quandaries that are more relevant to our own, noninfected reality than we may initially realize (or much like thinking about).
Gilligan has hinted at some of the possible interpretations of the show in various recent interviews. (His opinions, political and otherwise, aren’t exactly secret, even if they sometimes go unspoken.) But he’s also said, “One thing I did wrong while doing press for Breaking Bad was tell people, ‘This is what this meant! This meant that!’ … Whatever people want to take away from [Pluribus] is 100 percent up to them.” So, much like Carol chipping away at the volcanic soil in her backyard, let’s do some digging ourselves to uncover the possible meanings of Pluribus hidden behind Zosia’s Mona Lisa smile. Like the hivemind itself, the show contains multitudes, but all of these meanings ultimately form one overlapping web of interpretation that points to Gilligan’s (possible) theory of How We Live Now.
Pluribus Is About … the AI Takeover
You know when you sit down for a stiff drink after a hard day, and you just want to talk some shit, but your drinking buddy starts showing off their useless knowledge about vodka instead of drinking the vodka?
Carol knows all about that! Pirate lady/chaperone/most fuckable hiveminder Zosia sounds an awful lot like an AI bot as she reels off fun facts about aquavit and the alkaline levels of vodka to an unfeeling Carol, who’s fresh off a long, unproductive day of trying to save the world. Like AI, the Joined possesses most of the world’s knowledge, which it spits out in handy little factoids that make you feel a little smarter without having done any work for yourself. The hivemind is like walking, talking ChatGPT, but with the bonus of being able to tell you your dead loved ones’ innermost thoughts instead of just impersonating them.
The hivemind also likes to go on and on about its “biological imperatives,” which sound a lot like programming (and hearken back to Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics): to serve humanity, or what’s left of it, anyway; to cause no harm, even to a plant or insect; and to spread the Joining near and far—apparently, for now, without violating the first two directives.
Still, while the members of the hive do seem more human than robot, especially to someone like Laxmi, who refuses to accept that she’s lost her son to some kind of oversoul, they lack some fundamentally human traits: the ability to lie, commit violence, or, as far as we can see, create anything original. Gilligan has said that he thought of Pluribus before the rise of ChatGPT, Grok, et al., but he’s also said that “AI is the world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine,” that “there’s a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit,” and that he’s “happy if this show, in any way, shape, or form, could turn people off to AI.”
Pluribus Is About … the End Point of Optimization
In her essay collection Trick Mirror, the author Jia Tolentino writes about the push to improve our bodies, processes, and work so we can have extra time and energy for—well, no one really knows, I guess. More optimizing? “Slowing down for even a second,” Tolentino writes, “can make the machinery give you the creeps.” In other words, keep optimizing, and you won’t have the chance to think too hard about the tools you’re using to speed through life.
When Zosia airlifts in an excavator to dig a grave for Carol’s wife, Helen, or offers to do any number of other tasks for her, she (or “we”) is removing all of what’s challenging or time-consuming about life and labor. Carol takes her up on the excavator, but she wants to go to Sprouts and do some grocery shopping on her own instead of getting HiveDash delivered to her doorstep. But the world isn’t set up for her to run errands on a whim anymore. What self-sufficiency she’s allowed is an illusion; the machine cheerily, efficiently fills the grocery store’s shelves, letting her play store like she’s a kid at Pretend City.
Even though we might not be living under the benign dictatorship of an outer-space virus, sometimes it seems like we have about as much self-sufficiency as Carol does at Sprouts. As we continue to shift toward algorithm-based music and movie recommendations, food delivery services, and social media, choice feels more and more like an illusion, our options limited by whatever’s put on the (often online) shelves right in front of us.
Later on, when the hive gets the hell out of Albuquerque, Carol’s left to do her own dirty work. It’s when she takes out the trash herself (after a drone does a bang-up job of it) that she stumbles on the Others’ mountain of discarded milk cartons, which eventually leads her to a warehouse of human corpses waiting to be turned into HDP. She could have just asked the Joined where they were getting their food, as Koumba Diabaté did, but sometimes you have to see something with your own eyes for it to really hit home. It’s safe to say that Carol was more affected by coming face-to-face with a frozen head than Koumba was by learning about HDP from John Cena.
Pluribus is a vision of optimization’s end point, which, in this version of reality, requires getting rid of difference, disagreement, prejudice, and crime (not to mention grocery stores and funerals, which are both just as integral to human life). It reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, in which a character dreams up a world that runs perfectly and lacks war or hate but always has some fatal flaw. In one version of The Lathe of Heaven’s multiverse, everyone looks and acts alike—making a world that’s theoretically perfect but is also dull and literally gray. The hive is a little like that; as efficient and uniform as it may be, getting rid of life’s mistakes also gets rid of its excitement.
Pluribus Is About … the Stakes of Technological Progress
On a rewatch of the Pluribus premiere, I was struck by the fact that the series doesn’t open with Carol; instead, it focuses on the scientists who discover the repeating deep-space signal that eventually takes over the world. When one of them figures out that it could be a nucleotide sequence, the findings are sent to a lab for testing, and hundreds of macaques, mice, and other animals are systematically injected with the lysogenic virus containing the sequence. With the help of a wily lab mouse and some doughnut licking, the Joining comes into the world.
I certainly don’t think Gilligan is some kind of anti-science Luddite, but he has criticized Big Tech before, especially for its headlong, unregulated pursuit of AI. “Thank you, Silicon Valley!” he said in an interview with Variety. “Yet again, you’ve fucked up the world.”
All progress isn’t necessarily good progress; an argument for slow science—the kind that considers public good, not just “move fast and break things” innovation at all costs—seems to be contained within Pluribus. Sure, the apocalypse might not have been averted if all those astronomers and lab techs had just taken things a little more slowly. But the hunger for progress and discovery, without any consideration of the accompanying risks, is what eventually leads to the crisis (or salvation, depending on whose side you’re on) at the heart of Pluribus.
The hivemind itself can also make faster scientific breakthroughs than ever before, but that doesn’t mean its innovations are a sign of real improvement. There’s a warning in there somewhere—about trusting in tech to save us, about rushing into a new world without thinking about the consequences, and about the limits of what we’ll be capable of reversing once we’ve crossed a certain threshold.
Pluribus Is About … Being a Bitch
Gilligan has talked about how he originally imagined Pluribus with someone like Koumba in the lead, a beneficiary of the Others’ largesse who welcomes it without asking inconvenient questions. All hedonism and no conflict wouldn’t make for good TV, though, so Gilligan pivoted to Seehorn’s Carol, a grump before the Joining who turns into a real hellion afterward. She’s bitter and sarcastic in response to the most kindhearted entreaties from her helpers; she pours out their Aquafina, rejects their first-class seats (unimaginable, frankly), and generally treats them like unwelcome space invaders. You could argue that she’d be more successful with all her investigating if she’d just practice some basic politeness—you know, asking Zosia her name and what’s in all those milk cartons, or inviting the non-English-speaking survivors out for her Bilbao summit. She can’t even summon up the milk of human kindness for her fellow “old-schoolers,” as Pluribus’s writers call them; she might have been more successful with Laxmi, for example, if she hadn’t repeatedly said “fuck” in front of her 9-year-old son and asked him about his speculum preferences—since, after all, he’s now a hiveminder with all the expertise of the world’s leading ob-gyns.
Carol could also stand to acknowledge that there are some pros to the hive’s unrelenting niceness. As Koumba points out, they now live in a world without racism or violence, and Carol (like a real Karen) might benefit from listening to someone who has more experience with those things than she does.
So, sure, Carol could probably tone down some of her more combative tendencies. But it’s hard to blame her for spinning out after her wife dies and the planet is taken over by toxic positivity. Carol, at least, is confronting her new reality and its uglier side, unlike Laxmi or, for now, Koumba. And sometimes that confrontation, alas, turns into wanton death and destruction; when Carol lashes out, the Others can’t take it, collapsing at the first sign of one of her temper tantrums—the most extreme version of passive aggression I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot.
There are plenty of people who’ve given up on Pluribus because they can’t stand how prickly Carol is. (To which I ask: Have you ever had a job or a roommate?) Carol’s bitchiness may not help her much on her truth-finding mission or in making friends along the way—except for maybe Manousos, who seemed quite taken by her “Chinga tu madre, cabrón!”
But as Mel Robbins would say, let them—and by letting Carol be a bitch, the show creates a stark contrast with the determined niceness of pretty much everyone else left on Earth. And just because she’s rude doesn’t mean she lacks morals; Carol rescues Zosia from Koumba’s Air Force One harem, and she lets the hive resuscitate her chaperone after her truth serum plan goes awry.
It’s also worth noting that, even before the virus’s spread, Carol’s grouchiness was rooted in insecurity about her life and work: not only her disdain for her own Wycaro series but the self-loathing she’s carried with her at least since her summer at Freedom Falls, the conversion camp where her mom sent her when she was a teen. Seehorn says that Carol’s “always got to beat people to the punch,” like when she calls Las Vegas an ashtray right after Koumba makes it clear he doesn’t want her there. Hurt people hurt people!
Anyone who can’t see themselves in Carol might want to take a long, hard look in the mirror; Gilligan himself says that “I’m not unlike Carol, really. The sarcasm and the negativity and the general miserableness—that’s the easy part for me, honestly.” You’re saying you’re not sarcastic and negative sometimes? In this economy?
Pluribus Is About … Giving a Shit
Sometimes, it really does take rudeness to make a difference—which Carol might not have done yet, but she sure is trying. Even when the Bad Thing feels intractable and undeniable, she still feels an obligation to do something about it. Unlike the other survivors, Carol doesn’t swim along with the tide; there are a whole lot of people who were powerless to stop or avoid the Joining, giving her a certain amount of privilege that she feels obligated to use. Her methods may be dubious, but it’s the effort that counts.
That hardheadedness might not always be the best option in Pluribus—e.g., Manousos’s rejection of the Others’ help almost makes you want to reach through the screen and shake him. In Episode 7, on his long drive to find Carol, he tells them that he doesn’t want their help because they’ve stolen everything in the world from its rightful owners—but couldn’t he, you know, steal it right back by accepting some water or a plane ride? Is it possible to take a stance that’s too principled?
Manousos really doesn’t seem to think you can use “the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house”; Carol, until her pleasure bender and détente with the hivemind in Episode 7, uses the Others’ help and the resources of this brave new world to try to take them down. It’s possible that neither will succeed, or that Carol (or even Manousos) will become so compromised that she gives up the fight completely. But so far, their questioning and resistance have been at the center of Pluribus; even if it’s a doomed mission, it clearly means something that they’re trying to fight back.
Pluribus Is About … Feeling Free to Be You and Me
In Episode 2, one of the old-schoolers, Kusimayu, says she wants to join the hivemind as soon as she gets a chance, insisting that she would keep her individuality but also get to experience everyone else’s. Carol shoots her down, saying that Kusimayu would have to give up whatever makes her her if she joins. She tells the assembled survivors aboard Air Force One, “Some of you might think the world is better off this way, with all the newfound peace, love, and understanding. Enjoy that opinion. Relish it. Because it may be the last one you ever possess. And when the day comes that you have peace and love forced upon you, who knows? Maybe in that last fleeting moment, you’ll find you treasure your individuality.”
There certainly are nice things about being in this collective: You have a level of community, care, and communication that’s unimaginable for non-Joined people. But is it really community when everyone acts as one, or is it just singularity? In the hive, there’s no opportunity to form ideas in conversation, learn something new, or do the hard work of understanding someone you don’t understand. It’s more like a cult than a community, with a bunch of brainwashed members who are doing good, sure, but not of their own free will.
The literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin had an idea that he called dialogism, where the conversation of two separate people creates something altogether new and different from what either could have thought of on their own. That can’t happen when everyone thinks alike; as improved as the world may seem to be, there’s a ceiling when one mind is tasked with coming up with all the good ideas.
Pluribus Is About … COVID and Losing Your Mind on the Internet
As The Ringer’s own Miles Surrey pointed out in his review of Pluribus, it’s hard to watch this show and not be reminded of life during COVID, especially when the hive leaves Carol alone in an abandoned Albuquerque. Gilligan came up with the idea for Pluribus before the pandemic hit, but Carol’s fear of infection, Golden Girls binges, empty bottles of vodka, conspiracy theory vlogs, and pursuit of new hobbies like setting off fireworks in her cul-de-sac could be taken straight from many people’s experiences of lockdown. Although the other old-schoolers do have some contact with each other, it’s mostly via Zoom, the bane of everyone’s COVID existence. And when Carol is eventually reunited with Zosia, she acts a lot like how most people felt after they got the vaccine and finally saw their friends again.
In the wake of the pandemic, it can sometimes feel like we’re still in lockdown; all that time alone made it a lot harder to socialize on the other side. It’s easier than ever to replace old friends and third places with our phones, where there’s seemingly less risk of showing how fucked up and weird we really are (even though all that time online is definitely what’s making us more fucked up and weird). Almost like he’s playing Second Life or Minecraft, Koumba role-plays elaborate, Casino Royale–esque scenarios with his all-too-willing companions, before soaking it up in a hot tub with his soulmates. It’s like he’s building a fantasy world to get out of the real one.
When Carol comes to Vegas, Koumba’s left without his hangers-on for the first time and has to learn how to be around real people again. A lot has been made of his quiet avocado toast moment in Episode 6, when he watches Carol build herself a bacon, egg, and avo sandwich and realizes he can do the same thing. It almost seems like he’s taking a break from gaming to come up for air and realizing that there can be delights in the real world, too.
Pluribus Is About … Romantasy Slop
In one of my favorite scenes of the series, Carol interrogates Larry (played, winningly, by Jeff Hiller of Somebody Somewhere) about the hive’s opinions of her Wycaro books. She’s trying to see which will win out: their people-pleasing or their honesty. “We love your books,” he says, melting with pleasure at the mere thought of them. Carol might have been attributing more discernment to the hive; after all, the world’s scholars and literary critics are all contained within it. But no, Larry reassures her: The Others can recite passages from the Wycaro series from memory, and they credit her books with saving the life of at least one of them. They’re just as good as Shakespeare!
Carol doesn’t share the same opinion of her own writing (and neither did Helen, whose thoughts on Wycaro and Bitter Chrysalis Carol eventually extracts from Larry). While it may not have the aggressive tactics of, say, the BookTok community, the hive has the same “Let People Enjoy Things” attitude, arguing for the artistic value of, well, poorly written “spicy” fiction just because a lot of people like it (and, we can assume, get off on it). It’s the same kind of groupthink that manifests when the internet is arguing for the literary quality of hockey smut, just because there’s a loud chorus of horny people singing its praises.
As usual, the hivemind isn’t completely off base; a piece of writing that literally saved someone’s life has real value in this world. And anything that gets people to read can’t be all bad! But the bigger problem with LPET is that romantasy slop like Carol’s is eclipsing any other kind of literature in the public consciousness, and the mass push of series like A Court of Thorns and Roses is hypnotizing—and collectivizing—readers almost as effectively as Pluribus’s virus. It’s OK to be critical of writing (or music, or TV, or any kind of art) even if, or especially when, lots of people enjoy it. Harassing a critic because of a negative review or insisting, in the face of all evidence, that Fourth Wing is indelible art is just giving up on disagreement and critical thinking and relinquishing the conditions that facilitate great work getting made in the first place.
Carol could cut herself some slack—it’s an accomplishment to have written so many books and to literally save someone’s life! But the hive’s appreciation for her work is just another thing that proves the great mind’s mindlessness. Let People Hate Things!
Pluribus Is About … Grief
Did you notice how most of the other survivors at Carol’s big meeting in Spain brought their family members with them? Carol was one of the few (besides Koumba, who brought his own found family) to arrive without any relatives turned hiveminders, and she seems to be the only one who lost a loved one in the Joining. Laxmi and Kusimayu, in particular, still see their family members as family, not shells of their former selves possessed by an alien disease. Carol has been forced into grief, while they can avoid grappling with it because the bodies of their loved ones are still standing right in front of them. She can more fully see the Others as other because they’re not inhabiting one of the people she loved.
It’s easy to see Carol’s reality as a grand metaphor for grief after the death of a loved one. Everyone besides the person you’re missing can seem a little less real, especially as they offer up hollow condolences and do what they can to “help” without doing much to patch up the real wound. In grief, you might want to scream at everyone around you to stop putting such a happy face on a shitty situation.
Seehorn has said that the Others’ gestures of love could never come close to replacing Helen’s because that was an individual kind of love, based on real knowledge of Carol and all of her faults, instead of a universal, all-encompassing love that’s offered to Carol, Koumba, Laxmi, Manousos, et al. equally, without regard for who they are and what makes them distinct. That’s the kind of love she’s grieving, and it can’t come back once it’s gone—despite the hive’s assurances that they also absorbed Helen’s consciousness and see (and love) Carol the way she did. That sounds a lot like those empty, Precious Moments–esque promises that “she lives inside you now” or “she’s looking down on you from heaven.”
Some imaginary angel version of Helen, inside the hivemind or elsewhere, is no replacement for the real article. Carol will never be able to forgive them for that.
