How would you react to the end of the world?
This question lies at the heart of Pluribus, a TV series whose true meaning is still elusive even as its first season nears its conclusion next week. Vince Gilligan’s series, which evokes real-world dilemmas from AI’s chokehold on humanity to the isolating experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, continues to explore how a few remaining individuals are handling the aftermath of a global takeover that has melded almost all of humanity into a hive mind. There are those like Koumba, who take advantage of the situation and live out their wildest fantasies. Others, like Laxmi, try to pretend that life can carry on as usual. And then there are Carol and Manousos, who choose to resist the new world order.
After the dramatic series premiere, which depicted how an alien virus dismantled human civilization with little resistance, Pluribus has been more concerned with how Carol is learning to adapt to a post-Joined society than it has with her finding a way to undo it. Plot-wise, the Apple TV series has hardly advanced, which has tested the audience’s patience. However, by delaying the action, Pluribus has also heightened the sense of just how isolating and challenging it would be to survive on your own in this world.
In last week’s episode, “The Gap,” Carol tried to live (and enjoy) a solitary lifestyle, albeit with a little long-distance help from the Others. Meanwhile, Manousos attempted to travel all the way from Paraguay to New Mexico without having to rely on what he sees as the hive mind’s stolen resources. In both cases, they learned the hard way that they couldn’t go it alone. In “Charm Offensive,” directed by Melissa Bernstein and written by Jonny Gomez, Carol takes a different approach with the Others, allowing herself to try to understand them—and not solely because it might help her defeat them. And though the shift might not get her any closer to saving the world, the results illuminate Carol’s resolve and her character, while also further building on the mystery of Earth’s cheerful invaders.
Given how much time we spent with Carol through the show’s first seven episodes, it seemed like we’d learned all there was to know about the romantasy author whom Apple TV has marketed as being “the most miserable person on Earth.” But “Charm Offensive” really nails down the core of Carol’s character. After spending weeks without any human contact, Joined or otherwise, Carol keeps Zosia by her side for almost all of Episode 8. As the Others deploy their emissary in a charm offensive to win Carol over once and for all, Carol finally lets her guard down.
At first, the Others’ new tactic appears to be working brilliantly. Carol spends a day hosting Zosia at her home and then follows her back to the Rio Rancho Events Center, where the Others sleep huddled together under one roof. She stays the night, surprising herself when she wakes up to find her arm wrapped around Zosia. Yet, despite how charmed Carol appears to be by Zosia and the ways that the Others take care of themselves (and the occasional pet dog), her first move when she returns home the next morning is to add new entries to her list of facts about the Others.
Carol hadn’t touched her whiteboard since Episode 4, which would’ve been more than 40 days prior in the show’s timeline. Her progress, along with her drive to find a solution to reverse the Joining, had all but stalled. But within a matter of days that pass in Episode 8, Carol more than doubles the length of “What I Know About Them:”
Throughout “Charm Offensive,” we see a kinder side of Carol as she seems to genuinely enjoy her time with Zosia, whom she’d referred to only as “Pirate Lady” earlier in the season, when she didn’t care to learn anything about the Others’ nature. We see the joy she gets when Zosia strokes her ego and compliments her latest writing, and how passionate she is about Wycaro despite being embarrassed by its lowbrow nature. We see the comfort she gets from being around other people, and the crippling fear she has of ending up alone. And even as Pluribus uses this episode to show all of the complexities and contradictions that make Carol human, it also reminds us that she hasn’t lost sight of her mission.
The most important moment in “Charm Offensive” arrives after Zosia and the Others’ grandest gesture to impress Carol: rebuilding her favorite diner. When Carol walks into Lauchlin’s, she’s briefly entranced by the sudden trip down memory lane. She fondly reminisces about the days and nights she spent there as a young writer. But once she sees the same waitress who used to serve her all those years ago, she remembers that the diner had burned to the ground. Despite all of the thoughtful details that went into recreating this cherished memory (including flying in the waitress, Bri, from Miami as a finishing touch), the diner becomes another reminder of what humanity has had to sacrifice for the Others to build their supposedly idyllic world.
After Carol leaves the diner without warning, Zosia visits her at home later that night and finds Carol coping in a return to her previous bitter and drunken state. As hard as the Others try to please Carol, they still don’t understand what’s so offensive to her about their collective existence. And so Carol finally confronts Zosia about the game they’d been playing all episode.
“You are trying to distract me,” Carol says. “Knock me off course. You rebuild my favorite diner, you jump for joy when I tell you I’m writing again, but it’s all an act. It’s manipulative bullshit because you know I haven’t given up. Admit it. Tell me you know I won’t give up.”
“We know,” Zosia replies. “We wish you would. But it’s also true we love Wycaro.”
“All right, honesty,” Carol says. “Let’s go for it. Cards on the table. I like you. You people. You—You…whatever. You’re… There’s a lot of things that I like about you, but this? This is a train wreck. This is unsustainable. It’s mental illness. It’s psychosis. You are starving, and you can’t even pick a goddamn apple off a tree?”
Carol begins to break down as she struggles to weigh her life’s new purpose against her greatest fear: “Someone has to put the world right, even if it means you all leave me again. Even if it means that I’m…” Before she can collect herself enough to finish her thought, Zosia steps in to kiss her, waiting just a moment for Carol’s shock to subside before Carol returns the kiss with twice as much passion.
On one hand, congrats on the sex, Carol—you deserved it after the hell you’ve been through. (And this has been a long time coming, since Carol described Zosia as “fuckable” while under the influence of her makeshift truth serum in Episode 4.) On the other hand, this is yet another concerning development in the Others’ evolving willingness to cross boundaries whenever they see fit.
Although Manousos rejected their aid time and time again, the Others went against his wishes and saved his life at the end of Episode 7. Zosia all but confirms Carol’s accusations about their efforts to distract her from reversing the Joining, and she cleverly takes advantage of Carol’s obvious attraction to her and her vulnerable state to distract her once more. The Others correctly presumed Carol’s interest in Zosia from the start thanks to her resemblance to Wycaro’s Raban, and they went to the trouble of flying her in from Morocco to be Carol’s companion. While this initially seemed like an innocent effort to present Carol with a familiar face in the immediate aftermath of Joining Day, it’s starting to feel like one of many well-calculated manipulations.
As Zosia revealed to Carol earlier in the episode, the Others are already working to share the gift—the psychic glue—that originated on Kepler-22b with “whoever else might be out there,” “however long that may take.” There’s no indication that they’re any closer to solving their ongoing starvation crisis, but they’re already working hard on spreading their virus to the next planet.
By the time Pluribus shows its timer again at the end of the episode, 60 days have passed since Joining Day, and about a dozen days have elapsed since Zosia and the Others returned to New Mexico. As Carol washes peppers in the sink, she takes a moment to look out of her window. In the reflection, we see that Helen’s grave has caught her eye. And then Zosia walks into the frame to fill the same space as Helen’s resting place, breaking Carol out of her spell. Carol might still be grieving the loss of Helen, but Zosia has already made room for herself in Carol’s new life.
“Charm Offensive” follows this image with a personal, human story of Zosia’s memories of eating mango ice cream as a child, leaving us with an ambiguous depiction of where Carol stands with the Others just as Manousos is finally approaching the Mexico–United States border. After being saved against his will, Manousos wakes up in a Panamanian hospital under the Others’ care. It doesn’t take long before he forces his way out, taking an itemized receipt of the medical costs and the ambulance that he uses for the remainder of his off-screen journey. Now, he’s close to meeting Carol at last—but he could be arriving after Zosia and the Others’ charm offensive has paid off.
Pluribus has set up this encounter for the better part of the season, and it comes just in time for the finale, after Carol and Manousos have had wildly different, yet similarly transformative experiences. The series has dedicated its recent episodes to developing its leading characters while also establishing the Others’ evolving, eerie tactics to win over the last of humanity’s holdouts against a fully Joined world. Before we reach the wait that lies ahead of Season 2, Pluribus has one last opportunity to show us where this mystery is heading.
