Spoilers below for the Season 1 finale of Pluribus, so be warned if you haven’t yet streamed the episode via Apple TV subscription.
From it earliest scenes, Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus has kept me guessing in ways that Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul rarely did, and I wasn’t exactly shocked when Season 1 wrapped without hardcore resolutions for Carol, Manousos or anyone else. When I spoke with Rhea Seehorn ahead of that finale, I knew she couldn’t speak at length about Carol’s post-finale journey ahead of Season 2, so I focused instead on the new and surprising details we learned about the Others from Zosia in these final two episodes.
Gilligan and the rest of the creative team continued to uncork mysterious details about Pluribus’ alien hivemind in “Charm Offensive” and “La Chica o El Mundo,” though it’ll forever be hard for this show to top “a video of John Cena admitting the Others subsist on human corpses.” Carol and Zosia’s expanding relationship, for lack of a better word, was the crux of the eighth episode, as the two bonded through stories and sex, all while Carol added to her list of reasons to be suspicious of them.
When I asked Rhea Seehorn about the Others-related details that she nerded out over the most, her answer was surprisingly identical to what intrigued me the most. In her words:
I found it very curious, over the course of the season, that they are still learning. Even though they are a hive mind, that doesn’t mean their intelligence stopped at only the things they knew when they absorbed all these people’s brains.
Bringing over 7 billion minds together obviously would create a system of intelligence and information unlike anything ever witnessed or utilized in real life. (And without all the asshats that make the Internet a swamp.) But even with all of those experiences and brainpower on hand, the Others can’t know everything. For instance, if some of the Joining’s casualties included each of the people with proprietary knowledge of the recipes for Dr. Pepper or KFC’s spice blend, those products might never be produced succsessfully again even if Carol and Manousos do save the world.
In a similar vein, no one within the hivemind can speak to what the world was like in B.C. times, since those eras did not overlap with the Others’ time on our planet. Just as none of them can tell Carol what’s ever going on inside her head. To the contrary, Zosia makes it clear that they want to know what she’s thinking about, particularly when it comes to the author’s “Winds of Wycaro” fantasy books. I do love the concept of these aliens geeking out as one over Carol’s plotting choices.
It’s not just about Zosia and the Others learning new details about Carol’s history and her personality that may not have been present in Helen’s memory banks. The hivemind is also learning how to adapt to other human behaviors that will no doubt be utilized entirely in attempts to sway Carol to joining their side. That said, it’s hard to truly know whether they actually care, or if they’re just using curiosity as a means to an end to extract info from Seehorn’s character.
The Critics Choice Award-nominated actress spoke to that idea, saying:
They seem to be evolving themselves, I feel like, through Zosia – which Carolina Woodrow plays so brilliantly – that you see even like a growing ability to sense sarcasm, and have a sense of humor, and to gauge Carol or to meet her where she’s at to perform the way she needs. [Laughs.] I can’t decide if that’s heading towards becoming more of an individual, or heading towards becoming an even smarter hive mind.
The optimist in me would love for Carol, presumably with Manousos’ help, to figure out how to bring Zosia out of the hivemind and back to humanity, and that Karolina Wydra’s character would not only be appreciative for their efforts, but that she would also still be all in on romancing Carol. Such glass-half-full options are rarely the outcome in Vince Gilligan shows, however, so I should probably expect the worst here.
Other Details That I Was Surprised To Learn About The Others
- They sleep in mass groups akin to how safety shelters are set up after hurricans and other natural disasters.
- Despite the aliens’ vast wealths of knowledge, Zosia has difficulty adapt to using singular pronouns.
- Radio signals can possibly be used to recalibrate brains back to human, assuming Manousos’ theory is legit.
- As evidenced by the sensor in Carol’s liquor cabinet, the Others still know things about her relationship with Helen that even she’s unaware of.
- Despite not being able to lie directly, they have little issue with hiding duplicitous acts from Carol that tap directly into her fears of joining them, such as getting stem cells from her donated eggs and adapting their techniques.
It’s hard to believe that Season 1 is already over, but it’s not hard at all to believe that Rhea Seehorn has already secured her first nominations for her stellar work as Pluribus‘ Carol. She’s up for Best Drama Actress at the Critics Choice Awards, which will be telecast on January 4, and she’ll then be up for the same award at the Golden Globes on January 11.
Until then, all nine episodes of Pluribus can be streamed on Apple TV.
