The following review of Pluribus contains some spoilers for the first two episodes.
Before Vince Gilligan made award-winning dramas Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, he cut his teeth on sci-fi, writing and directing episodes of one of the greatest sci-fi series to ever do it, The X-Files. With Pluribus, a new Apple TV series created by Gilligan, he’s back to those roots. If you’ve ever read Stephen King’s The Stand or consumed similar literature and media about a viral outbreak that ends human life as we know it and thought to yourself “this is good but could use a lesbian protagonist,” well same here, and this is definitely the show for you. The first two episodes — both written and directed by Gilligan — are now available to stream with subsequent episodes dropping weekly, and I’m already very hooked.
The series follows heavy-drinking, world-weary Carol Sturka, an author of pirate-themed heterosexual romantasy novels with a huge followings and few fucks to give. She hates the books that have given her this career, which she makes abundantly clear to her manager who also happens to be her wife, Helen. We spend the first stretch of Pluribus‘s pilot both watching the slow and steady spread of a mysterious virus detected initially as a radio signal by astronomers as well as getting to know Carol in her regular life, where she feels frustrated and unfulfilled. There are touches of The Stand here, yes, as well as Station Eleven. I always love the moments just before an apocalyptic event in these types of sci-fi end-of-the-world epics, when the humans are just dealing with their very human problems before the onset of mass crisis and where some of the emotional scaffolding for the series starts to take shape.
Then, while in a dive bar post-book tour where they live in Albuquerque, Carol watches in horror as Helen suddenly collapses. When she enters the bar to find help, she finds everyone in a catatonic, convulsing state. The horror visuals of Carol moving through this bar of people shaking and unresponsive is immediately chilling, but then the horror ramps up later when she’s outside a hospital seeking help for Helen and everyone comes to, turns, to her, and says in a chorus: “We just want to help, Carol.” CREEPY!!!!!
The virus, Carol and viewers soon learn, is an alien technology that turns all humans into a collective hive mind. Everyone in the world melds into one entity. They are complacent, perpetually happy seeming, and “here to help,” as they keep trying to explain to a shocked Carol who has just lost her wife and does not understand what is happening. Because Carol is one of 12 other humans on the planet apparently who is not susceptible to the hive. While the world around her turns into a swarm of soulless robots, she remains herself, completely in control of her life. The hive does not like this. Though their generally calm and “helpful” disposition might suggest they “come in peace” as it were, they make it clear they want to find a way to make Carol and the others who are immune join them.
It’s easy to map Gilligan’s disdain for AI onto the story unfolding in Pluribus. The series itself features a disclaimer before the credits noting it was indeed made by humans without the help of generative AI. Gilligan has been a vocal hater of AI (as if I needed more reasons to love his work). “What is more important than being creative?” he posited in a recent interview on the subject.
Indeed, the collapse of all of humanity into one interconnected being at the core of Pluribus‘s conceit feels like a direct indictment of the ways AI and big tech companies seek to erase individual identities, ideas, and turn us into a complacent and ultimately unintelligent populace all in the name of supposed “efficiency.” In the second episode, Carol is outraged to learn five of the other English-speaking humans immune to the hive virus seem pretty okay with just going with the flow of this new reality. There is no more suffering, murder, crimes. The hive, in fact, are not allowed to intentionally kill any living beings, even insects. And they seemingly live to serve the remaining unaffected humans, a luxury some are quick to take advantage of. The hive promises a world that operates like a well oiled machine. But that is not a real life. There may not be “suffering,” but there also isn’t real joy, curiosity, creativity, wonder. And even the more difficult emotions and experiences that make up humanity are necessary for a real life with agency. Carol’s grief over Helen is the beating heart at the center of these opening episodes, a raw human emotion that the hive cannot experience meaningfully.
In the second episode, Carol also attempts to bury her dead wife in the harsh Southwestern sun. A member of the hive assigned to be her companion, Zosia, shows up and offers help. Through the hive, Carol has sudden access to all the tools and resources she needs to better be able to bury her dead wife in the stubborn Albuquerque rubble. But the “efficiency” Zosia provides does not change the fact that Helen is dead. And in the face of real, human emotions, the hive malfunctions. Whenever Carol expresses genuine anger toward Zosia (and thereby to everyone on the planet since they’re all connected), the hive enters that same catatonic state as the first night, which causes some of them to die. When Carol learns she’s responsible for these deaths, she has another viscerally human reaction, puking into the dirt.
But Carol should be allowed to experience anger. We all should. The ruling class and the tech companies that line their pockets would rather us be docile, happy for empty reasons like consumerism and false promises. The fact that it’s Carol’s rage that threatens the hive? Yeah, that’s a clear message about how those in power fear our rage.
Always, Carol’s humanity is in opposition to the hive, a lifeless presence that promises a new world while undeniably destroying it. I went into the show anticipating an allegory for Covid, and sure, it functions on that level, too, the hive and even some of Carol’s fellow unaffected humans trying to convince her that nothing all that bad is really happening and that some people having to die for the greater “good” is okay, actually. It reeks of Covid denialism. But even more so than the virus that has caused an ongoing pandemic, it’s AI that feels like our real-world stand-in for Pluribus‘s supervirus. When Carol asks Zosia how the hive is spying on her while she digs a grave, Zosia responds nonchalantly they’re doing so via a military-grade drone from thousands of feet up in the air. But don’t worry: It isn’t armed, she assures a rightfully unassured Carol. Already in our real lives, AI is being used by police to surveil us. Pluribus, like the best kinds of sci-fi stories, heightens those realities in order to interrogate them. Only two episodes in, and Pluribus already feels like a warning.
I’ll be keeping an eye on the series and might write about it more depending on how things unfold, because I’m also particularly interested in the creative decision to have a lesbian protagonist. Carol did not seem particularly closeted in her life before the hive, but she also did not seem to be the most out either, evidenced by her apparent decision to make the central love interest in her novel series a male pirate named Raban instead of a woman as she reveals to Zosia she previously planned (Zosia, spookily and intentionally, looks like a woman version of the character, which the hive thought would endear her to Carol). There’s something interesting and fitting about the choice to have Carol, who already in many ways opted out of societal scripts for herself as a queer woman living outside the bounds of heternormativity, become this symbol of nonconformity. The choice to make her an author also feels interconnected with that. I’m curious to see how much the series ends up digging into all that.
“Angry lesbian” would typically be a term I use to describe a poorly executed trope or stocktype, but here? Here it works and wholly lands. This is one earned angry lesbian. She’s also, crucially, not beyond reproach. When meeting with her fellow immune humans, Carol’s flaws are on full display, some of the racial dynamics in the room impossible to ignore (she is the only white woman present and seems to think everyone should listen solely to her). In advocating against conformity, Carol paradoxically assumes everyone should think exactly like her. These contradictions, however, don’t undermine the character but rather deepen and bolster her. Gilligan is great at creating characters who do not so easily slot into hero/villain categories.
And as her, Rhea Seehorn is already giving a stellar performance and one that feels completely different than her role in Gilligan’s Better Call Saul. Meanwhile, Gilligan seems to have another big hit on his hands. I’d eagerly follow this creative team of REAL HUMANS to the end of the world.
I didn’t know much about this and now it sounds like an absolutely much watch! That’s my Sunday sorted
Truly an amazingly written article! It feels like many reviews are too focused on the sci-fi element and not the human element of the story so far.
I took biology in college a decade ago, so take this with a grain of salt. I like that the infection (or whatever you want to call it) is technically not a virus. Conceptually, viruses freak me out because they aren’t even “alive”. They don’t perform cellular reproduction or metabolism. It’s a piece of biological code, surrounded by a shell.
The signal from space is even less than that, because it’s just the code. It’s as alive as the binary code in your computer. And yet! Look what it’s done to earth.
Very cool show so far. My theory is the collective is turning earth into another signal array Deathstar style. Gotta spread the signal.