It’s a good thing that we already know a second season of Pluribus is on the way. Because the season finale for the show — a sci-fi drama on Apple TV, helmed by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan — made it clear that things are just getting started. The episode brought together a number of significant threads but, more importantly, opened up potentially explosive (literally) new lines of inquiry for what comes next.
Spoiler to follow for the first season of Pluribus.
First, a little reminder of how we got here. The inciting incident of Pluribus was the release of a virus of unknown, but extraterrestrial, origins, that turned almost the entirety of the Earth’s human population into an interconnected hive mind. The hive are peaceful, to the point that they won’t even kill a bug or pick an apple off of a tree, and they are physically harmed by negative emotions. There are around a dozen people who weren’t impacted by the virus. Most notably this includes an American woman named Carol (Rhea Seehorn) and a Paraguayan man named Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga). For most of the season, the pair have been separated physically, but united in being vehemently opposed to the hive’s presence, while trying to figure out a way to “save” the world by making it the way it used to be.
The finale sees these two finally able to meet up with each other — but things have changed for Carol. In the penultimate episode, her feelings toward the hive began to soften, primarily as she grew closer to her chaperone Zosia (Karolina Wydra). In fact, by the time the finale starts, they’re a full-on couple. It’s a far cry from the early days of the show, when Carol was so antagonistic to the hive that they abandoned her and the city of Albuquerque for safety reasons.
But Carol’s new view of the hive, and Zosia in particular, means that things don’t go quite the way Manousos expected. Instead of finding a like-minded comrade who would help him “save the world,” he finds a version of Carol that is reluctant to even speak to him. The dynamic is much like Pluribus’ second episode, in which Carol fails to convince the rest of the survivors that they should work toward putting the world back the way it was. Only this time the roles are reversed. Combine this dynamic with the fact that Carol and Manousos are both extremely stubborn people who are using Google Translate to communicate and, well, it’s not exactly a smooth meeting. After the first time the two talk, Manousos mutters to himself “well this is going just great.”
By the end of the episode, though, the two seem largely on the same page. And that’s because Carol learns that, despite her budding romance with Zosia, the hive are still diligently working on bringing her into the fold (the episode actually opens by showing one of the other survivors joining the hive via a new procedure). This all culminates with Carol receiving a large package that turns out to be an atom bomb. I guess she wasn’t joking earlier in the season.
The first season of Pluribus has been a learning experience. While there are plenty of postapocalyptic shows, there’s really nothing quite like this strange, hive-mind-infected version of Earth. And so over nine episodes we see Carol emotionally coming to grips with her new reality, but also using that time to learn as much as she can about how the hive operates. This, in turn, helps us, the audience, understand just what the heck is going on. All stories require some kind of scene-setting, but Pluribus’ unique nature requires that much more.
But the reveal of the atom bomb at the end suggests that things are going in a different direction in season 2. I don’t expect Pluribus to suddenly become a fast-paced show; its measured pace is part of its appeal and allows it to really dig into the nitty-gritty details of the world. But many of the remaining plotlines and questions require more action than simply learning more about the hive. Manousos may have figured out a way to pull individuals out of the hive using radio signals; the hive are in the midst of building a “giant antenna” to possibly communicate with whoever or whatever sent the virus in the first place; the rest of the survivors have to decide whether or not they want to join; the hive need to sort out a solution to their impending food crisis; and, oh, there’s that bomb that Carol may or may not have a plan for.