Before the premiere of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus on Apple TV, viewers had only vague details about the show’s premise. Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) seems to be the only woman immune to a virus that has infected the world and made everyone oddly happy. We were told there would be a big twist in the first episode, while a series of creepy, often dialogue-free teasers leading up to the premiere left us scratching our heads.
Now that the first two episodes of the show — created by the man behind Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, who also wrote for The X-Files — have finally arrived, we have some clarity about what’s really going on. It’s exactly what we expected, nothing like what we expected, and so much more.
The Origins of the Weird, Apocalyptic-Like Situation in ‘Pluribus’
First, the big question on everyone’s minds for one of the most anticipated shows of 2025 is how this all started. Buckle up, because Gilligan’s experience in sci-fi really shines through here with an explanation that might leave you a little lost. It begins with astronomers who detect something mysterious drifting in space, repeating the same sequence every 78 seconds. Is it something bouncing off the moon? No, it can’t be that. It looks more like Morse code. It’s a pulse wave modulation, and it’s coming from 600 light-years away.
As they gather more experts to dive in, one discovers that while the pulses are of equal duration, they are split across four different frequencies. It’s not binary code, it’s quaternary. Could this be an alien lifeform trying to communicate? That would require megawatts, even gigawatts of data, and an antenna the size of Africa.
A light bulb goes off with one of the astronomers when he realizes what it is. Whatever it is, people are now working furiously in a lab to replicate it, and two scientists are working around the clock to make a groundbreaking discovery. One tells the security guard, before a shift in the wee hours of the morning, that they believe they have found a sequence that encodes a lysogenic virus. This is a type of virus that replicates the host’s DNA whenever the cell divides. They’ve been experimenting on all kinds of animals, but none have shown any clinical signs. So far, the study has been a failure.
But when the pair head to the lab in protective suits, ready to resume the research, they discover that one of the rats appears to be dead. The female scientist removes it from its cage and tries to feel for a heartbeat, but she can’t tell through her thick gloves. She removes the outer pair and is taken aback when she senses not just a heartbeat but a strong one from the rodent. The rat then bites her and breaks her skin. From there, despite her desperate attempts to wash it away, she’s infected.
Showing how quickly a virus — or a viral-type infection — can spread, it doesn’t take long for her colleague, the security guard, and even the cleaning staff to become infected, each through a simple kiss. They join others in the building, and in eerie synchronicity, pairs take turns — one swabs a cheek while the other adds the sample to a petri dish, then seals and stacks it in a fridge. The most jarring scene, revealed in an early teaser, shows the first scientist licking every donut in the lobby one by one and putting them back in the box for visitors to “help yourself,” as the sign below encourages them to do. Clearly, the objective is to spread this condition as far as possible, as quickly as possible.
What Is Actually Going on in ‘Pluribus’?
It isn’t until after Carol arrives home, grieving the sudden death of her manager and partner Helen (Miriam Shor) and shocked by the oddly convulsing, hive-minded people she encountered, that she learns more about what’s going on. The only active TV channel shows a presidential-looking man in a suit behind a podium, with a ticker that addresses Carol directly and provides a phone number to call for more information.
She reluctantly does, and this man, apparently Davis Taffer (Peter Bergman), Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm Production and Conservation (apparently, he was the only man left intact and wearing a suit, so he would do), wants to reassure her that everything will be OK. It’s not an alien invasion, but they are the beneficiaries of extraterrestrial technology. What the astronomers discovered 14 months prior was a radio signal that may have been repeating since the dawn of human existence. There’s no indication of how long. But it has now been discovered.
It consists of four tones that represent guanine, uracil, adenine, and cytosine. Together, these are a recipe for an RNA nucleotide sequence. Once they figured this out, the scientists began to recreate it in a lab. It isn’t a virus, but it sort of behaves like one. It’s like a “psychic glue, capable of binding us together,” Davis tells Carol. And they want her to join them. They want her to be happy, too.
But is Carol literally the only person left on Earth who has agency over her own life and isn’t part of this collective mind of humans? The answer, which is one of the big twists, is actually no.
Carol Is Not Alone in ‘Pluribus’
When Carol asks Davis if she’s the only one who seems immune to this virus-like condition, he reveals that she isn’t. 11 others are in the same situation, just as disoriented as she is. “They” have spoken to all of these outliers, who are located around the world, inconveniently, none in the U.S. Later, Carol learns there’s a 13th person, a man in Paraguay who only speaks Spanish. They didn’t detect him at first.
As Carol grapples with what’s going on, she is sent a potential friend —more like an assistant — who “we” felt she would like. It’s a woman named Zosia (Karolina Wydra) who happens to be the spitting image of the original character from Carol’s best-selling book series. Once Carol realizes that Zosia is effectively at her beck and call, willing to do whatever she asks, she requests a meeting with the other immune people, at least those who can speak English. As it turns out, five of them can, and they are willing to meet. Off she goes on a plane to meet them, but she’s floored to learn they aren’t as angry about the situation as she is. In fact, most of them have adjusted to it.
Kumba (Samba Schutte) is relishing in the spoils of being able to fly on Air Force One with a bevy of pretty women at his beck and call and indulge in expensive food and drink. The others are happy to continue living with their hive-minded family members, believing that joining them might be the right move anyway. They do seem so happy, after all. It’s like there’s literal peace on Earth. But Carol thinks they’re traitors to the human race, brainwashed cult members who are willing to give up their sense of individuality to become these walking, talking shells of human beings.
Carol Has All the Power, for Now
The big question is why these 13 people are immune. No one knows…yet. Zosia tells Carol that they are working around the clock to figure it out and come up with a way to integrate them. It could take weeks, it could take months. She has no idea. But for now, there are a few key things to know about Carol and the others, and how they play into what’s going on.
First, it appears that everyone in the hive mind is affected whenever Carol, and presumably any of the 13 immune individuals, loses their temper and gets angry. They effectively freeze and begin to convulse, as they all did before, many springing back to life with their Stepford Wives-like smiles. Some, however, don’t survive the shock to the system. In fact, Carol learns that her first angry episode, which almost killed Zosia, likely led to the deaths of thousands around the world. In total, since this “virus” has been around, more than 886 million people have died. That’s about 10% of the world’s population. The angrier Carol gets, the more she puts innocent lives at risk.
Second, while Zosia confirms to Carol that they will do anything she asks, can bring her anything she wants, she also reveals that the one thing they can’t do is protect her and the other 12 individuals from one another. This raises interesting questions about what happens when there’s conflict among the only other people in the world who can be angry or upset.
Further, it’s worth noting that no single person is in charge; rather, everyone is. But no one has agency anymore either. Their bodies are simply bodies that house the same mind, so that a doctor, a pilot, a chef, and an athlete all have the same knowledge, skills, memories, and recollections of life experiences. When someone introduces themselves to Carol, they note that “this individual is” and recite the person’s name before the outbreak. How do they know so much about Carol if they can’t read her mind? Apparently, Helen joined right before she died, and thus they have all her thoughts and memories stored within their hive, like a hard drive of her brain.
Naturally, the goal with whatever is controlling this virus-like mutation is to convert these 13 remaining people so the world can start anew, a perfect society that runs efficiently, with no crime, no conflict, and no single leader. But also no individuality, no free thinking. Their lives are not their own.
What can Carol possibly do? The other immune folks are uninterested in helping. She can’t lash out for fear of killing innocent people. She’s stuck. All she can do is wait until they figure out how to reverse her immunity and force her to join them. “Once you understand how wonderful this is…” Davis begins to tell Carol on the TV, but she cuts him off before he can say more. Nothing he says will convince her that “this” is “wonderful” in any way.
Sure, it does all seem wonderful on the surface. It’s tough not to ask yourself what you would do in the same situation. Would you ask to be taken to a tropical island to sip Mai Tais, eat Wagyu beef and shrimp cocktails, and enjoy a massage? Would you desperately try to connect with your loved ones who seem stuck in some kind of trance? Or would you push back like Carol?
Chances are, once you snap out of the indulgent haze, it’s easy to see where Carol is coming from. There’s something very, very wrong about it all. She explains it to the other immune people when they ask how she can be so against joining, even though she hasn’t asked any of the others what it feels like. “Because I’m smart enough to know you don’t ask a drug dealer to describe their heroin,” she says. If Carol can discover what makes her immune, she may be able to find a cure for the others before they find a way to get to her. We can’t wait to find out. Stream Pluribus on Apple TV.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
