Had it been any other show that surprise-released its finale a little early as a Christmas present, it wouldn’t have been so darn hilarious. Because the last feeling that Pluribus tends to leave you with is wholesomeness. On the contrary, it leaves you fragmented on all of your preconceived notions of yourself, your surroundings, your overarching understanding of the world and humanity, your feelings about deep space friends and foes–so basically literally everything ever? The final episode of Pluribus is no different in that regard. Not that I even expected it to be, especially considering all the mental gymnastics is one of the biggest reasons I love the show. Not to sound too confident, but I think I get exactly which chapter Pluribus meant to open and close within its first season. So despite its majorly open-ended season finale, Pluribus has settled multiple debates with its usual subtle style of storytelling. And that’s only opened up a world of wild possibilities for the 2nd season of the show, within reason of course. Let’s see if we can figure all that out all by ourselves and with no alien technology (*wink wink*).
Spoiler Alert
Is the alien RNA a gift or a curse?
Even if your gut feelings about the alien-RNA-turning-humanity-into-a-hive have been on point from the start, you gotta admit that Pluribus doesn’t make it easy for you to pick a lane, especially if you’re flexible in your views. You knew that it couldn’t have been a gift when astronomers stumbled upon the radio transmission sent by the alien life over on Kepler-22b, the Super-Earth that’s 600 lightyears away from us. And your instincts told you to be real worried when scientists, true-to-form, created a tangible infection out of that recipe, got themselves infected in a freak accident, and deliberately spread the infection on a global scale. Something that doesn’t care about asking for an intelligent lifeform’s permission before entering its body and changing its entire functioning can only be a disease. And a disease, however appealing the symptoms, will always be a disease. But you were yanked away from this sense of certainty by the very symptoms that you were certain would only be spooky throughout the course of Pluribus. You got close to the hive-mind along with Carol, the last person you’d have expected to actually get attached to these “others.” But it’s impossible to be a good person and not love something as tender and as sweet as every infected individual on the planet. So Carol fell for it. She fell hard! How could she not? They’re weird, alright. Freaky even when they creep up on someone with their pearly whites all on display. But they’re also as innocent as lambs with their tiny little baby feelings that are easily hurt. In fact, they’re so easy to hurt that any loud expression of negative feelings will make them all go into a seizure, a state that only a fraction of them will survive. Carol had the worst time figuring that out. But after causing a couple of genocides in the wake of her fight for humanity, she’s softened herself up for them. You see, the problem with the dynamics between the infected and the immune is that only the immune have to make adjustments and compromises to coexist. The infected are made in a way that their biological imperatives must be acted upon for them to even go on living. They can’t be challenged. Because if you do, they’ll just go ahead and die. How can something like this ever be a good thing for humanity? Sure, the hive-mind is always happy and content. But that’s part of their imperative too. How are they anything more than flesh puppets of the alien RNA that’s pumped their heads full of happy hormones so that the immune might be enticed into joining? Because happiness, as Carol comes to learn in the ending of the final episode, is only real if it’s about the individual’s personal wishes, goals, and dreams. Have you noticed that the hive-mind has stopped creating anything that doesn’t help further the alien agenda? All human creation–scientific, artistic, and of all sorts–anything that’s ever made our species stand out–has been halted ever since the big joining. No wonder they’re so excited about Carol’s book. The fact that they’re helplessly honest has had its effects on Carol. She trusted them completely, so much so that she almost forgot that these imperative-run individuals have but one goal in mind; to pass the infection forward. The things about the hive-mind that make them seem so harmless–the fact that they can’t lie, that they won’t hurt a fly, that they’ll go out of their way to make any immune feel happy and safe–all of these were put in place as cunning distractions from the horrors of the infection. They’re made in a way that they’re bound to conserve as much of Earth’s energy and resources as they can. Healing for the planet, sure, but is it really the best possible thing for the humans who have been driven to cannibalism to sustain what will obviously be a rather short existence? Moreover, the energy that they’re saving will be used to power a giant antenna so that they can point it at other planets with intelligent life and pass the “gift.” Yeah, that’s when you know for sure that there’s nothing to celebrate about this infection that’s turned humans into laborers to fulfill a singular goal. Seems a lot like the alien RNA is in the process of wiping out all intelligent lifeforms all across the vast depths of space. The takeover is peaceful because that’s how you avoid doing too much work crushing revolts. So if this “happiness” is indeed a serpentine manipulation tactic used against mankind, it’s basically just fantastic PR for a brand that will kill you. Kusimayu bought into it because her circumstances didn’t allow for her to feel very tethered without being a part of her family. But in the process of joining them, what Kusimayu lost was herself. She had a smile on her face upon turning. But her little goat’s affectionate call didn’t mean anything to her anymore. It only dawns on Carol that they’re not as harmless as she’s started to believe when Zosia tells her the scariest thing she’s heard in a long time. The hive-mind that holds all the scientific knowledge of humanity has gotten hold of Carol’s frozen eggs. They’re actively in the process of creating stem cells out of them so that they can tailor the infection to Carol’s genes. Before this, Carol was under the impression that the only way they could access her stem cells was by retrieving them out of her spine, something they couldn’t have done without their consent. But now, if they do manage to make those stem cells in the 2nd season of Pluribus, they just have to find a way to get the infection into Carol. Believe me, I want to have faith in Carol and Manousos’ Adam-and-Eve-esque efforts to keep humanity alive, but I think the hive-mind will cook up the stem cells faster than the only two people trying to destroy them can figure out how. But I do believe that if it has to fall on just two people to be so freaking scrappy that they beat a highly advanced alien hive-mind in a very long game of chess, there’s no better duo than Carol and Manousos. They’ve got stubbornness and might for days. The way the hive-mind is progressing though, I doubt that Carol and Manousos will be able to catch up before the hive comes up with more advanced ways to spread the infection. They’re still entirely unpredictable if you think about it. There’s absolutely no reason for us to be confident in our knowledge about them when we don’t even know the first thing about who sent the infection to Earth. Is Kepler-22b really the primary source of the infection? Or had the intelligent life on Kepler been turned the same way that humans were? The 2nd season of Pluribus might make the aliens and their ulterior goals more transparent. We might take a dive in Kepler-22b’s endless ocean or go somewhere we haven’t even heard of yet. We can’t even be sure that the hive-mind was told the truth about its origin by the alien RNA. So I think things could go just about any way that Gilligan wants it to in the 2nd season of Pluribus. He did say that he has long term plans.
Will Carol And Zosia Meet Again?
Between Carol and the hive-mind? Oh, it’s been manipulation city! Carol continued with her research on the hive-mind well into her relationship with Zosia. But how do you think Carol went from losing her wife to this global disaster and falling for someone who is everyone and can never be hers? Stone cold mindgames. But I don’t think the hive-mind, which is the same as Zosia, played this game with Carol knowingly. I think they were just doing what they’re made to do by the effects of the alien RNA. When they gave Carol everything she wanted, they were trying to make her happy. When they went away from Carol and left her all alone in the whole wide world, they did so to protect themselves. And then they came right back when Carol failed her battle with loneliness and grief for a minute there. How could Carol not fall for Zosia when she is eager to forgive her despite her many inadvertent and conscious mistakes? Zosia was sent to Carol because the hive-mind knew exactly what kind of woman Carol was most likely to be into and therefore would get closer to. But they weren’t trying to trick her, per se. They were trying to make her happy. In that way, Carol’s a victim of the same overarching manipulation that has worked on most of humanity in Pluribus. The aliens really knew what the people would want. So they tailored the poison just right. I doubt that Carol saw her feelings for Zosia coming. Because, you see, when Carol wants to avoid looking at one of her issues, she tends to succeed. Like her alcoholism, for instance. That’s something she’s been denying so hard that Helen had to sneak a motion sensor into the liquor cabinet. And I doubt that Carol would’ve done anything about her feelings for Zosia had Zosia not made the first move. But then again, did Zosia only get together with Carol on a sexual and romantic level just because she knows it would make Carol happy? Because Pluribus has been kinda sketchy about Zosia’s pre-joining life. You have to remember that the only real thing about the pre-joining Zosia that Carol and we know is her favorite ice cream flavor from her difficult childhood in Gdansk. Who is Zosia? And would she even want to be with Carol if she wasn’t infected? Maybe Carol thought of all this too. Maybe that’s why she kind of stepped away from her mission to save the world from the aliens. Maybe pre-joining Zosia isn’t a can of worms that Carol wanted to open, because for the first time in her life, she’s experienced a happiness that’s been consistent. Only for all of it to slip away in the ending of the final episode. Carol got her fight back. But at what cost? You’ve got to acknowledge Carol’s massive sacrifice, although it’s for her own sake, really. Not a lot of generally grumpy, mostly sad people would find happiness and have the guts to exchange it for an atom bomb. I can’t predict exactly how, because that would be insane, but I do think that Carol and Zosia’s arc will continue to have major developments in the 2nd season of Pluribus. Zosia is still the face the hive-mind would prefer to wear when they try to get Carol to take a whiff from the container. They’ll obviously fail to wear Carol down unless they actually manage to make stem cells out of her eggs, which doesn’t seem super probable even with all their technology and everything. But it would be interesting if Carol actually succeeds in figuring out a way to pull a person out of the hive. The first person she would want to try it on can’t be Zosia. But it has to come to Zosia at a certain point. I also have this feeling that Carol’s eggs may not come into play the way we’re expecting. If the hive-mind is unable to make stem cells out of them, do they have other plans for them? I don’t think Carol’s super attached to her frozen eggs. But she might just want to go on a freaky adventure to rescue them from the hive-mind in the 2nd season of Pluribus.
How Will Carol And Manousos Save The World?
I kinda like that Manousos is still mostly an enigma we can hardly claim to be familiar with. The bits and pieces of him that we’ve been exposed to in the course of the 1st season of Pluribus paint a picture of a man who takes his convictions and his fixations seriously. Manousos’ situation is special because not only is he immune, but he’s also a ham radio user who picked up a particularly strange transmission way ahead of knowing exactly what’s been up out in the world. The side to Manousos that comes out in his excruciating journey from Paraguay to Albuquerque–the side to him that’s revealed when he’s met Carol and the hive-mind–doesn’t necessarily make him out to be the most stable guy that humanity’s fate should rely on. But however scary he may be with the casual genocide he guiltlessly commits in the final episode, he still is the only person in the world who gets the importance of interfering with the radio frequency that’s been holding the hive together. I’m not totally sure that that makes it any less scary. So I guess Carol’s perspective of the hive-mind is exactly what Manousos needs to calm the hell down and actually figure out a way to fix the problem without making things a million times worse. Because even if they do find a way to pull the humans out of the hive in the 2nd season of Pluribus, what happens after that? There’s no way that Carol and Manousos can put the world back the way it was. But finding just the right way to bring everyone back without causing too much death and damage can’t be too easy a thing to figure out for Carol and Manousos. I know Carol brought an atom bomb. And I hope that that’s not plan B. But I think they’re gonna try to think of less explosive ways to fix the world first. I do have a feeling that Carol’s books will have a lot more to do with the deliverance of humanity from the grasp of the alien RNA. Carol is a quick learner. And I think Manousos is too. But I expect much of the 2nd season to be spent on Carol and Manousos finding a middle ground between their wildly incompatible personalities. You can’t keep fighting and expect to have the right state of mind for scientific research. Especially when neither of them are scientists.
