Pluribus, Another Vince Gilligan Masterpiece
Vince Gilligan is back. The writer, director, and creative mind behind the award-winning drama Breaking Bad and the equally successful spin-off series Better Call Saul has stepped away from the crime world and returned to his roots as a science fiction writer, as he did with The X-Files. His new show on Apple TV, Pluribus, takes a different approach to the apocalyptic, doomsday themes we’re familiar with. In Vince Gilligan’s mind, the end of the world comes with a smile.
Pluribus certainly rivals Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone in using sci-fi tropes to ask thought-provoking questions that make for great television.
The show begins with astronomers discovering a radio transmission from 600 light-years away. The signal turns out to be an RNA sequence, and a government lab recreates it. It turns out to be an alien virus or “psychic glue” that, after a year and a half, turns the whole world into a collective hive mind known as “The Joining.”
In other words, all humanity is a homogenized collective consciousness. The title Pluribus comes from the Latin phrase e pluribus unum, “out of many, one”, the American motto. The pilot episode, similarly, is titled “We is us.”
Unlike typical dystopian shows such as The Walking Dead, Pluribus presents a hive mind that makes humanity perpetually happy and peaceful, offering a fresh perspective.
There are, however, thirteen people on Earth immune to the virus, among them is our protagonist, Carol Sturka, a cynical fantasy romance author. The character, played by Rhea Seehorn, is defiant against the hive mind, especially after her only friend and publicist, Helen, died during the joining. It’s only fitting that the tagline for the show is, “The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness.”
The question Pluribus asks is not whether humanity can save itself, but whether it is even worth saving, or whether the responsibility is worth the effort. When Carol organizes a meeting with the remaining survivors to devise a plan to reverse everything that happened, none of them wants to go along with it because they like this new world. They reject Carol’s rant on freedom and independence when one of the immune, Koumba, reminds her that “no one is being robbed or murdered” and “No one is in prison.”
Unlike most end-of-the-world sci-fi dramas, Pluribus doesn’t portray Carol as a hero or villain. She’s more of an empathetic character to watch and understand how someone can persevere under these circumstances. There aren’t any climactic battles or fights; instead, significant time is spent with Carol in desperate solitude, watching TV reruns, lighting off fireworks, and stealing artifacts, including a Georgia O’Keeffe painting.
In fact, we get to meet Zosia (Karolina Wydra), who the hive mind has selected to chaperone Carol, due to her similarity to a character in her own Wycaro novels, in this new walk of life. As a member of the hive mind, Zosia explains that they want Carol to be happy and join them. In turn, Carol learns that they can’t lie or deny any of her requests. They also cannot force her to participate without her permission, as they are pacifists in nature.
Despite Zosia’s harmonious companionship, Carol still makes it her mission to return humanity to the way it was. Along the way, though, Carol’s endurance begins to wane. She lets her continuing relationship with Zosia moderate her stance against the new order. She makes temporary peace with the way things are and chooses endless thrill-seeking over saving the world.
On the flip side we meet Manousos, an uptight Paraguayan who has barricaded himself from the rest of the world, seeking a cure. Unlike Carol’s conflicting emotions toward the hive mind, Manousos’s anti-communist stance rejects the alien virus at all costs. When he finally meets Carol, we seem to arrive at the crux of the show. Manousos poignantly asks her, “Isn’t it evil to value a human the same as an ant?”
Gilligan’s deep dive into societal issues prompts viewers to consider whether we would sacrifice the human condition for a life of unobstructed satisfaction and control over our choices, echoing current debates about individual freedom versus collective security. The show suggests that perhaps people might give up their own thoughts in exchange for safety and security, making the series highly relevant to contemporary societal concerns.
Admittedly, the world of Pluribus sounds like a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren fever dream. It’s the collective suppressing the individual, which is a libertarian theme echoed by philosopher Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. Creative expression ceases to exist when a population forces us to think and act in unison.
Perhaps unintentionally, the show repudiates the leftist utopian vision embedded in modern political thought. History offers no shortage of warnings — from Russia to China — where collectivism was embraced with enthusiasm and ended in catastrophe. Even in contemporary New York, Mayor Mamdani’s boast that “we will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism” sounds less like civic leadership than a line lifted straight from Zosia’s mouth.
These are moral quandaries as old as the book of Genesis, and Pluribus certainly rivals Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone in using sci-fi tropes to ask thought-provoking questions that make for great television, which is why it is a Golden Globe winner. In the age of copycat shows, Vince Gilligan continues to create original, compelling TV dramas.
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