There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about the slowed pace of TV production in the “All TV must be prestige TV” era. You’ve run into it somewhere or other: A new series makes a splash, and then disappears from the digital airwaves for what can be more than two years at a time while writers, directors and producers figure out how the hell they can top that freshman effort. On a strictly quality-based note, it’s probably a good thing—nobody likes coming back to an obviously rushed product—but it can be immensely frustrating, and disruptive to viewers’ ability to keep a handle on any given series’ themes, ideas, or even just basic plots.
In light of all that, it’s mildly worrying to hear that the writing process on the second season of Vince Gilligan’s Apple TV show Pluribus isn’t moving quite as quickly as Gilligan initially intended. (Which was already going to be a slow burn, from earlier reports.) The Breaking Bad creator didn’t get into exact numbers, but told Polygon in an interview this week that, at this very moment, he and his team “Are breaking the season. It is not going quite as fast as I would hope, but we’re hoping there’s lots more excitement and twists and turns.”
Gilligan later joked about any possible delays, suggesting that “We’re looking forward to people seeing it in eight or nine years when we get season 2 finished.” But it’s still a pretty big question about when the series—about an alien invasion, of sorts, in which all but a handful of humans wind up psychically glued together in an endlessly chipper collective hive mind—might actually come back. The first season had a notably long development cycle, having originally been given a season order right around when Better Call Saul was wrapping up back in 2022. (The Hollywood strikes of 2023 contributed to delays, but even so, there was quite a bit of time between Apple buying the show and Gilligan and his team getting it to air in the fall of 2025.)
Gilligan obviously couldn’t let any actual details about the show’s second season slip loose during the Polygon interview, although he did promise that “We’re looking forward to spending more time with some characters that we’ve met and didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time with. I’d love to see more of Mr. Diabaté, for instance, and seeing more of Zosia [Karolina Wydra] and Manousos [Carlos Manuel Vesga] is always going to be a treat for us and for the audience. And of course, Carol remains front and center in our show, played by the great Rhea Seehorn.” So, yes: The characters from Pluribus will be in Pluribus. Y’know… eventually.