Pluribus
Entry updated 13 April 2026. Tagged: TV.
US tv series (2025-current). High Bridge Productions, Bristol Circle Entertainment, Sony Pictures Television, Apple TV. Created by Vince Gilligan. Various writers and directors, including Gilligan. Cast includes Rhea Seehorn, Carlos-Manuel Vesga and Karolina Wydra. Season 1 comprises 9 episodes of 42-63 minutes. Colour.
An Alien virus, initially detected by astronomers who decode radio signals as the formation of a viral RNA sequence, comes to Earth and infects the vast majority of the population. The result is the "Joining", a Hive Mind linking billions of people across the globe, who think and feel as one entity. The resulting population is entirely peaceful, incapable of lying, living as vegetarians, and refusing even to eat fruit that has not already fallen from trees, though it is revealed that 886 million people died in the initial Joining.
Only thirteen people worldwide are immune, and the Joined are working towards finding ways to incorporate them into the hive mind. Despite this, they give the unaffected anything they want, from a private jet to a supermarket full of food, and even Weapons that could cause mass damage. The series focuses on Carol Sturke (Seehorn), a romantasy writer whose partner was one of those who died. She is initially entirely hostile to the Joined, referring to them as the Others, but later forms a friendship with one individual member of them, Zosia (Wydra), who acts as her chaperone. In her initial rage she causes a seizure among the Others, killing many of them, and her anger and hostility lead to most of the other unaffected people, and temporarily the Others, cutting themselves off from her. A Columbian man, Manousos (Vesga) also hates the Others, and offers to join Carol in fighting them, believing there is a way to reverse the effects of the Joining, and willing to kill them all if it can't be done. Carol's friendship-turned-romance with Zosia tempts her into accepting the status quo, but upon discovering that the Others have been using her frozen eggs to attempt to make her one of them, agrees to join Manousos' fight.
Pluribus is in many ways emblematic of high-end US Television: high-concept, smoothly if anonymously professional, drawn out in order to ensure that further seasons can be commissioned for an indefinite period of time, and raising serious moral issues in a context designed also to satisfy audience expectations. Creator Gilligan makes a couple of brave choices. The unhurried pace alienated some, but allows for some very effective moments, and the most remarkable episode largely follows Carol in her exile, attempting to fill her time in a world devoid of people, with very little dialogue. Secondly, the concentration on a character whom Gilligan called "a flawed good guy" but whom some viewers (like most of the other characters) will find monumentally unpleasant does not follow the mould of the usual Hollywood hero. The series gives due weight to considerations of loss of individuality or Identity and imposed beliefs versus the benefits of Empathy and peace, and the end of prejudice, War and environmental destruction. The side it comes down on leads to a disappointingly glib cliffhanger to conclude season one, in which Carol and Manousos acquire an atom bomb, at the insistence of television execs who rejected the original, more subtle ending. [CWa]
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