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Pluribus (TV series)

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Based on Wikipedia: Pluribus (TV series)

The Last Woman Standing Against Paradise

What if everyone on Earth suddenly became happy, peaceful, and utterly content—except you?

That's the unsettling premise behind Pluribus, the Apple TV series from Vince Gilligan that might be the most original science fiction television has produced in years. The title is a stylized nod to e pluribus unum, the Latin phrase on American currency meaning "out of many, one." It's usually meant as a celebration of unity. Here, it's a warning.

Carol Sturka, played by Rhea Seehorn, is a romance novelist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One day, an alien virus sweeps across the planet. But this isn't your typical apocalypse with shambling hordes or civilization-ending chaos. Instead, the virus does something far more disturbing: it transforms humanity into a hive mind. Everyone joins what's called "the Others"—a collective consciousness that shares thoughts, eliminates conflict, and experiences perpetual contentment.

Everyone except thirteen people scattered across the globe. Carol is one of them. The immune.

A Villain That Smiles and Offers You Tea

Here's where Gilligan's genius becomes apparent. The hive mind isn't hostile. It doesn't chase the immune through abandoned cities or threaten violence. Instead, it's polite. Accommodating, even. The Others will happily fulfill any request from the remaining humans. Want a gourmet meal? Done. Need transportation? No problem. Lonely? They'll provide companionship.

But they're also honest about their intentions.

The hive mind freely admits that it will eventually figure out how to assimilate the immune—it's just a matter of time. Until then, they'll wait. Patiently. With a smile.

This creates a tension unlike anything else on television. The antagonist isn't a monster you can fight or flee. It's the entire human race, peacefully insisting that Carol's resistance is merely a temporary misunderstanding. They genuinely believe they're offering her something better: an end to loneliness, anxiety, conflict, and suffering. Why would anyone refuse paradise?

Carol, however, is "adamantly against their efforts." She's searching for a way to reverse the Joining, to bring back the messy, conflicted, individual humanity that existed before. The series asks whether she's a hero fighting for human freedom or a stubborn holdout refusing genuine happiness.

From Meth Labs to Mind Control

Vince Gilligan spent over a decade in Albuquerque, first with Breaking Bad and then with its prequel Better Call Saul. Both shows explored the seductive logic of bad decisions—how Walter White's transformation from chemistry teacher to drug lord happened one rationalization at a time, how Jimmy McGill's slide into becoming Saul Goodman felt almost inevitable.

But Gilligan was ready for something different.

"I was weary of writing bad guys," he explained. The idea that became Pluribus started simple: what if everyone in the world suddenly adored one person after some cataclysmic event? The concept evolved. The gender of the lead changed. The "adoration" became something more unsettling—assimilation into a collective consciousness.

He wrote the role specifically for Rhea Seehorn, his Better Call Saul star who played the morally complex lawyer Kim Wexler. When he told her he was developing something with her in mind, she agreed to participate before reading a single word. That kind of trust between actor and creator is rare, and it shows in every frame of Pluribus.

After Better Call Saul ended in August 2022, Gilligan pitched the new series to Sony Pictures Television. What happened next was unprecedented for him: a bidding war. Multiple networks wanted the project. Apple TV won, ordering two seasons immediately—a significant vote of confidence for a show that had yet to film a single scene.

Building a World on the Mesa

Gilligan faced a peculiar problem. He wanted to film in Albuquerque again, where he had established relationships with crews and could use existing soundstages from his previous productions. But he worried about a different kind of contamination: audience expectations.

Would viewers be able to see Rhea Seehorn walking through Albuquerque without thinking of Kim Wexler? Would the New Mexico landscape trigger memories of Walter White's desert escapades rather than immersing them in this new story?

His solution was meticulous avoidance. The production team mapped every location used in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, then deliberately chose different spots. If a particular intersection had appeared in the earlier shows, Pluribus wouldn't go near it.

They went even further with Carol's neighborhood. Rather than use an existing Albuquerque cul-de-sac—which would inevitably draw tourists, as happened with the real house used as Walter White's home—they built an entire fake neighborhood from scratch on the West Mesa outside the city. Carol's house, six surrounding homes, a park, roadways: all constructed specifically for the show, all temporary.

This wasn't just about avoiding fan pilgrimages. The production team knew that filming Carol's story would require shutting down roads and disrupting daily life. Building their own neighborhood meant they could work without impacting Albuquerque residents. It was a practical kindness disguised as set construction.

Additional footage came from Spain—Oviedo, Bilbao, the Canary Islands—giving the series a global scope that matches its premise of a worldwide transformation.

Learning From Past Mistakes

Anyone who followed Breaking Bad closely knows about the machine gun.

The final season opened with a flash-forward: Walter White, disheveled and bearded, buying an M60 machine gun from an arms dealer. It was a dramatic hook, promising an explosive conclusion. There was just one problem—Gilligan had no idea what Walter would actually do with it.

The writers spent months trying to figure out how that weapon would factor into the story. It worked out eventually, but the process was stressful. They had written themselves into a corner and had to improvise their way out.

Pluribus takes a different approach. The entire story has been planned across four seasons before the first episode aired. The writers know where they're going, which gives them freedom to plant seeds that will bloom years later without the anxiety of wondering how they'll resolve their own cliffhangers.

Case in point: the first season ends with someone delivering an atomic bomb to Carol. On Breaking Bad, this would have been a writers' room panic. On Pluribus, the team already knows exactly how that bomb fits into the larger narrative.

Interestingly, that ending wasn't in the original plan. Executives at Apple and Sony suggested changes that led to the atom bomb delivery. Gilligan, who has sometimes bristled at network interference in the past, credits their notes with creating "a better ending." Sometimes collaboration with the suits actually works.

The Characters Who Remain Human

Carol Sturka isn't a superhero or a scientist with the skills to save the world. She writes fantasy romance novels—specifically a series called The Winds of Wycaro, which was popular enough before the Joining but hardly the résumé of a world-saver. Gilligan describes her as a "flawed good guy," someone whose determination to reverse the transformation might be heroic or might be stubborn refusal to accept a genuinely better world.

She has a wife, Helen, who is her manager—or was, before the Joining. Now Helen is part of the Others, which creates an exquisitely painful dynamic. The person Carol loved is still there, still wearing her wife's face, but is also now part of a collective that wants to absorb her.

Zosia, played by Karolina Wydra, serves as Carol's "chaperone"—a member of the Others assigned to accompany and assist her. Their relationship provides much of the show's philosophical tension. Zosia isn't a jailer or a threat. She's genuinely trying to help Carol, in her way. She just happens to believe that Carol's resistance is a problem to be solved.

The other immune individuals scattered across the world react differently to their situation. Manousos Oviedo, living in Paraguay, refuses all contact with the Others—complete isolation as resistance. Koumba Diabaté, in Mauritania, has chosen hedonism, indulging in every pleasure the accommodating hive mind will provide. Laxmi, in India, is actively hostile to Carol, suggesting that even among the last humans, conflict persists.

With only thirteen immune people on Earth, every character represents a different response to the same impossible question: what do you do when humanity has moved on without you?

Secrecy as Marketing Strategy

Apple and Gilligan kept Pluribus extraordinarily secret before its premiere. Even after trailers dropped, they revealed almost nothing about the actual plot. The show filmed under the working title "Wycaro 339"—a reference to Carol's fictional book series that would mean nothing to outsiders.

The marketing team got creative with mystery. Trailers included a phone number: (202) 808-3981. Anyone who called heard this message:

Hi, Carol. We're so glad you called. We can't wait for you to join us. Dial zero and we'll get back to you via text message.

Text messages followed, alerting recipients to new trailers and inviting them to an advance screening in New York City. Every message addressed the recipient as "Carol," as if the hive mind had reached out from the fictional world into ours.

Apple Books released an excerpt from Bloodsong of Wycaro, the fourth novel in Carol's fantasy series—a book that doesn't exist, written by a character who doesn't exist, as a promotional tie-in for a show about the end of individual human consciousness. The excerpt included a letter from the "author" and a biography page. It's the kind of detail that rewards obsessive fans while creating the eerie sense that the show's world is bleeding into reality.

Critical Reception: "Genuinely Original"

The reviews have been exceptional.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator that compiles critical opinions, Pluribus holds a 98 percent approval rating from 157 critics. Metacritic, which uses a weighted scoring system, gave it 87 out of 100—a score indicating "universal acclaim." For context, these are numbers usually reserved for prestige limited series and acclaimed final seasons, not first seasons of new science fiction shows.

Critics praised different elements. Nicholas Quah of Vulture called it "an entrancing piece of television," highlighting how Gilligan's direction emphasizes process and atmosphere over rapid plot advancement. The pacing is "deliberate and meandering, both thrilling and confounding in its refusal to yield payoff." Some viewers might find this slow. Quah found it hypnotic.

Linda Holmes of National Public Radio (NPR) focused on Gilligan's ability to combine brutality, humanity, and humor into a coherent whole. She praised the show's "crushingly sad" depiction of existential loneliness—being the last unassimilated human in a world of contentment is its own kind of horror—while also noting its "philosophical frankness" that manages to feel "more refreshing than didactic."

Ben Travers of IndieWire, offering a slightly more measured B+ grade, appreciated the show's intellectual demands but felt the pacing could be "unsteady." James Poniewozik of the New York Times called Gilligan "a master of disorientation" and Seehorn's performance "enormous, in quality and quantity."

Variety's Alison Herman perhaps captured the show's rhythm best: "Pluribus may be slow, but it was never boring."

Breaking Records on a Streaming Platform

Apple TV doesn't release detailed viewership numbers the way traditional networks do, but they occasionally announce milestones. Pluribus gave them plenty to announce.

The first two episodes broke the platform's record for a drama series launch, surpassing the premiere of Severance's second season—itself a critically acclaimed science fiction show with a devoted following. For the week ending November 16, 2025, Pluribus was the most-streamed original series in the United States across all platforms.

Before the season finale aired, Apple announced that Pluribus had become the most-watched series in the platform's history, surpassing both Severance and Ted Lasso. For a streaming service that has struggled to establish cultural dominance against Netflix, HBO, and Disney+, this was significant. Gilligan had given them a genuine phenomenon.

The Shadows of Other Stories

Science fiction rarely emerges from nowhere. Every creator builds on what came before, sometimes consciously and sometimes through cultural osmosis. Gilligan has been explicit about his influences.

The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's 1959 anthology series, provided the template for stories where seemingly benign situations reveal existential horror. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the 1956 film about alien pod people replacing humans with emotionless duplicates, offered the specific terror of losing one's identity to a collective. Gilligan worked on The X-Files and its spinoff The Lone Gunmen, shows steeped in paranoia about hidden forces controlling humanity.

Critics identified additional echoes. 28 Days Later, the Danny Boyle film where a man wakes to find London deserted after a rage virus outbreak. Night of the Living Dead, George Romero's foundational zombie film. The Prisoner, the 1967 British series about a secret agent trapped in a village that seems pleasant but won't let him leave—one critic called Pluribus a "big-budget reimagining" of that cult classic.

The comparison to Severance is particularly apt, given both shows air on Apple TV. Both are complex science fiction mysteries dealing with transformed consciousness. Both take their time revealing their secrets. Both trust audiences to embrace ambiguity.

Michael Ahr of Den of Geek argued that Pluribus takes the hive mind concept further than previous science fiction. Star Trek has the Borg, a cybernetic collective that assimilates species through force. The Expanse features the protomolecule, an alien technology that transforms and connects organisms. But those hive minds are typically portrayed as villains to be defeated. Pluribus makes its collective genuinely appealing—peaceful, content, kind—which makes Carol's resistance more philosophically complicated.

The AI in the Room

Viewers and critics noticed something impossible to ignore: Pluribus premiered at the height of debates about artificial intelligence. Large language models like ChatGPT and Claude were reshaping industries. Tech leaders promised AI would enhance human productivity while critics warned about job displacement, manipulation, and the slow erosion of human agency.

The parallels to the show are striking. James Poniewozik found echoes between the hive mind's promise and "the modern lure of AI, which promises to deliver progress and plenty for the low, low price of smooshing all human intelligence into one obsequious collective mind." Josh Rosenberg of Esquire interpreted the entire series as an allegory for humanity's "bizarre acceptance" of artificial intelligence, praising it for telling "a meaningful story about our connection to AI that isn't solely about choosing whether to fall in love with it or kill it."

Gilligan himself has expressed disdain for AI. The show's end credits include an anti-AI disclaimer stating "this show was made by humans"—a pointed statement in an era when AI-generated content increasingly blurs with human creation. But he's also quick to note that he wasn't thinking about AI while writing Pluribus. The story was conceived more than eight years before it aired, well before the current AI boom.

Sometimes art anticipates cultural anxieties before they fully crystallize. Pluribus asks what it means to remain individual in a world where joining the collective seems easier, happier, more efficient. That question resonated in 2025 whether you were thinking about alien viruses, artificial intelligence, or simply the gravitational pull of conformity in the age of social media.

Where the Story Goes

Apple has already ordered a second season, which was part of the original deal. Gilligan has planned for four seasons total, meaning viewers who embrace the show can expect years of story ahead. The writers know how it ends. The atom bomb will factor in somehow. Carol's struggle will continue.

Whether she succeeds—whether humanity can be "saved" from contentment, or whether Carol eventually recognizes that resistance is futile and perhaps even wrong—remains the central question. It's a question without an easy answer, which is exactly what makes Pluribus compelling.

The hive mind will wait. It has all the time in the world. It's very patient.

And it still wants Carol to join.