Vince Gilligan returns to the screen with his most daring work yet in Pluribus, his first foray into science fiction and his boldest investigation into human nature. As show creator, Gilligan constructs a world so eerily plausible that the boundary between speculative fiction and reality begins to blur.
Originating from an American motto, “E pluribus unum” (meaning, “out of many, one”), Pluribus sets up a story of isolation at war, unity and one woman’s refusal to surrender in a world that has been forcibly cured of unhappiness.
Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), a perpetually irritated and widely successful fantasy author, shares the ideal domestic life with her manager and partner, Helen (Miriam Shor). That is, until an “alien” signal originating some 600 light-years away sweeps into Earth. The signal infects humanity with harmony, a viral transformation that dissolves individuality into a blissful hive mind.
Everyone succumbs to the “virus” except for Carol and a scattered handful of holdouts. When Helen “loses her life” to the collective, Carol becomes her worst self and, paradoxically, the only sane voice left. She rejects the cheerful bodysnatchers’ every attempt to comfort her, as they investigate why Carol was never converted.
Pluribus is open-ended as can be, offering up interpretations that could encompass any one of the world’s anxieties. In today’s political and social climate, it is impossible not to see echoes of the AI takeover.
Carol, a privileged upper-middle-class American bestselling author, personifies the sentiment that AI cannot replicate the human soul but stands to reshape our world in ways artists like her have spent their lives resisting. She acts as a stand-in for every creator feeling overshadowed or threatened by algorithmic “creativity,” clinging to independence while reluctantly acknowledging the technology’s practicality.
Characters like Mr. Diabaté (Samba Schutte) embrace the new order wholeheartedly. Through his fleeting encounter with Zosia (Karolina Wydra) — a hivemind entity that seemingly alters her personality and appearance to appease the holdouts like Carol — he luxuriates in his newfound benefits in good ways and questionable ones.
Carol’s disdain for the newly unified masses is met with a rebuttal: now that the human race has become a perfect hive mind, all cultural, racial and economic divisions are broken down. Those who once lived in hardship now experience previously unthinkable comfort. As part of the upper echelon of American authors, Carol has very little ground to argue against in such a circumstance.
In imagining the ideal version of artificial harmony, Gilligan asks: How much does the human soul matter if its absence guarantees universal material well-being? What would someone living in poverty and discrimination — who has never had the privilege to romanticize suffering — say?
Beyond its reflections on AI and privilege, Pluribus loudly stages a clash between emotional disorder and a world that no longer tolerates it. Carol’s depression, irritability and grief become fundamentally incompatible with humanity’s most recent upgrade.
A handful of episodes in, the show is still only drawing its first breaths.
Online, complaints rolled in: “nothing happens,” or the “pacing is too slow.” But anyone familiar with Gilligan’s style — sharpened in Breaking Bad and perfected in the masterful slow burn Better Call Saul — knows his worlds are built brick by brick with tension. Pluribus is no exception — the opening episodes are littered with detail, and every frame is a thesis begging to be dissected.
Seehorn, long overdue for another moment in the sun, delivers a devastating performance, hardly subtle and yet with masterful depth. Her role as Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul earned her a long-deserved Emmy nomination, and if her portrayal of Carol is any indication, the moment of her win finally feels imminent.
As Zosia, Wydra brings incredible nuance, blurring the lines between artificial sentience and a consciousness straining to break free from the collective.
Carol’s frustrations stem from her resentment at altering her writing to please the masses, mirroring Gilligan’s own artistic evolution. After years of building the Breaking Bad universe into one of television’s most acclaimed achievements, Pluribus feels like a declaration of independence.
Coming from the creator who changed the landscape of modern drama with antiheroes, moral spirals and operatic realism, Gilligan combines all his strengths and ideas to set up his strangest and most metaphysical premise to date, with a protagonist’s struggles to fight against a force strong enough to rewrite the human condition.
If individuality can survive the tide of an all-embracing “better” world, then Pluribus is where the answer will unfold.
Featured image from IMDb.
