In Pluribus, Koumba Diabaté (played with chilling casualness by Samwa Schutte) is the only man on Earth who seems to be having a good time.
Holed up in the Elvis Suite at the Westgate Las Vegas, he has turned the apocalypse into an ultimate James Bond-themed bachelor party that never ends. He drinks vintage champagne, he wins every hand of cards, and he sleeps with a rotating cast of the city’s most beautiful women.
Even the 'housemaids', it would seem.
But while the show frames his existence as a pathetic fantasy, it is actually the series' darkest subplot. Koumba isn't just a survivor blowing off steam; he is a rapist hiding behind a technicality.
The visual language of Koumba’s scenes tells a story of uncomfortable wish fulfillment. Koumba is, by design, an average man - average looks, average charm, average status.
Yet, the women who populate his bed are supermodels, showgirls, and actresses. In the pre-virus world, the "league" dynamic would have rendered him invisible to them.
He is using the end of the world to bypass rejection, selecting partners who would likely never have chosen him if they still owned their own minds.
He hasn’t "gotten the girl"; he has requisitioned her, ordered on queue from the hive mind.
To understand why this is a violation, we have to look at the biology of the Joined.
As established in earlier breakdowns of the Empathy Prison, the Joined are hardwired for conflict avoidance. Their biology compels them to accommodate the "Immunes" to prevent stress and maintain the hive's equilibrium.
When Koumba initiates sex, the women do not say "yes" because they desire him.
They say "yes" because their 'collective wisdom' dictates that refusing him would cause friction. They are now firmly biologically incapable of the type of resistance that defines true agency.
This dynamic was on full display in the recent look at Episode 6’s Casino Royale fantasy.
We watched Koumba play James Bond, surrounded by Joined actors who applauded on cue and folded their poker hands so he could win. We accept that the card game is rigged, a hollow performance for his ego.
Yet, when the scene shifts to the bedroom, Koumba conveniently forgets that the sex is just as rigged as the poker. He treats the card game as a toy, but he treats the women as if their affection is real, selectively ignoring that both are just algorithms designed to keep him pacified.
This leads to the uncomfortable question the show is begging us to ask: If a woman is trapped in a mind that forces her body to be compliant, is consent even possible?
The answer is a hard no.
Consent requires the ability to say no without consequence, and the Joined cannot say no at all. The individual personalities of these women are submerged, trapped in the "sunken place" of the hive, watching while their bodies are utilized by a stranger. It is a violation of the highest order - the use of a living person as a masturbatory aid.
The power imbalance in the Elvis Suite is total. Koumba is akin to a prison guard sleeping with inmates, or a wealthy patron in a starving economy. He holds 100% of the agency in the room. The fact that the women smile, or moan, or wrap their arms around him makes the scenario more horrific, not less. Those reactions are not evidence of enjoyment; they are evidence of how deep the virus’s control goes.
He is exploiting a biological imperative that was designed to save the species, perverting it into a harem for one.
In many ways, Koumba represents a moral rot deeper than the virus itself.
The virus is a force of nature, an alien biological event without malice.
Koumba is a human being with free will who is choosing, every single day, to exploit a tragedy for sexual gratification. He knows, on some level, that these women are puppets.
The tragedy of his character is not that he is lonely; it is that he prefers the puppets. He prefers a world where women are objects that cannot challenge him, cannot reject him, and cannot leave.
Pluribus suggests that civilization has ended, but Koumba Diabaté is proof that its oldest sins survived.
In the silence of the Westgate, he has rebuilt the patriarchy in its purest, ugliest form: a world where men take what they want, and women smile because they literally have no other choice.
