Pluribus, the series from creator Vince Gilligan, reimagines the alien-contact story as a slow-motion tragedy of empathy and control.
Set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it follows Carol Sturka, played with fierce restraint by Rhea Seehorn, a romance novelist who becomes one of only twelve people immune to an extraterrestrial contagion known as “the Joining.”
The virus originates from a decoded radio signal containing an RNA sequence that, once synthesized, spreads across the planet, merging humanity into a single hive mind called the Others. Instead of war, chaos, or destruction, the apocalypse arrives as serenity.
The infected are calm, content, and incapable of deceit or violence.
Planes land safely, fires go out, and arguments end forever.
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| Carol. |
But for Carol, left alone in a world that no longer understands privacy or grief, peace itself becomes horror.
Gilligan turns the familiar setting of Albuquerque - once the site of moral decay in Breaking Bad - into a vast cathedral of stillness, where silence and sunlight replace crime and consequence.
Beneath its science fiction premise, Pluribus is an autopsy of humanity’s dependence on individuality. Gilligan uses the hive mind as both utopian ideal and totalitarian mirror, asking whether empathy without friction can still be called human.
The series threads together themes of grief, memory, and autonomy, building a world where emotional connection becomes a form of surveillance.
Rhea Seehorn anchors the story with a performance defined by exhaustion and defiance; her Carol is not a hero so much as a remnant, clinging to anger as the last trace of identity. Each episode contrasts her raw emotion against the collective’s eerie civility, showing how compassion can turn coercive when shared without boundaries.
Through its sterile beauty and unnerving quiet, Pluribus examines the cost of perfect harmony, questioning whether evolution means transcendence or extinction.
It is both love story and warning, a parable of connection in an age that cannot bear to be alone.
The Core of Pluribus
- The Themes of Pluribus
- What is The Joining?
- How did the Virus Spread in Pluribus?
- How Albuquerque acts as a character
- Why do Carol's actions end up killing people?
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