This article contains spoilers for Pluribus episode 8, Charm Offensive.
Rare is the show that gets you hooked eight episodes in and still leaves you wondering where the hell the story is going. Such is the case with Pluribus. While the pilot episode opened strong with the dissemination of an alien virus that has all but wiped out humanity, the rest of the season has been a slow — but pleasurable — dripfeed of information about the hivemind and Carol’s nature. While the story seemed like it might be taking a drastic turn with Manousos’ journey in The Gap, Pluribus‘ ninth episode has me guessing all over again. What if this isn’t a story about saving the world? What if, instead, it’s a tragic romance story?
Episode 9, titled Charm Offensive, sees the return of Zosia and the hivemind in Albuquerque. The charm offensive works both ways — with the plurbs courting Carol in the first half of the episode, and Carol flipping the tables in the second half by encouraging Zosia to recall her memories and feelings as an individual.
What’s most fascinating about this episode, though, is the fact that the plurbs have returned to Albuquerque despite knowing that Carol will never give up on trying to reverse the effects of the virus. Even as Carol continues to try to find a way to save the world, we see her slowly succumb to the pleasures that the plurbs can offer her, from simple ‘human’ connection to revisiting old, happy memories that she has long since shut away in the darkest recesses of her mind. When you have a whole group of people so desperate to please you and that’s willing to do almost anything to make you happy, that can be difficult to resist. Even while Carol thinks it’s weird that the plurbs all sleep together in an orgy-style setup, she ends up spending a night with them after being starved of human connection for so long.
Unlike someone like Diabate, however, Carol never loses sight of her goal even as the plurbs continue to charm her. Towards the end of the episode, Carol drunkenly admits that there are many things about the hivemind that she enjoys, but she recognizes that the hive itself is unsustainable. They’re starving to death, and to continue down this path would be “mental illness” in her view. Seeing Carol’s desperate affection, the hive itself makes the first move by having Zosia kiss her. This is key, as it suggests that the hive is indeed capable of initiating romantic or sexual contact, and perhaps they’re even capable of consent.
We then get yet another timeskip and we see that Carol and Zosia have spent a month living together at this point. While Carol will never let go of Helen’s memory, she’s more than willing to lean into a relationship dynamic with Zosia as she takes the time to coax the individuality out of her from time to time. We’re treated to a short conversation where Zosia shares a memory she had of eating ice cream while watching the ships go by as a child, and for a brief moment, the scene feels like it’s a moment of genuine connection between two people — a rare sight in a show like Pluribus.
Then the spell is broken when Zosia reconnects with the hivemind and tells Carol that she’s going to have a visitor. While I was firmly on Manousos’ side last episode and was all “Yeah! Go Team Human! Let’s get these plurbs outta here!”, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness and foreboding at being reminded that Manousos was about as anti-hive as you could get. How is he going to react when he sees Carol has formed a relationship with Zosia? Is Manousos being set up as a main antagonist? Now that Carol is clearly invested in Zosia as an individual, how is she going to reconcile her feelings for Zosia and her desire to put the world right again? Is Pluribus really a tragic love story where one of the characters is doomed to die or disappear?
Up to this point, I’d been going back and forth on what Pluribus was actually going to be about. It’ll be a fascinating character study for sure, but against what sort of framework? Will it be Carol versus the hive? Will it be Carol learning to live in this new world? Will it be Carol versus the other survivors? After all, humans are often revealed to be the true monsters in most of these post-apocalyptic shows and movies. “We are the walking dead!” and all that. What I didn’t consider, though, was the possibility that Pluribus might be a simple Shakespearean love story, with a wonderfully complex and nuanced queer heroine to boot. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
Pluribus is now available for streaming on Apple TV.
