Pluribus is a sci-fi TV show on Apple TV that revolves around a virus that has affected all of humanity and merged everyone into a hivemind. The sole survivor is Carol Sturka, played by Rhea Seehorn, who also happens to be the most miserable person on Earth. The show explores many themes, and most recently, viewers have drawn comparisons between AI and the hivemind, especially in the third episode.
In a recent interview, show writer Gordon Smith states that while the team is pleased to have viewers “think about and feel different things in different ways”, he also doesn’t want to explicitly agree with one camp or another.
“So there are themes that come to mind, but it’s less rich to say, ‘Oh, this is a show about fill-in-the-blank.’ If I said that it’s a metaphor about not using your phone, you don’t need to watch the show. The show becomes useless. The show becomes meaningless,
Smith states. “There are AI proponents that are going to watch the show, and they might feel attacked or they might feel supported. But for us to say, ‘No, it should just be this one-to-one correspondence,’ it limits both the storytelling and the availability of the show to ask questions that people are going to be interested in.”
There are a lot of things we can say about the hivemind in Pluribus. It’s an allegory for AI, just like how Breaking Bad was a critique of the American healthcare system. It’s about American imperialism. It’s about the loss of individualism. It’s about addiction. Pluribus is shaping up to be a very thematically rich show, but Smith insists that it’s important for the writers to not come out and state that the show is about one thing or another. Once they do that, the show becomes meaningless, according to Smith. He goes on to state that all the readings are valid but it’s important to keep the show open, especially when it’s so conceptual.
In the interview, Smith also gives us a small hint about what Pluribus Season 1 is exploring. We already know that the hivemind is willing to do a lot to keep Carol, but what won’t they do? Where is the line?
“The joke that I constantly make in the room is a joke with a core of truth. The Others are basically saying, ‘I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.’ And so the question is, ‘What is the ‘that’ they won’t do?’ A lot of the course of the first season is discovering what they will and won’t do, and it’s even more about what they won’t do,” Smith says. “I take them at their word that they will give her an atom bomb or a bazooka.”
It’s a little insane to think that the hivemind didn’t draw the line at atom bomb, so it’ll be interesting to see where that boundary is.
Pluribus is now available for streaming on Apple TV.
