Pluribus – Season One Review (Spoilers)
Pluribus begins with the promise of something massive. From the outset, we know an extraterrestrial encounter is on the horizon, but the show makes a deliberate choice not to frame it through spectacle or panic. Instead, we experience it from the inside, through scientific minds grappling with something incomprehensible while the rest of the world goes on in complete ignorance. There are glimpses of what’s coming, flashes of scale and consequence, but the roots of the series are firmly planted in reality. In the mundane.
Image courtesy of Apple TV
At its core, Pluribus is about resilience—how humans adapt, survive, and normalize even the most impossible circumstances. That idea is both fascinating and, at times, deeply uncomfortable to sit with.
I’ve read plenty of criticism about the show’s slow pace and uneventful storytelling, much of it aimed at Vince Gilligan’s restraint. And if I’m being honest, I almost gave up midway through the season myself. The repetition, the quiet stretches, the lack of traditional narrative payoff—it tests your patience. But I’m glad I didn’t walk away.
This is the kind of storytelling I love most: grounded, real, and unafraid to be difficult. Sometimes that makes it hard to watch. Hard to root for. Hard to stay engaged. But if you put your phone down and truly immerse yourself—if you accept the premise that a hive mind has connected to all but twelve people on Earth, at the cost of countless lives—you begin to feel the weight of the journey rather than just observe it.
Carol is a complex character in the way Gilligan’s protagonists often are. She’s far from perfect. She’s frustrating, resistant, and at times exhausting. She complains. She pushes back. She fights a battle that feels unwinnable, and we’re never quite sure whether that fight is even worth having. That ambiguity is the point.
The existence of the hive mind is presented as something strangely beautiful—peace, unity, an end to conflict. And almost immediately, that beauty is undercut by fear. The fear of losing identity. Identity is what makes us who we are, yet human individuality is also at the core of nearly every problem we’ve created for ourselves. Most of our unnecessary suffering comes from it.
The show’s slowness gives us the space to sit with that contradiction. To ask, over and over again: what is right? What is wrong? Would I give in? Would losing my sense of self be worth global peace? Is the hive mind truly offering salvation, or is there an underlying motive still hidden from us?
And maybe the most unsettling question of all—if I refuse to even imagine the positives, what does that say about me?
At this stage, Pluribus doesn’t offer answers. It isn’t interested in resolving the debate. It presents an unthinkable scenario and asks us to live inside it. We follow Carol as she resists, breaks, embraces the collective, and ultimately walks away again. That doesn’t feel like an ending. It feels like the beginning of a much deeper exploration of choice, consequence, and ripple effects.
I initially thought a rewatch might reveal clues about the aliens’ true motives. But as I write this, I’m realizing that Pluribus may be intentionally uninterested in definitive answers. Everything is open to interpretation—and meant to stay that way. What I’m most curious about now isn’t what I’ll learn on a second viewing, but what I’ll feel differently, and which moments will resonate now that I’ve lived with the experience once already.
Image courtesy of Apple TV
Pluribus won’t be for everyone, and I think that’s exactly the point. Stories like this require patience and a willingness to engage. That’s a big ask in modern entertainment—but it’s also a rare gift. We need fun rides and escapism, but we also need thoughtful, challenging work that forces us to confront ourselves.
In a time when people often complain about Hollywood’s lack of originality and lazy storytelling, Pluribus deserves real credit. So do Apple TV+ and Vince Gilligan for taking the risk to tell a story this quiet, this strange, and this human.
