‘Pluribus’ series review: Vince Gilligan’s smart, funny, terrifying sci-fi thriller unsettles in the best way

Watching Pluribus causes one to wonder what one would do if faced with the situation the protagonist, Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), finds herself in. One fine evening, the minds of all the people in the world are joined into a hive mind, which Carol and 12 others in the world are not part of.

Is it a bad thing? Is individuality the key? Is the one more important than the 8.2 billion? The fact that the 13 are not able to reach a consensus makes it seem like the entity that integrated the rest of the world’s population into the hive mind must have known a thing or two. What if there were no crime, no war, optimal use of resources overlaid with a bland niceness?

Rhea Seehorn and Karolina Wydra in “Pluribus”
| Photo Credit:
Apple TV+

Carol wants to reverse the process, get the world back to “how it was,” perhaps hurtling towards destruction, with global warming, crime and pitched battles for resources.

Helen (Miriam Shor), Carol’s partner, succumbs to her injuries during the Joining. When Carol learns that there are others who are immune to the Joining, she demands to meet them, specifically the five who can speak English, as she does not trust the Others to translate truthfully.

The Others do whatever is asked of them and so organise a meeting in Bilbao where Koumba Diabaté (Samba Schutte), a Mauritanian immune, who believes in living king-size, flies in on Air Force One. A Colombian immune, Manousos Oviedo (Carlos-Manuel Vesga), refuses any contact with the Others. The immune seem quite content with the way things are. Laxmi (Menik Gooneratne), an Indian immune, finds Carol’s seeking to fix the problem annoying.

Zosia (Karolina Wydra), looking suspiciously like Raban, the pirate in Carol’s novels before she gender flipped the character, is Carol’s chaperone. Zosia tells Carol the Others are non-violent (slowly starving as they do not kill plants or animals for food), but that the initial Joining caused the death of 886 million people. Carol soon learns that survival in the new world comes at a chilling cost, in actor John Cena’s cheerful words.

Breaking Bad’s Vince Gilligan presents a fascinating thought experiment, anchored by an extraordinary performance by Seehorn in Pluribus.

Seehorn’s Carol is exasperating, testy, smart and vulnerable and keeps us in her corner even if one might not buy completely into her rationale. We are scared for her when the town abandons her, we weep with her when she finds out things Helen did not want to tell her and cheer her triumphs, however small.

Sharon Gee, Darinka Arones, Rhea Seehorn, Amarburen Sanjid and Menik Gooneratne in “Pluribus”
| Photo Credit:
Apple TV+

Beautifully shot, from the bison on the golf course to the piano playing on its own, Pluribus makes us question everything we see. Why does Carol drive a police car? What happened to the internet — we learn early on that the cell towers are down, so how are the other immunes meeting on zoom?

Pluribus is layered — from the townspeople staying away from Carol for 40 days in a kind of reverse spiritual retreat to the translation app designating Carol “unknown word or name.” The hive mind, with its bland niceness, naturally brings to mind AI with its danger to individuality and creation.

With just one disruptor in Carol, who demands and gets a real hand grenade, and the possibility of bringing the whole structure down, one is forced to wonder if it is worthwhile after all.

It must be — because while Diabaté lives out his James Bond dreams (complete with eye patch and baccarat) and Laxmi curses in weirdly-accented Hindi, we can count on Carol and Manousos, who make that horrific trek from Paraguay to Carol in Albuquerque to break up the party in a variety of ingenious ways. And yes, Carol, a train horn is the loneliest sound in the world.

Pluribus is currently streaming on Apple TV+

Published – December 26, 2025 02:56 pm IST