Rhea Seehorn and Karolina Wydra, Pluribus
Apple TV[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Pluribus, “La Chica o El Mundo.”]
The first season finale of Pluribus opens with a massacre. Kusimayu (Darinka Arones), the young Peruvian who survived the apocalypse with her individuality intact, is absorbed into the hive mind that binds together the rest of the world. Technically, she's the first person on Earth to consent to her own Joining, trusting her family's promise that she'll be one with them in their bliss. But she might have been misled — not about the bliss, but about her family. As soon as Kusimayu is no longer her own person, her village is gone. The singers fall silent; there are no more meals to share; animals that were lovingly raised are left to fend for themselves. The Others smile blankly and say nothing as they pack up and clear out of the villagers' old homes. An entire culture has just been erased.
Pluribus doesn't play games with its audience. Speaking to the New York Times before the show's premiere, creator Vince Gilligan was coy about the premise of his new series but clear that it shouldn't be treated like a puzzle to be solved: “The twist on this one is that there is no twist,” he said. Gilligan's showrunning career has evolved into an act of trust between his shows and their viewers, moving from the propulsive but detail-oriented Breaking Bad to the slower introspection of Better Call Saul, which, as a prequel, couldn't always surprise audiences with what happened and managed instead to surprise them with how. So far, the intrigue on Pluribus comes from the debate around what it all means. The show gets its unpredictability from its misanthropic hero, Carol (Rhea Seehorn), but the question that animates the story isn't just how she'll react to the new world order. It's how we, the viewers, would.
I've landed on horror. Pluribus began with the utopian declaration that the hive mind is “us,” which suggested that…