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Bloomberg

The end of the world is not usually so cheery.
In Pluribus, the new Apple TV+ series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, scientists encounter a mysterious repeating signal coming from outer space.
That discovery leads researchers working for the United States military to encode a sort of virus that inevitably gets set loose and, after brief periods of mass seizures, leads to a psychic harmony among every human on Earth, who now operate as an “us”.
The thing is, they are really very nice. They offer pooled resources, true equality and, above all else, contentment.
For Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), a grumpy romantasy writer who is immune and surrounded by smiling altruists at her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, things could not be worse.

Typically, post-apocalyptic and dystopian speculative fiction narratives offer worst-case scenarios. Think Fallout, 28 Years Later and The Last of Us.
Pluribus, though, forces its viewers to genuinely consider whether giving in to this new world would be so bad after all.
“If this is a vision of absolute happiness in the calmest, most secure way possible, but it means losing being what is distinctively you, is it worth it? That’s obviously the tension that we’re trying to figure out,” Gordon Smith, the show’s executive producer, says.
“And we don’t know.”
Smith says Pluribus – Latin for “of many” – stands apart from other The Body Snatcher-esque projects because it does not have Cold War concerns. Those films released from the 1950s to the 1980s, as well as countless episodes of The Twilight Zone, were energised by fears of nuclear war and communism.
Pluribus feels radical because Carol’s enemies genuinely seem to care. They let animals out of zoos. They provide healthcare for everyone. They are vegetarians and they refuse to kill any living being, even a fly. Is the modern world just too cynical to believe ending it could actually be paradise?
In fact, when Carol, in the second episode, meets with the other English speakers who have not yet “joined” with the others, she is in the minority. One man is charmed that these people will seemingly cater to his every need. Another woman maintains that her son is still very much her child, even though he now shares a hivemind.

Carol is, in a way, the ugly American – loud, abrasive and willing to break up the party with her harsh truths.
“There’s 7 billion people on one side,” Smith says, noting that the writers felt as if they had to make it feel as though there was “some beauty on the other side” so Carol actually has some hard decisions to make.
The series is something of a Rorschach test, Smith says. It is not trying to directly evoke the news cycle, even though some viewers have already regarded it as a show about artificial intelligence.
The joined are a little bit like ChatGPT come to life with their all-consuming knowledge – every person on Earth now has the skills and memories of everyone else – but without the spuriousness of a learned language model. The eeriest thing about them is that you can see hints of the people they were before this all happened, the pain they have pushed down.
“If we’re feeling didactic or like we’ve got a lesson, then we’re steering into the wrong waters,” Smith says. “We want to make sure this is a human scale.”
But at the same time, it is hard to watch Pluribus and not think about the times in which we live, even if the metaphor is not as obvious as it is in, say, The Running Man or The Handmaid’s Tale, where the rise of fascism is on the menu.
These days, it feels as if polarisation is the language of humanity, and not in a good way. One just needs to log on to X, formerly known as Twitter, to see that.
Carol, in some ways, represents our fractured world with her fury. At the same time, we must root for her. That is in part because if she simply gave up, that would not make for very entertaining television.
More crucially, however, it is because our ability to feel is what makes us human, and is not hanging on to humanity what all our dystopias are about, anyway?


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Rhea Seehorn (left) in a still from AppleTV+‘s Pluribus. Seehorn stars as Carol Sturka, one of the only humans not to have “joined” the majority who share the same memories, skills and proclivity for kindness. Photo: Apple TV/TNS

Rhea Seehorn in a still from Pluribus. Photo: Apple TV/TNS

Rhea Seehorn (second right) and Vince Gilligan (middle) with Pluribus cast members at the show’s premiere in Los Angeles on November 4, 2025. Photo: AFP

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Bruce Willis (left) and Samuel L. Jackson in a still from Unbreakable. Photo: Newsmakers

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Lifestyle

Entertainment

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Film & TV

The new show from Breaking Bad’s creator about a cheery hivemind virus that infects humanity flips the script on the post-apocalyptic genre


The new show from Breaking Bad’s creator about a cheery hivemind virus that infects humanity flips the script on the post-apocalyptic genre.


Apple TV

United States

Science fiction

Pluribus, AppleTV+’s dystopian sci-fi, makes the end of the world look happier than ever

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The new show from Breaking Bad’s creator about a cheery hivemind virus that infects humanity flips the script on the post-apocalyptic genre

The new show from Breaking Bad’s creator about a cheery hivemind virus that infects humanity flips the script on the post-apocalyptic genre