Vince Gilligan, of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame, has done it again. The director’s newest project — Pluribus, the newest science fiction series on AppleTV+ — is as gripping as his previous successes with its unique and unsettling spin on pandemic-era fiction. 

Pluribus’s protagonist Carol Sturka — played by Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn — is an up-and-coming author who discovers she is immune to an alien virus that has infected the rest of the human race. In a matter of days, billions of humans form a shared consciousness, leaving Carol utterly alone. After losing her partner, Helen, to the illness’s deadly side effects, Carol is forced to free the surviving members of the human race from the virus herself — even when what remains of humanity does not want to be saved.

A peculiar philosophy: Is peace worth its cost?

Pluribus’s greatest strength is the philosophical nature of its main villain — the human race. The virus has converted the infected into a collective with the goal of achieving universal happiness. 

In theory, the virus has achieved world peace. In practice, the consequences of uniting eight billion minds force viewers to reckon with the value of their own individuality and the role it plays in their humanity. 

At first, the idea of total unity might seem appealing. If everyone is the same, no one can be criticized for being different. The infected “Others” claim that the virus has cured racism, sexism, and homophobia. Everyone loves and accepts everyone because everyone is everyone — with all the knowledge to show for it. 

Even the most unique person becomes just another thread in the collective tapestry. The world’s leading expert on Shakespeare? You have their memories, and they have yours. Your bully from high school? The two of you are now one, and old grudges have vanished.

But what lies beneath the surface? The members of the collective have no choice but to conform and act like a well-oiled machine, taking strides to fulfill the biological imperative of their virus — propagation. 

Even the initial process of infection is strangely invasive, with a single kiss being enough to bring someone into the collective. Despite the assurances of the infected that Carol’s life is her own, no one is given the choice to become infected; the virus is forced upon them in an act of assault, stripping them of both their physical and mental agency. If the infected have their way, Carol will be the next to meet this fate.

To make matters worse, joining the collective means a loss of free will, acting without hesitation to fulfill any directive — whether this be to drop everything to restock a grocery store, or to step into the blast radius of a grenade. They lack the ability to think critically, to have autonomy, or to hold an opinion. 

The members of Pluribus’s collective are no longer themselves, even referring to the identities they were forced to abandon in the past tense. Is abandoning individuality the best decision for the human race — or does it spell the end of all the good that came before?

Safety in the collective, or freedom alone?

To Carol, joining the collective means certain death. She repeatedly refers to her mission to cure the virus as a mission to save humanity, and cannot understand why anyone would disagree with her motives. When considering her life before the pandemic, her views make a lot of sense: she is an author whose creative work and values align closely with individual thought. Being Carol means being independent; would she be the same person if that were taken away from her?

When exploring these themes, Pluribus appears to hint at a topic relevant to our own post-pandemic world: humanity’s increasing dependence on AI. With large language models like ChatGPT having access to much of the knowledge found on the internet, the technology has become its own sort of hive mind. 

The resulting temptation to supplement independent thought with AI-generated responses is significant: 33 per cent of American adults claimed in an April 2025 report by Pew Research Center that they had used an AI chatbot like ChatGPT, and that number has almost certainly grown since. At what point will our reliance on technology begin to fundamentally change the way we think and behave, and could these changes have an impact on who we are as people?

While we have not come to a collective consensus on whether AI will ultimately help or hinder us, we are facing the same crisis of individuality as Carol. Namely, is our reliance on AI leading to a drain of individual thought and creativity? Although AI has not yet threatened to take forceful control of us as a species, the impact of the Pluribus virus presents an opportunity to reflect on its growing role in our society.

What’s next for Carol’s world?

While the first four episodes of the series have yet to propose a solution to humanity’s growing dilemma, the power of this science fiction story comes not from the quick resolution of its challenges, but from the uncertainty it inspires in its audience. With its critic rating of 98 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and the confirmation of a second season in the works, Pluribus will undoubtedly have even more quality entertainment to offer science fiction audiences over its next five episodes. 

Since the show’s premiere on November 7, Pluribus’s Reddit page, r/pluribustv, has gained approximately 80,000 members. Many of these have spent the last few weeks discussing theories and predictions for what might await Carol and the infected in the coming episodes, demonstrating an impressive level of engagement for a show that is less than a month old. 

After its meteoric rise in popularity, it seems Pluribus viewers have formed a ‘collective’ of their own.