‘Pluribus’ Finale Explained: Star Rhea Seehorn Took Me Inside Carol’s Mind

In its nine episodes, To many quietly dismantled the alien invasion genre and reconstructed it in Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s signature storytelling style. Just a few years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the success Apple TV The series introduced a new disease where most of the world’s population contracts an otherworldly happiness virus.

At the center of the story is Carol Sturka (played by Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn), a successful but temperamental novelist. When the reality around her changes – and it happens quickly – her grumpy attitude sets her apart from the happy hive mind that takes shape. She makes it her mission to set things straight, but it’s not a simple task.

The ninth episode, entitled La Chica o El Mundo, has the effect of a silent bomb. Its final moments refocus the emotional stakes and urgency of the series. What does all this mean? Where do things go from here? I sat down to chat with Seehorn to dig deeper into Carol’s state of mind, the defining moment that brought her back to reality, and her potentially incendiary motivations for moving forward.

If you’re not aware of the Pluribus finale, turn back now. Major spoilers follow.

The final act of the episode revealed Carol’s frightening realization. Although she officially told the hive mind that they did not have her consent to access her stem cells in order to transform her, in fact, Zosia (Karolina Wydra) and the others had actively cobbled together a workaround: her frozen eggs. Up until that point, Carol had been romantically involved with Zosia, an understandable decision after being abandoned by the hive mind to live a solitary existence as the only person in the entire state of New Mexico.

But this betrayal? It was the slap Carol needed. According to Seehorn, the scene exists in layers and illuminates Carol’s struggle to maintain her free will and her unexpressed grief over the death of her wife. “First of all, I thought I had to give consent,” Seehorn said. Us too.

“That’s removed,” Seehorn said. “That clock is ticking again, and you’re going to lose your individuality. On top of that, the idea that all this time, someone would say they really care for me, and that behind my back, you were still plotting to change me. Even intellectually, Carol probably could have guessed that, because of her biological imperative. But I feel like it draws attention to the fact that Carol knows she was a jerk.”

Losing a loved one at the same time the world is losing most of its humanity would probably make me do stupid things too.

If you’ve been paying attention, the potential romance with Zosia was there from the first moment they met. Seeking physical love – and even the false idea of ​​emotional love – for comfort after a deeply traumatic experience doesn’t seem like a bad decision. It’s this perspective that makes the next detail even more devious.

“The third thing is, of all the ways to do it, the eggs that I froze that represented my future with my wife, who is now dead because of them,” Seehorn said. “I don’t really know how betrayal can get worse. You could say: Is it heroic that she only ends up getting away with it when it puts her in danger? At the same time, I would say that everyone tells me they’re fine. It wasn’t like I could fight for everyone anymore. They don’t want to fight these people. They don’t want to save the world, except Manousos, who just wants to destroy people, which is not the right way to do it. do. come on.”

In our conversation, Seehorn compared this breakup scene with Zosia to the dinner scene that takes place in Episode 8, Charm Offensive. It was Carol’s favorite place to write when she was young, and it had apparently burned down, only for the hive mind to rebuild it and subject it to nostalgia-driven manipulation.

Was the relationship with Zosia the same? I think so, but Seehorn said it depends on interpretation. However, she didn’t expect the questions about love – and the things we do for it and how we respond to it – that Pluribus raised in her.

“As the show does so well, for me it revealed a lot of questions about, like, how do you judge what true love looks like?” » said Seehorn. “Can’t true love have any goals when we do loving things for the people we love? We often have a goal: I want you to love me back. I want to make you happy. So that was a pretty deep dive into what’s really going on here.”

So, what is Carol’s state of mind now? Is she in a better place than where she was when she pointed that lit firework directly in her face in Episode 7, The Gap? I wouldn’t say better, but it’s definitely a different place.

Learn more: Apple TV: 15 of the Best Sci-Fi Shows You Should Stream Right Now

On the one hand, she now has a weapon of mass destruction in front of her house. What is his plan with this? Seehorn hasn’t commented on this, but if you look at the third episode, titled Grenade, and the way Zosia reacted to that explosion, I have a sneaking suspicion that moving up to a much bigger bomb will disrupt the world – the hive mind world, of course.

As for Carol, “she’s scared, defensive, hurt, ashamed and embarrassed,” Seehorn said. “As we’ve seen, she’s very reactive and very impulsive, with a little bit of rage, and she can’t sit in those feelings.”

It took two days to shoot the scene with Zosia, Seehorn told me, as everyone explored the emotional spectrum of this betrayal from every angle. “In the end, I saw the take they chose, which almost went backwards,” she said. “We were trying something where I refused to be vulnerable in front of these people again. You don’t even deserve to see how angry or upset I am.”

Seehorn continued with a laugh: “It lights up in no time and says, ‘I need an atomic bomb, and I’m leaving.'”

The first season of Pluribus is available to stream on Apple TV.