Transcription
The finale of Plurbus' first season proved that the most relatable thing about Carol Sturka as a main character is that she's human. After 40 days of imposed isolation, she gave into a kinder, gentler approach to life in the postjoining world, only to find out that wouldn't work either. After learning they could use her frozen eggs to develop a way to assimilate her anyway, she returned to Albuquerque with the atom bomb she jokingly asked for in episode 3 and drew her line in the sand. For a season that essentially amounted to the hero refusing the call to save the world, this answers the question of what comes next. Now they save it.
Of course, the bomb raises some questions, and as you probably heard, that came from a last-minute decision to change their original ending based on a note from the studio. The executives asked if there was an even better ending to be had, and this is what they came up with after they'd already started shooting the finale. That doesn't mean the bomb isn't important, and we'll get to that. But if we're thinking about burning questions, when I hear something like that, I want to know what the original ending was.
The finale's director, Gordon Smith, and the series creator Vince Gilligan, laid this out in an interview with Variety. They said it was similar, but on top of the bomb not being a part of it, Carol took a more covert approach. She would make a pact with Manus, but not openly declare war on the Hive. They threw out the idea of her being a double agent rather than saying, "I'm not doing this. This relationship with the others can't continue." That seems like a pretty significant change when you're trying to figure out what's going to happen next. But it also reinforces that the point of the first season was her making this decision. Get the girl or save the world. Getting the girl and saving the world didn't work, and trying to play both sides probably wouldn't either. So, the change itself doesn't concern me that much, but I do wonder how the Hive will react.
One question I saw repeated quite a bit after the finale was, why doesn't Carol just ask them to give her eggs back? Don't they just do anything she says? This oversimplifies the situation too much. The key things we know about the Hive are that they have a biological imperative to spread, a loving nature, a tendency to love everyone equally, and a commitment not to lie, harm, or kill. While this often leads them to give the unjoined anything they want in an effort to spread their love or make them happy, the show has made it explicit that there are some things they won't do. When Carol was testing whether they could lie, she asked a hive member to tell her what Helen thought of her WAO books. This was something she knew they'd try to avoid because it would harm her. When pushed, they reluctantly answered, but when she asked Zosa directly how to undo the joining, they refused. Carol almost killed Zosha with the grenade and they still admitted they would give her an atom bomb if she wanted it. But after the true serum incident, they left Albuquerque. They couldn't do the painful procedure to harvest her stem cells. But if there's some biological material already out there in the world that they can use to assimilate her, they wouldn't see the harm in that because in their mind and in accordance with their biological imperative, everyone would be better off if they were brought into the hive. Of course, this is just my assessment based on the specific scenarios the show made a point of showing us. At the end of the day, the others don't even know for sure how everything works, but I do wonder how things will evolve between them. They know it's a matter of time until they can complete their objective, and they don't necessarily need to deal with Carol directly to make it happen. They still wouldn't want to see any harm come to her or Manus, but they had officially left town for their own safety. Come to think of it, I wonder if Manusos has a recording of Lo he gets to hear every time he picks up the phone.
Now, Karolina Bedra's fantastic portrayal of Zosa has likely locked her in as the face of the Hive for the foreseeable future. Given how things were left, in a typical story, you might expect her to take a turn. But what would that even mean in Plurbus? While the hive does the lawyerly language thing and can be deceptive through omission, they've always been upfront about what they're trying to do. While Carol certainly sees what happened with the eggs as a betrayal, and the relationship feels like manipulation, from their point of view, it could just have been another attempt to make her happy. There was an added benefit of distracting her. But if they are just compelled to spread love, then how is this not in line with that? For now, the bomb seems to say that the romance is done. But it's hard to imagine that Zosha won't continue to be a main character in the coming seasons. I do wonder what else they can mine from what happened and how that can help us better understand the hive and how it will help Carol better understand herself. Though from Anusos, while they were on their world tour, I think it's entirely possible he might have already figured out how to disrupt the signal or at least cut individuals off from it. From looking at the books he was studying, Manusos at least thinks he does, which means he'll have a plan for season 2, and we'll be watching him put things together. That seems in line with Vince Gilligan's previous shows. If the Hive is doing the "We just need some space" routine, that leaves a lot of room for the unjoined duo to go on some adventures. I guess I should point out that the show got a two-season order, so they were always guaranteed to make this one and another. But in the most recent interviews, they seem to have settled on about four seasons worth of story. Right now, we have a ticking clock with a month until they can convert Carol. So, unless these last three seasons are going to cover about 10 days worth of time each, some things are going to have to go wrong on both sides.
The way I see it, the show was most effective in making you think. As I mentioned in my video about the ending, by avoiding mystery box storytelling, it shifted focus to exploring how the characters reacted to the situation they found themselves in rather than withholding information to keep viewers guessing or what's become popular in the online discussion about shows like that, trying to solve the show based on clues. So, I imagine Manus will be able to separate one of the others or disrupt their connection at scale, but it'll cause more problems than it solves.
A central burning question I have comes from Zosa's assertion that the others know what it's like to be us, but we don't know what it's like to be them. We don't understand how someone who's been assimilated would feel about being disconnected. We don't know what memories they would retain, how their bodies would react to cutting off all those feel-good chemicals, or how they would process the absence of that connection. While they're connected, it doesn't seem likely that they could be convinced that they need saving. Zosa seems like the leading candidate if they needed to test breaking someone free from the hive, but that brings up a lot of questions. Carol sort of needed to believe she was connecting with the individual, but even through the lens of her being able to enjoy a massage and recall her mango ice cream story, even if the individual feels and the hive knows, how would that person she used to be react to the situation if they woke her up? That's just the tip of the iceberg. And I guess rather than going through everything we don't understand about the others, the big question I have here is how Manus's discovery leads us to learn more about what it means to be joined.
There's been a lot of commentary on Kusamayu's joining and her leaving the baby goat behind. And the human interpretation is that what Carol warned her about came true. Everything that made her her was gone. Her connection with her family and tribe also gone. and her care for God boy ceased to exist. Is it really that cut and dry? I'm not sure we know. In interviews, the showrunner mentioned losing sparks of affection and individual connections to a favorite goat say, but also qualified the comment by saying it's not because she's suddenly cold and evil. It's because she perceives the world in a new way. What that means for the former individuals is an ongoing mystery. And I guess we'll continue to gain understanding in bits and pieces rather than getting everything all at once. The frequency will play a role. And among the speculations I've seen, I like the idea that it's essential for their synchronization. The cell phone network being disabled always felt like a detail we were supposed to take note of. And I think the theory about the opening credit sequence being an important visual clue makes sense. I think they'll definitely answer this early on in season 2 because as I've mentioned, I expect Manus to have an actual plan to disrupt it.
For the big picture questions, I won't be holding my breath. I don't think they need to answer all of those, and some they probably shouldn't. Zosa told us where the hive was on the subjects of where the signal came from, and that the beings on Kepler 22b were unknowable to them because they're just too far away. Knowing the answers to how or why the RNA sequence got created doesn't really change the story we're watching, unless you think it's all set up for an invasion story, which I don't. The critical piece of intel that came out of that was that they're building a giant antenna to spread the love out into space. We don't know if that's what happened on Kepler or if the civilization there created the sequence. If they made it, it might have been to hobble emerging civilizations once they reached a level of technological advancement that could make them a threat. Or they might have been trying to do something good that went wrong. Either way, the hive isn't waiting for them. They know what they're trying to do. And Carol and Manuso should be figuring out what they're going to try to do about it.
That leads us to the other unjoined. Mr. Diabate is the only one of them we've spent any time with, so you'd expect him to play an ongoing role. He was riding pretty high when Carol left Las Vegas. He was getting to live out his stage fantasies and felt confident they wouldn't be able to assimilate him without his consent. Now that we know that they're moving ahead with Carol's conversion, it should be a matter of time before they figure out ways to bring the rest in. Kusamaya was the only one who wanted to join right away, but because of family and loved ones, the rest weren't immediately hostile and didn't see a path to change things either way. Once they learned about the HDP and the caloric deficit, they felt morally obligated to try to save them. Since Carol hasn't heard from any of them except Lakshmi, it's hard to say what role they'll play. But if you only have 12 individuals to work with and three seasons of TV to go, you're probably going to need to get them involved. Diabate didn't appear to have the family connections. He was the most curious. And even though he couldn't wait to get Carol out of his penthouse, there was that scene where he copied her making the sandwich and the diminishing returns on getting everything you want all the time. I expect more Kumba. So the question is, will he feel betrayed? Will something happen like that? Will he flee if they try to change him? Or will Carol need to come to him and change his mind?
As for the atomic bomb, I think it's more of a symbol of "now we're at war" than something Carol thought all the way through. We know how it got there and why they decided to include it. And I don't think they had to commit to what she was trying to accomplish. I think it works as a deterrent, but I expect they'll come up with something clever. Since it sounds like they're just getting into the writing phase for season 2, we'll probably have to wait until 2027 to find out.
That's pretty much all the big questions the finale left me wanting answers for. Of course, that's on top of all the premise-related questions I've been pondering since the series premiere. At the time I'm making this, we still have one final live discussion for episode 9. So, I'll get to see where some of my friends are at. And I'm curious to see what you're all thinking about in the comments. Let me know where you think the show is heading in season two. What big questions have been stuck in your head, what you think the show is about now that season 1 is in the books, and anything else that's on your mind. Season 1 asked the question, "Are you going to get the girl or save the world?" Carol answered, "Get the girl." Then that didn't work out. So, now we move on to saving the world. Sometimes you get both answers. And I think that's a great place to leave things. Please like this video if you enjoyed it. Please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. And thanks for watching. I'll talk to you.