Celebrity guest stars are part of the television toolbox. But for some shows, it’s easier to cast high-profile stars than others — especially if the celebrity plays themselves. Pluribus, Apple TV’s latest hit sci-fi series, feels like the last place you’d see a celebrity guest star: it’s a profoundly lonely series, focusing on one woman trying to save the world despite almost everyone else on Earth being absorbed into a hive mind.
But in Episode 6, “H.D.P.”, one of the grossest facts in the show is delivered by a surprising guest star, playing himself and begging a curious question about the hive mind itself.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Pluribus Episode 6, “H.D.P.”
Mr. Diabaté returns to Pluribus in Episode 6.
In Episode 6, Carol (Rhea Seehorn) decides to go on a road trip to visit Mr. Diabaté (Samba Schutte), who has settled in living in Las Vegas. She tells him the dark secret she has discovered: the hive mind subsists on a strange milky product that is, in part, made of human remains. He doesn’t seem surprised by this, however; he discovered the secret earlier by asking the hive mind persistently. In fact, he asked one specific member of the hive mind: John Cena, who apparently has been hanging out with Mr. Diabaté.
The hive mind also decided the wrestler-turned-actor was the best person to explain this to Carol, and Mr. Diabaté plays a video where Cena explains the hive mind cannot in good conscience end any life, including plant life, so all seven million members or so of the hive mind subsist on a sludge made from “windfall” — crops that can merely be scavenged, not harvested; leftover processed food from before the Joining; and “H.D.P.,” aka human derived product.
“Given our druthers, would we choose to consume H.D.P.? No,” Cena says. “Throughout history, most cultures, though not all, have taken a dim view of anthropophagy. Honestly, we’re not that keen on it ourselves. But we’re left with little choice.”
Carol discovers the hive mind has been subsisting on a strange substance.
Cena’s speech does explain the strangest part of the hive mind invasion so far, but there’s a deeper implication to this guest appearance: what other celebrities have survived the Joining? In Episode 1, the first person to inform Carol of how the hivemind worked was Davis Taffler, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm Production and Conservation. When she asked to speak to the President, he told her that the President and most other high-powered officials had passed away in the Joining, leaving him the next best thing.
But, apparently, John Cena survived. This opens the gate for countless other guest star spots down the road. Who knows, maybe we’ll get an appearance by other Vince Gilligan stars like Bryan Cranston or Bob Odenkirk, not as their Breaking Bad characters, but as the actors themselves. At the very least, this episode proves that, in the event of alien-invasion-induced-cannibalism, John Cena makes for a good spokesman.
