Pluribus Season 1 Finale Sets Up Bold Direction For Season 2
Nothing was really resolved, other than Carol's true feelings.
If you’re looking for a clear end to the story of the Vince Gilligan sci-fi epic Pluribus, the Season 1 finale of the series, “La Chica o El Mundo,” doesn’t quite provide all the answers. The gripping drama, instead, has its finale focus on a much more emotional story, one that leads Carol (Rhea Seehorn) to a massive epiphany, which results in an ending scene that sets up Season 2 for a very different kind of show. Whereas Pluribus’s nine Season 1 episodes represented a slow burn, the last moment of the finale could suggest that Season 2 will be very different.
Here’s why Carol’s final decision was sort of baked into the beginning of the show, and how it will likely lead to a Season 2 version filled with entirely different stakes. Spoilers ahead.
Interestingly, throughout Pluribus Season 1, despite Carol’s initial resistance to the hivemind of the Joining, the stakes of the series almost never felt connected to whether or not Carol would or could undo this massive change that had befallen most of the human race. In fact, after Episode 7, and through nearly the end of Episode 9, Carol seemed more content to simply live with the new status quo, provided she could keep her own individuality. Even the extreme urging of Manousos (Carlos Manuel Vesga) doesn’t sway Carol for most of Episode 9, even when he challenges her to get her priorities straight. Asking her if she’d rather “get the girl or save the world” clearly sets up a choice for Carol. Either she’ll be okay with Zosia (Karolina Wydra) being part of a hivemind, and also her lover, or she won’t.
Carol and Zosia are not living happily ever after.
Manousos’s extreme attempts to break the Joining — which have something to do with radio frequencies, and apparently, inducing a near-fatal heart attack — are way too extreme for Carol. Earlier in the series, we saw her grapple with guilt, because her outbursts caused various trauma and fatalities among the hivemind of the Others. And, for most of Episode 9, she seems to view Manousos as an extreme version of her previous fanaticism. In answer to his question, “the girl or the world,” Carol seems to choose the girl.
That is, until she discovers that the Others have her frozen eggs, a detail which is both foreshadowed and revealed in this episode. The Others are planning on extracting Carol's T-cells from these eggs, and thus, being able to make a formula that will connect her to the rest of the Others. And it’s this step that is too far for Carol. Selfishly, she can live with the rest of the world being part of a hivemind. But when the Others are plotting to convert her, it’s too much to take.
Pluribus Season 1 Ending Explained
Carol makes a big decision in the Pluribus finale.
So, the final moments find Carol returning to her home in New Mexico, and the Others have furnished her with an Atom Bomb, something that we were told they would give her if she asked for it. Reunited with Manousos and bitter about it, Carol is now resolved to save the world, which, of course, has to include breaking the Joining and making the Others nonexistent.
This seems to suggest that Season 2 will be all about Carol making extreme demands of the Others, presumably with the help of Manousos. Will Carol threaten to blow up part of North America if the Others don’t do what she wants? Or, is there some larger, less obvious twist in store?
Whatever theories we might have right now for Pluribus Season 2, those theories will likely be wrong. Nobody could have seen this ending coming for Carol, even though, in almost every way, the series was clearly leading to this point.
