‘Pluribus’ Season 2 gets more chilling as finale confirms horrifying fan theory about the Others
For Carol Sturka and her indomitable drive to not 'join' herself with the hive-mind, the hour of reckoning seems to have finally arrived. The ninth and final episode of 'Pluribus' season one, known as 'La Chica o El Mundo,' aired recently on Apple TV+. The finale ended on a clever cliffhanger that paved the way for Carol's future to hang in the balance. It also presented our perpetually pissed-off protagonist in a rather different light, i.e., for the first time on the show she let her emotions get the better of her.
The finale also went to great lengths to affirm a previously discussed fan theory that gained a lot of traction on the social media platform Reddit, says SlashFilm. In the interest of providing some essential context, the third episode of the show, i.e., 'Grenade' had Carol and Miriam Shor's Helen visit a hotel made of ice somewhere in the Arctic Circle. It was from their conversation therein that we learned about Carol freezing her eggs sometime in the past, with an eye towards eventual motherhood if she and Helen decided upon it. Fast forward to the sixth episode, i.e., 'HDP', and Carol came to know about the shocking manner in which the Joined went ahead with assimilating the immune individuals.
As revealed by Mr. Diabeté, the hive-mind is in the practice of extracting stem cells from the immune system to bring them into their fold. Carol was outraged to know about this, and made her lack of consent very clear. She would not have the Joined extract her stem cells. The hive-mind's response was quite carefully worded in the form of, "No stem cells will be collected from your body". Although Carol was temporarily reassured, she didn't suppose that the Joined would go back to collect her stem cells from her frozen ova, as per Elite Daily. Doing so would perfectly fall under their doctrine of not harming any form of life.
The finale featured the shocking revelation that the hive-mind has already harvested Carol's stem cells from the afore-mentioned source, and she now has about a month before they complete work on her individual strain and end up assimilating her. While Manousos arrived at Albuquerque, replete with his dogged determination to resist the Others, Carol surprisingly turned him down. To her, the relationship with Zosia seemed to matter a lot more than her previously vowed goal of restoring normalcy across the world. By the end of the finale, we know that the reluctant Carol and Manousos are locked in a battle against time, one that could be taken up in the show's sophomore season.
Rhea Seehorn recently sat down with THR to share her insights on her character's state of mind, commenting, "She just feels so incredibly betrayed. She had some real feelings for Zosia, and she feels like an idiot she thought Zosia had real feelings for her. It’s almost like the way you would feel from a breakup where somebody has chosen to not just break up, but to do it in such a painful and humiliating way that didn’t need to be done.” All episodes of 'Pluribus' are available exclusively on Apple TV+.
