Following the release of the Pluribus finale, writers and executive producers Gordon Smith and Alison Tatlock have opened up about the ending of Season 1 and why Carol Sturka’s (Rhea Seehorn) journey played out like it did.
In Episode 8 of the Apple TV series, we learned more about the hive mind than ever before when Zosia (Karolina Wydra) showed Carol Kepler-22b – the planet that transmitted the alien virus sequence to Earth.
The final scene sees Zosia telling Carol that she’s going to have a visitor, and that visitor is none other than Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga), the only other immune human who wants to find a cure.
Pluribus has been building to the moment they meet, but it’s not what you might have expected. Warning: spoilers ahead!
Pluribus writers break down Carol and Zosia’s relationship
When Manousos asks Carol, “Do you want to save the world or get the girl?”, she momentarily chooses the latter, and we see a brief, quasi love story between her and Zosia.
However, the illusion shatters when Carol finds out that the Others are using her frozen eggs to join her. She heads home and tells Manousos, “You win, we save the world” – and she’s brought an atomic bomb along, just in case.
Even if Carol hadn’t asked Zosia the right questions at that moment in time, the writers behind the show explained to Dexerto why this happily ever after with Zosia would have never worked out – and why it even happened in the first place.
Alison Tatlock said, “I think that in the room we felt like a certain amount of delusion of self is required to enter into that kind of relationship, and that for all of the psychological reasons that we painstakingly build throughout the season, it felt to us that Carol was in a place where she was willing and able to trick her brain just enough to find some comfort and to be able to relax and experience some pleasure and connection.
“But something was going to crack. And even when we weren’t sure exactly how, I don’t think we ever felt like, ‘Oh, they could live happily ever after,’ whatever that is.”
“That said, I don’t know that the end of the season is the end of possibility, you know?” added Gordon Smith. “Everybody knows a good toxic romance is an on again, off again kind of thing.”
So, perhaps there could be a Zosia-Carol reunion in Pluribus Season 2? Speaking of which, Apple TV ordered two seasons when it greenlit the show, and creator Vince Gilligan told Dexerto that the sophomore chapter is moving along nicely.
“We’re in the writers’ room for Season 2, we’ve been going since the end of October… All of us writers have been plugging away,” he said, adding that after a break for the holidays, they’ll be back on the case in January 2026.
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