Pluribus: Vince Gilligan wants people to argue over his new show “not angrily, but spiritedly” - Here’s why

Apple TV+'s latest series, Pluribus, is part post-apocalyptic sci-fi and part psychological thriller, and that is what makes it so unique. To date, very few sci-fi thrillers have managed to strike the right note.

Vince Gillian has always loved a good moral tug-of-war. From Breaking Bad's slow corruption of Walter White to the complex conscience of Better Call Saul's Jimmy McGill, the Emmy-winning creator has spent years perfecting the art of depicting moral ambiguity.

Now, with Pluribus on Apple TV, he's diving into something stranger, darker, and more unsettling: A story about a world where happiness itself becomes a kind of apocalypse.

Among the dozen people who remain unaffected after the weird alien event, The Joining is Carol Struka (Rhea Seehorn). The rest of the world is absorbed into a serene hive mind. In short, it's a perfect world; one without war, poverty, discrimination, inequality, and oppression. However, it's ideal to such an extent that it seems eerie. Speaking to Deadline, Vince Gilligan revealed,

"I’d love for this show to be a water cooler show … I guess, probably virtually nowadays — although I’d love it even better if people got together face-to-face, just period in the world, I think we need more face-to-face and less communicating virtually — but I love the idea of people watching this thing and arguing over it, not angrily, but spiritedly."

Pluribus: Vince Gilligan's happiness apocalypse

Gilligan calls Pluribus "a water cooler show," one that invites debate. Thus, he wants the viewers to think, take sides, and debate with the show's central questions: Is unending happiness worth the cost of free will? Maybe, maybe not.

The show taps into the eerie and old-school sci-fi Gillian grew up on, such as The Twilight Zone and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, stories that use fantasy to expose something deeply human. He revealed,

"I thought it’d be a fun thing to have a show where we could, one by one, turn all those tropes on their ear, change them up a little, make them different, make them fresh or for a new generation.”

In Pluribus, the invasion isn't physical, but it's psychological. Gillian's alien event doesn't wipe out people or cause a virus-induced zombie outbreak like in AMC's The Walking Dead.

In Pluribus' world, the most significant rebellion isn't fighting for survival, but it's refusing to let your emotions/consciousness be controlled. Carol, played with raw precision by Seehorn, becomes the show's unlikely hero. She's bitter, abrasive, and far from perfect.

Across its opening two episodes, Pluribus weaves a hypnotic rhythm between hope and horror. The first episode," We is Us," introduces Carol, a novelist who once wrote about romance, now watching a world that has rewritten the meaning of love itself. By Episode 2, "Pirate Lady," she finds herself in conflict with others like her, the few immune individuals who question whether saving humanity from its own bliss is even moral. Her anger isn't harmless. Every time Carol lashes out, millions connected to the hive mind freeze or die, suggesting her emotions ripple across the collective. In Gilligan's twisted world, misery becomes both a weapon and a cure.

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Also read: Pluribus: The meaning of the show's title and why Vince Gilligan chose it, explored

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