Pluribus: What could be the secret ingredient in the hivemind’s milk? Theories explored

The fifth episode of Apple TV's Pluribus launches us into another mystery on top of the show's usual psychological chaos. Rhea Seehorn's Carol follows a trail of hints that start with a carton of suspicious milk and ends with something much larger. If you too were wondering what's the story behind the milk cartons, then you're at the right place.

The episode, which is titled Got Milk spends most of it's runtime tightening a spiral. What exactly is inside this secret milk? The theories from fans are running wild as many speculated it to be human remains. Maybe blood plasma or spinal fluid or bonemeal or powdered corpses. It's a very distopian premise, and leads you into a thinking spiral of what exactly is in there.

Before Carol disocvers anything, the episode revisits Zosia's cliffhanger in the fourth episode. However, Carol's attempt to drug her chaperone ends up with the worst possible consequences. The hivemind collectively distances themselves from her, and in one of the show's most intense scenes, every chaperone near her drives away, leaving her stranded on the highway.

What they do when she is not watching becomes the next puzzle. They move in perfect sync. They vanish together. They barely speak. They may not even rest. But Carol does learn that they eat. Every recycling bin she checks is overflowing with nothing but empty milk cartons.

So what exactly is inside the milk cartons in Pluribus?

Helen then ends up at Duke City Dairy. Inside the warehouse she finds an oily gold liquid and stuff that doesn't exactly feel like milk. She tests it at home with a pH kit and it reads 7.1, completely neutral.

The barcode on the bag leads her to a supermarket, then to a dog food manufacturer’s warehouse. She opens a freezer filled with frozen vegetables, which fits with the hivemind’s insistence that they refuse to harm living creatures. Then she lifts a hidden tarp. She processes what she is seeing, then recoils with a visible jolt. Her reaction confirms everything that the Pluribus episode has been hinting at without saying aloud.

The imagery throughout points toward one grim truth. Crows peck at the powder bags. Coyotes dig at Helen’s buried body. Episode two even shows a corpse being loaded into a dairy truck. The hivemind cleaned up the countless bodies created during the disaster linked to their psychic spread. Their practicality suggests they would repurpose the dead rather than bury them. The show frames them as obsessive recyclers rather than killers.

The twist feels inevitable. The milk may come from the dead. And Carol might be the only human left willing to confront what that means.

Ofcourse, we will know more about this in the show's fourth episode, but from everything we can see now, things are falling pretty fast. For now, all we can do is wait and see what Carol discovers next. Pluribus' Season 1 Episode 6 drops on 5 December.

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Pluribus is now streaming on Apple TV.

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