Pluribus

Vince Gilligan, the architect of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, returned to Albuquerque for Pluribus, a nine-episode dystopian drama that landed on Apple TV+ in late 2025. The series imagines a world reshaped by the Joining, an extraterrestrial virus that has converted nearly all of humanity into a serene, telepathic hive mind called the Others. Only thirteen people remain immune, and the show centers on one of them: Carol Sturka, a bitter lesbian author played by Rhea Seehorn. Where Gilligan's earlier work explored men who break bad, here he trains his lens on a woman who refuses to break good.

The Others are not monsters. They are polite, helpful, and endlessly patient. They deliver groceries, maintain infrastructure, and smile with unnerving consistency. Their stated goal is to eventually assimilate the immune, and they see no rush. Carol, by contrast, is a monument to unhappiness: her apartment is a clutter of books and bottles, her conversation a series of sharp dismissals. She values her misery as the last authentic human experience. The series follows her reluctant alliance with two other Unjoined individuals, Zosia and Manousos, as she searches for a way to reverse the Joining entirely.

Shot by Better Call Saul cinematographer Marshall Adams, the show uses cool palettes and wide lenses to evoke emptiness. Composer Dave Porter, another Gilligan regular, built a minimalist electronic score that one critic described as the sound of silence. The series was filmed in New Mexico with a reported budget of $15-20 million per episode, much of it spent on visual effects for the Others' synchronized movements and a sub-audible drone designed to induce calm in viewers. All nine episodes were released weekly from November 6 to December 23, 2025, exclusively on Apple TV+.[edit]

Carol Sturka lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a world that has gone quiet. The Joining, a virus of unknown origin, has absorbed nearly eight billion people into a collective consciousness called the Others. These individuals move with synchronized grace, speak in a unified cadence, and exist in a state of perpetual contentment. They have eliminated crime, poverty, and conflict. They have also eliminated individuality, desire, and the capacity for genuine grief or joy. Carol, one of thirteen immune humans, finds this peace suffocating.

The Others accommodate the Unjoined with meticulous care. They deliver groceries before they are requested, repair appliances unnoticed, and leave notes that read simply: We will wait. Carol's apartment becomes a fortress of disorder, a deliberate counterpoint to the sterile harmony outside. Her only company is her own rage and the occasional forced interaction with Zosia, a calm, knowing woman who seems to understand the Joining better than she admits, and Manousos Oviedo, a former priest who has made a fragile peace with his immunity. Together, they form an uneasy triangle of suspicion and need.

Season 1 unfolds as a slow-burn investigation. Carol traces fragments of information about the virus's origin through Albuquerque's transformed landscape. She visits libraries where the Others have re-shelved books in perfect order, interviews former colleagues who now speak with the collective's voice, and uncovers clues that point to a neuroscientist named Dr. Elena Vasquez. The Others, meanwhile, grow more attentive. They begin to leave personalized gifts, to finish Carol's sentences, to anticipate her movements. The series builds tension not through violence but through the creeping realization that the hive mind is not an enemy to be fought but a condition to be endured.

The emotional weight of the season rests on Carol's refusal to be consoled. She is not a hero in any conventional sense. She is petty, drunk, and cruel. But her stubborn commitment to her own unhappiness becomes, paradoxically, a kind of integrity. The show asks whether individuality is worth preserving even when it means suffering, and whether happiness without choice is any happiness at all. By the season's end, Carol has assembled a device that could disrupt the Joining network, but she has also begun to understand that the cure might be more terrible than the disease.[edit]