Apple TV’s Pluribus is hands-down one of the best new shows of 2025. Created and written by Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul’s Vince Gilligan, the series follows misanthropic novelist Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) who finds herself isolated as one of the last humans after an alien virus transforms the Earth’s population into a peaceful, content, and happy hive mind. Immune to the Others, Carol seeks to not only resist their efforts to get her to become one of them but also searches to find a way to undo the “Joining”. The series just wrapped up its first season with a shocking development — but it turns out that while it’s a perfect edge to leave the series on, it was added only at the last minute. Warning: spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Pluribus beyond this point.
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Heading into the Season 1 finale of Pluribus Carol had been essentially playing house with the Other-ized Zosia (Karolina Wydra) and leaves with her on a two-week world tour after Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga,) another immune individual, experiments on an Other trying to reverse the condition. However, when Zosia lets it slip that the Others have developed a way to bring Carol into the hive mind even against her will, it’s enough to send Carol back to the side of humanity. She goes back to Albuquerque and joins forces with Manousos to save the world but with a major twist: Carol has a nuclear bomb in tow, having asked the Others for one previously in the season. It’s a wild cliffhanger, leaving fans to question what Carol is going to do and how far she’s willing to go to save humanity, but it’s something that the show runners explained didn’t come about until they were actually shooting the episode.
Carol and Her Bomb Was a Late Addition — And The Studio Got Involved
Speaking with Variety, Gilligan and executive producer Alison Tatlock explained that the Carol bringing out the nuke was something that became a major part of the ending a day or two into shooting the finale episode and that there had been a different ending in mind, but the studio asked for something better.
“We had an ending that was perfectly good,” Gilligan said. It would have been satisfying but not as satisfying. And we got a note. You know the old thing about how executives always have stupid notes. Actually, Apple and Sony said, ‘Is there an even better ending to be had?’ And we listened, and I’m really glad they gave us that note. It made for a better ending.”
Tatlock added, “We had planted the seed in Episode 3, but we didn’t have an exact plan to pay it off in this way. It opened an opportunity to do that.”
Carol’s Nuke Makes for a Wild Cliffhanger (And Perfect Leverage)
In Episode 3, Carol it was established that the Others would get Carol anything she asked for and Carol tested that by asking if they’d give her an atomic bomb, which they confirmed that they would since they couldn’t really refuse her anything. The finale shows that Carol definitely gets her bomb, but it also gives her something that she hasn’t really had up until this point: leverage.
While the Others operate as a hive mind and appear to be pretty powerful as a unit, they are still individual human bodies which means that they would be susceptible to the same kind of threats and damage even as part of the hive mind. As threats go, there aren’t really any bigger than a nuclear blast and the Others probably really wouldn’t want that to happen. However, it’s also true that one nuclear weapon alone won’t take out all of humanity which also suggests that maybe Carol hasn’t fully thought the plan through — yet.
Of course, Carol having this bomb even with the questions it raises and the new threat it poses is still a more interesting one than was originally planned. Pluribus director, writer, and executive producer Gordon Smith revealed that it was similar, but much more subtle.
“It was similar to that ending,” Smith said. “It was more subtle. Carol secretly forges a pact with Manousos, slips him a note and is perhaps going to play double agent. There wasn’t as much of a flag planted, like: ‘Nope, I’m not doing this. This relationship with the Others can’t continue.”
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