All posts tagged: Pluribus

Vince Gilligan on the 8-Word Note That Inspired ‘Breaking Bad’

Vince Gilligan on the 8-Word Note That Inspired ‘Breaking Bad’

Published by Daniella Wilson

We’ve all heard how Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan first thought that his beloved crime drama would tell the story of how a Mr. Chips-type everyman would turn into Scarface. But during a South by Southwest Film & TV Festival panel on Saturday morning titled “Albuquerque Aftermath: From Breaking Bad to Pluribus,” Gilligan said he found a notebook which had the very first conception for the show — and it was only nine words. “I found this old notepad in my office a few years back, and it was the very first idea for this,” Gilligan said. “And who knows where ideas come from? But it said: ‘Good guy does something bad to save his family.’” Then Gilligan retold the story of how he fleshed out his idea of a high school chemistry teacher with cancer who cooks meth to provide for his family and then pitched it to Sony Pictures Television. Gilligan says a top executive, who is no longer with the company, told him, “‘That’s the single worst idea I’ve ever heard.’” Gilligan …

Vince Gilligan Offers Update on ‘Pluribus’ Season 2

Vince Gilligan Offers Update on ‘Pluribus’ Season 2

Published by Daniella Wilson

Attention Pluribus fans: Season two is in the works but don’t expect The Pitt-level of swiftness in between seasons. Vince Gilligan joined his star Rhea Seehorn and members of the ensemble Karolina Wydra, Carlos Manuel Vesga and Samba Schutte for a panel conversation during Apple TV’s inaugural press day at Santa Monica’s Barker Hangar on Tuesday. Naturally, the Emmy Award-winning creator was asked the question “everyone’s dying to know” by a member of the press and fielded by Schutte, who moderated the lively discussion: “Where are you currently in the process of writing Pluribus season two?” “We’re plugging away,” answered Gilligan. “My writers are plugging away. All the folks, if you like the show, thank you for getting us here on this stage. It takes a long time to come up with these episodes. We are deeper into the process at this moment than I would like, considering how few episodes we have figured out. But it takes some time, just as it did the first season.” Pluribus represents an idea that Gilligan had been …

What Pluribus Reveals About AI And Our Future

What Pluribus Reveals About AI And Our Future

Published by Sam Flores

Rhea Seehorn is already dominating awards season for her spectacular performance as Carol Sturka in Pluribus, the wildly unsettling sci-fi series on Apple TV+ from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan. Earlier this month, she won the Golden Globe for her work in the series, having already picked up a Critics’ Choice Award for the same role the previous week. In Pluribus, both identity and individualism are under direct threat. An alien virus spreads across the globe, absorbing nearly everyone into a collective consciousness — the hivemind — leaving behind just 13 “lucky” people who are immune. Lucky might be the wrong word; unlucky might be worse. These survivors become keepsakes of an old world almost overnight. Carol loses her wife, Helen (played by Miriam Shor), during the “turning event”. While other immune survivors savour their new reality, Carol rejects it. The hivemind does not retaliate against her. Instead, it accommodates her. It assigns her a constant companion, Karolina Wydra’s Zosia, whose role is to manage Carol’s day-to-day life and anticipate her needs. Zosia is attractive, …

Streaming Ratings Dec. 22-28, 2025

Streaming Ratings Dec. 22-28, 2025

Published by Daniella Wilson

After scoring the largest single week streaming viewing total ever with the premiere of its final season, Stranger Things had to settle for just the third-largest week of all time with the release of more episodes on Christmas. The Netflix smash recorded 6.89 billion minutes of viewing for the week of Dec. 22-28. That trails only two other weeks in the five-year history of Nielsen’s streaming rankings — both of which are also owned by Stranger Things. The season five premiere week in late November ranks first with 8.46 billion minutes. From the week of its final season premiere through Dec. 28, Stranger Things recorded more than 25 billion viewing minutes in the United States. That figure alone would make it the top original streaming series of the year and put the show in the top seven among all titles, to say nothing of its tallies for the previous 47 weeks of 2025. Apple TV’s Pluribus set a new high of 483 million minutes of watch time for the week of its first season finale. The …

How Does the Hive Mind Work in ‘Pluribus?

How Does the Hive Mind Work in ‘Pluribus?

Published by skeptic

You know what’s great about a show like Pluribus? It’s that we don’t really know what’s going on, so we get to speculate. Just like real life! In case you haven’t seen this show, which just finished its first season, here’s a quick recap: A radio transmission arrives from a planet 600 light years away, and the message turns out to be RNA code for an alien virus. Some fool synthesizes it, and it infects almost everyone on Earth, causing them to act as one entity—a hive mind with common goals, values, knowledge, everything. The show’s title comes from the old US motto “E pluribus unum”—out of many, one. Only 13 people remain immune, including Carol Sturka, an ornery romance novelist who’s intent on keeping her individuality, against all efforts by the collective to absorb her. We don’t know for sure how the hive mind works, but it seems that the plurbs (the infected people) commune with each other unconsciously through radio waves. Talk to one of them and you talk to all of them. …

Pluribus star Rhea Seehorn gives update on season two

Pluribus star Rhea Seehorn gives update on season two

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Rhea Seehorn has shared a promising update about the second season of her hit Apple TV+ series Pluribus. Since its dramatic season one finale in December, fans have been eager to learn when season two will arrive. The show, from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, centers on Earth’s most miserable woman, Carol Sturka (Seehorn), who must save the world after the rest of humanity becomes a hive mind. Speaking to Deadline on the red carpet at Sunday’s 2026 Golden Globes — where she was awarded the trophy for Best Female Actor in a Television Series Drama for her portrayal of Carol — Seehorn, 53, confirmed that the team is already “back in the writers’ room.” Apple TV+ had originally greenlit the series as a multi-season project in 2022. Its debut season broke the streamer’s record to become its most-watched series of …

From “Sinners” to “Pluribus,” 2025 was the year of the hive mind

From “Sinners” to “Pluribus,” 2025 was the year of the hive mind

Published by Sam Flores

For a few exuberant days, Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), the despondent heroine of “Pluribus,” almost convinces herself to be happy at the end of the world. That wouldn’t be much of a challenge for most people in her position, since Carol’s apocalypse is curated to please her. As one of a dozen people worldwide immune to a phenomenon called the Joining, which unified billions of people into a blissed-out hive mind, Carol’s well-being becomes everyone else’s mission. It takes her a while to get used to that. First, she had to stop fighting the Others, the term for the billions united in groupthink, and accept if not entirely trust that the collective love they profess to have for her is real. That required modulating her anger and recognizing she prefers the company of her designated companion, Zosia (Karolina Wydra), to sullen loneliness. The hive mind is one of genre fiction’s most reliably unsettling tropes, embodying our native fear of being overwhelmed by a force organized around a singular purpose. In the season finale, “La Chica …

‘Pluribus’ Finale Explained: Star Rhea Seehorn Took Me Into the Mind of Carol

‘Pluribus’ Finale Explained: Star Rhea Seehorn Took Me Into the Mind of Carol

Published by skeptic

In its nine episodes, Pluribus quietly dismantled the alien invasion genre and rebuilt it in the signature storytelling style of Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan. Just a few years out from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hit Apple TV series introduced a novel disease where most of the world’s population contracts an otherworldly happiness virus. At the center of the story is Carol Sturka (played by Rhea Seehorn of Better Call Saul), a successful yet cantankerous romance novelist. When reality around her shifts — and it does so quickly — her grumpy demeanor sets her apart from the happy hive mind that takes shape. She makes it her mission to set things right, but it isn’t a simple task. The ninth episode, titled La Chica o El Mundo, hits like a silent bomb. Its final moments recenter the show’s emotional stakes and urgency. What does it all mean? Where do things go from here? I sat down for a chat with Seehorn to dig into Carol’s mindset, the watershed moment that snapped her back …

The ‘Pluribus’ Finale Really Delivered

The ‘Pluribus’ Finale Really Delivered

Published by Jenni Sidey

This story contains spoilers for Pluribus season one, up to and including the season finale, “La Chica o El Mundo”. Depending on your feelings about post-humanism or AGI or whatever the worst sentient LinkedIn profile has held court about at your holiday party, the opening of “La Chica o El Mundo,” the Pluribus season finale, is either a march to an execution or a coming-of-age ceremony. We see one of the last remaining non-Othered individuals, Kusimayu, in her village with her now-Othered people in rural Peru. Another impeccable Vince Gilligan process montage unfurls, with a crate being moved across air and land, a relay race among the giga-competent pilots and drivers and handlers that make up the omnipotent flesh LAN as it prepares to subsume one more into its ranks. The sacred cloud of Kusimayu’s stem cells and alien DNA has arrived. She’s all in on being all out of individuality. She huffs the vapor. She collapses. The people of her village—the people who were her people—sing and she awakens. With an eerie smile she …

“Pluribus” is a fascinating Rorschach test

“Pluribus” is a fascinating Rorschach test

Published by Sam Flores

With “Pluribus,” Vince Gilligan has what most series creators would envy: a show that generates constantly evolving conversation. Those who watch are careful about spoilers, often refusing to discuss the show with anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. Once a viewer is indoctrinated, however, they may find it difficult to refrain from puzzling over its message. Is it a parable about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence and the fawning tendencies of large language models? That we can answer with a firm “No,” since Gilligan said as much in several interviews, including a recent Variety profile. When he first conceived of the show nearly a decade ago, ChatGPT didn’t exist. Perhaps it’s one long defense of being a hater, as a Forbes story published a few weeks ago posits. Or maybe hatred is the cure. Theories abound on social media, especially (and of course) on Reddit. Clicking on a message board can send you down a rabbit hole for hours. Yet no one can say they’ve decisively decoded what the show is trying to tell …