News Pluribus So You’ve Watched Pluribus Episode 1 and Have Some Questions Reactor has got you. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on November 7, 2025 Credit: Apple TV Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Apple TV Warning! This post contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Apple TV’s Pluribus! You are doing yourselves a disservice if you read more without watching. Go watch a great show and then come back here for more. Apple TV didn’t reveal much in the lead-up to the premiere of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus. One of the trailers did hint that something… not great would happen to the world, especially from the point of view of Carol, played by Rhea Seehorn. And much like Carol, you might be asking what she asks at the end of the trailer linked above: What the fuck is going on? The talk Carol has with the Secretary of Agriculture (or whatever) on C-SPAN at the end of the first episode explains a lot (and also evokes a similar scene from Jurassic Park), but there are likely more than a few moments you may still be wondering about. Here’s our take on some questions you may have after watching episode one. Credit: Apple TV So, what the fuck happened to everyone? As C-SPAN guy explained, the lab researchers fabricated the RNA sequence that was being transmitted in space. They infected rats with the sequence, a rat bit a person, and then the doughnut-licking ensued. The virus (or whatever) didn’t just take control of a person — it erased a person’s sense of individuality and connected every member of humanity into a hive mind that wants all living things, including Carol, to be happy. That hive mind also houses every person’s memories, skills, and experience, meaning, for example, that a TGI Friday’s server can fly a plane, no problem. It’s also why they all knew Carol’s name right after the turning. How did everyone suddenly turn so quickly? Remember those infected licking all those swabs for those petri dishes? And remember those planes flying overhead in a row as Carol and Helen talked outside the bar? Those planes were crop-dusting humanity — apparently it doesn’t take much alien virus to turn someone — leaving Carol as the only uninfected in the U.S. How did Helen die? Helen, Carol’s partner, was infected like everyone else. It’s clear though that many people didn’t survive the transition — if you were on the freeway, for example, when you got crop-dusted, odds are good that you’d died when your car crashed. Helen fell down and smacked her head pretty hard on the pavement when she was turning, so the head trauma likely caused her death (though perhaps some people just don’t survive the infection, full stop). What’s Carol gonna do now? We’ll have to watch and see! One thing that’s clear is that she’s far from safe: the infected want her to join them, after all. All they want is for Carol to be happy! “Come join us, Carol!” they think. “Why wouldn’t you want to join us? We’re living the dream!” In the meantime, however, they’ll do anything and everything they can to make Carol happy. How that plays out, I’d venture to say, will be a major consideration of the season. [end-mark] The post So You’ve Watched <i>Pluribus</i> Episode 1 and Have Some Questions appeared first on Reactor.