15 Questions We Need Pluribus Season 2 to Answer

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s latest project, Pluribus, offers fans refreshingly subdued and mysterious marketing.

From the beginning, you’re not quite sure what this sci-fi thriller is going to be, and it rewards that patience by keeping you guessing. We soon learn depressed author Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) has to save the world from a blissful hive mind dubbed “The Others.”

Pluribus has quickly become Apple TV’s next Severance, and it’s left us with more questions than answers heading into Season 2.

Here are the biggest questions we have ahead of Season 2:

1. What is the atom bomb for?

On Pluribus Season 1 Episode 3, “Grenade,” Carol tested how far the others would go to make her happy by asking if they’d give her an atom bomb. Then, on the Season 1 finale, Carol requests exactly that, and it’s delivered in a crate to her doorstep.

The episode’s ending is about Carol reaffirming her opposition to The Others, and presumably, the bomb is going to factor into that.

But what precisely is she planning to use it for? Perhaps it’s a literal nuclear option; she’ll threaten to blow herself and Albuquerque up if they try to induct her into their hive.

2. How will Carol and Manousos work together? 

Of the dozen individuals left on planet Earth, only Colombian man Manousos Oviedo (Carlos Manuel Vesga) shares Carol’s disdain for The Others. Their paths finally intersect during the Season 1 finale, but it isn’t a happy introduction — their language gap is the least of the issues between them.

Manousos is as stand-offish as Carol and even more militant. He thinks if The Others can’t be freed, they’re better off dead, which Carol definitely disagrees with.

While the episode ends with them allying in earnest, how will the relationship progress? Will a friendship form? Or will they continue to grate on each other as they work towards a common goal?

3. Will Carol be joined?

Pluribus Season 1 Episode 1, “We Is Us,” ends with the hive reassuring Carol they’re hard at work finding a way to “fix” her immunity. Carol later learns that she has at most a few months until they crack that code.

It’s more or less confirmed that the Joining can be undone or at least interrupted, though it’s only been done for a moment so far. If it can be full-scale reversed, then, given the build-up to the Others wanting Carol as part of them, perhaps she’ll be temporarily joined and freed later.

It’s unlikely the show will permanently give its lead character over to the hive, but such an experience could give Carol’s character a new perspective and development to work through.

4. Will Zosia be un-joined?

The flip side of that previous question concerns the most prominent Other so far, Zosia (Karolina Wydra), Carol’s designated chaperone of the brave new world.

Aside from a brief glimpse of a memory on Pluribus Season 1 Episode 8, “Charm Offensive,” the real, individual Zosia hasn’t appeared yet. Carol eventually meeting the real woman behind the chaperone seems like a storytelling lay-up, one ripe with potential conflict and character development.

On Pluribus Season 1 Episode 4, “Please Carol,” Carol attempts to separate Zosia from the hive mind, but she goes into cardiac arrest when it happens. Perhaps a second, successful attempt is due?

5. Is Diabete safe?

Pluribus Season 1 Episode 6, “HDP.” reveals that The Others need the immune system’s stem cells to make a virus variant that will infect them. For Carol, they’ve gotten around this by using the genetic material in her frozen eggs.

So, given that workaround, one must wonder if Koumba Diabaté (Samba Schutte) is as safe as he thinks?

When he tells Carol that The Others need stem cells and consent to extract them, he seems confident that this will protect him. But if the hive can word its way around infecting Carol, presumably it will find a way to get around Diabaté’s word too.

Diabaté is taking advantage of The Others to live large, but he clearly values his individuality too much to want to join them. The choice, though, may be taken out of his hands.

6. Will Laxmi be willing to join?

Another individual left on Pluribus, and another POV on what The Others are, is Laxmi (Menik Gooneratne). Her husband and son are part of The Others, making her protective of them and refusing to see them as anything but the people they once were.

Laxmi has also butted heads with Carol, because Carol’s short temper caused The Others to seize up collectively around the world; Laxmi’s infected grandfather then died in a car crash. Now, the Others want to join Laxmi like all the remaining individuals, but the show hasn’t given much spotlight to how she feels about this yet.

Would she accept it, seeing it as a way to be with her family? Or will the chance that Carol and Manousos can come up with a way to reverse it, snap Laxmi out of her denial that her loved ones haven’t been replaced?

7. How does the virus connect the hive?

Pluribus has only skimmed over the mechanics of how the virus works. It spreads through the air or physical touch (like a kiss, symbolizing it as an “act of love”) and then the infected is part of the hive near instantly.

Zosia also touches on how the collective mind filters out the experiences of individual bodies.

How does the virus link people’s minds in the first place? The hints so far seem to suggest it has to do with bio-electricity, with the infected’s bodies being mutual receivers of a larger signal. Manousos discovers that a particular radio frequency can disrupt the connection, as well. 

With how Pluribus Season 1 ended, this seems like one of the first puzzle pieces that Season 2 will fit together.

8. How can the virus be cured? 

Curing the virus is Carol’s on-again-off-again goal during Season 1, and as of the season’s finale, she’s on again.

The Others refuse to say whether the virus can be cured, and Carol has taken that to mean it can. If it couldn’t, they’d just say that instead of evading her question.

However, Carol tries and fails to extract the answer for the cure. The “how” of undoing the virus remains an open-ended question. Discovering how the virus works will probably go hand-in-hand with finding a way to reverse it.

If the virus does draw on radio-like signals, then it may be a matter of jamming the signal rather than creating a pharmaceutical cure or antivirus. 

9. Who made the virus?

We know the virus comes from space. Earth’s communications picked up a galaxy-spanning signal that contained instructions for creating the virus strand. But was that the virus’ original creators or just another world that fell victim to it?

In either case, what is the purpose of spreading the virus? And why would someone want to create it in the first place? Within this question is another question: will Pluribus even attempt to explore or answer who the creator is?

There’s a reason, for instance, that zombie movies often skimp over the origins of the virus that brings the dead back. Delving into too much backstory can distract from a story’s immediate conflict and give answers that could never satisfy everyone.

10. Why are some people immune? 

Out of several billion human beings, there are only a dozen people on the whole Earth who are naturally immune to the virus. Whatever the deciding factor is, or if there’s even a single trait that keeps them immune, it is extremely rare. 

The immune must wonder why they’re immune, though none of them have the medical knowledge to investigate further. Indeed, this might be another stone that is left unturned as Pluribus hasn’t made much of a mystery out of this topic yet.

If finding a cure is going to be a driving story of Season 2, finding the reason for existing immunity might be a place to start.

11. More celebrity cameos?

One of the most amusing and surreal scenes on Pluribus is when John Cena shows up as himself.

As part of the hive mind, he’s recorded a video explaining in calm, cogent terms why the pacifistic-to-a-fault Others must sustain themselves on HDP — human-derived protein made from dead bodies.

Presumably, Cena isn’t the only celebrity who’s part of the joined, so could Pluribus repeat this trick with another unexpected guest star? This could even be a way to bring in actors from one of Gilligan’s previous shows. Not just Breaking Bad, but also The X-Files.

For that meta route, the obvious answer seems like Gillian Anderson. Carol’s about the right age and demographic to have had a crush on Dana Scully in high school or college.

12. What’s Planet Kepler-22 like? 

Tied into questions of the virus’ origins are ones about life on the planet where the signal came from — Kepler-22b.

Carol asks Zosia what The Others know about them, and it turns out, almost nothing.

Is that Pluribus signaling that the planet and life there are irrelevant? Or is it piquing interest for an eventual answer? A theory picking up steam is that the virus is a weapon designed by its maker to eliminate rival civilizations. After all, the Others’ extreme pacifism impedes their ability to live long-term, since they can’t kill plants to harvest food.

Given his work on The X-Files, Gilligan isn’t above telling a story about an alien invasion. 

13. Can the world be fixed? 

While Carol is operating under the belief that the virus can be cured, it’s unclear if the world can truly go back to normal.

For one, millions upon millions of people died during the Joining. That means a “reset” is already out of the question.

Moreover, if the hive mind were to be severed, that would leave a planet of individuals who know everything about each other. Can the world function as a civilization after that? That’s a question to answer down the road (Gilligan has said he has a four-season plan).

Pluribus employs a time clock visual, counting down days to and from the joining event. Could the show eventually introduce a third for the days after the hive mind has been undone?

14. What’s the endgame? 

Speaking of Gilligan’s four-season plan, what is Pluribus going to look like by that fourth season?

The ticking clock of The Others learning to infect Carol doesn’t seem like it can last for longer than Season 2. But where will the show pivot from there?

What will be the final conflict in the show, and how will it be decided? Will the show be about picking up the pieces after the Joining is cured? Or will it go for a darker ending with everyone on Earth assimilated? Or perhaps somewhere in between, with some people joined and some people not.

No one could have predicted where Breaking Bad would go during Season 1. The thrill of Pluribus is that it looks like it’ll offer the same experience.

15. When is Season 2 premiering?

Every episode of Pluribus leaves you wanting the next one. So, how long is the wait for more? While Apple TV has already picked up the show for season 2, a release date hasn’t been confirmed.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Gilligan said he doesn’t think a production start date by May 2026 is feasible: “It’s going to be a while between seasons; it just is. Unless we invent a time machine or figure out how to stop time,” he added.

In that case, it might be as far away as 2027 until we get some answers to these questions.

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All episodes of Pluribus Season 1 are streaming on Apple TV.

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