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Pluribus writer-director Gordon Smith says there's no need to reveal what the hit sci-fi show is actually about...because then it will essentially become "meaningless."
"There are themes that come to mind, but it's less rich to say, 'Oh, this is a show about fill-in-the-blank.' If I said that it's a metaphor about not using your phone, you don't need to watch the show," Smith told The Hollywood Reporter. "The show becomes useless. The show becomes meaningless. There are AI proponents that are going to watch the show, and they might feel attacked or they might feel supported. But for us to say, "No, it should just be this one-to-one correspondence," it limits both the storytelling and the availability of the show to ask questions that people are going to be interested in. This is such a conceptual show, and my hope is that it makes people think about and feel different things in different ways."
The series, set in New Mexico, follows a romantasy author named Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) who is one of the only people in the world immune to the effects of a mysterious virus that has turned everyone else into members of an eerily calm hive mind known as 'the Others.' And if you still don't know what it's about, neither do I...and neither does Seehorn, actually.
The end credits of each episode contain the sentence, "This show was made by humans," prompting some viewers to theorize that the show is a metaphor for society's slow descent into a reliance on AI. We're not quite yet halfway through the first season (and the show was already greenlit for a second before the first even premiered), so there's a long way to go before we find out Smith and creator Vince Gilligan are trying to tell us...and we're in no rush to find out.
Pluribus is available to stream on Apple TV, with new episodes dropping weekly. See our Pluribus release schedule for exact timings. For more, see our list of the best shows on Apple TV Plus, and keep up with new shows heading your way.
