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Pushed to encapsulate the essence of Pluribus in a sentence or two, you're likely to evoke classic sci-fi horror stories such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Episode one certainly played with some of the familiar terrors you'd expect to see in an alien takeover, even if it's clear that creator Vince Gilligan is keen to push past obvious tropes in search of something different, something more alien, if you will. But the latest episode – and it's associated cameo – proves Pluribus is anything but conventional.
Full spoilers for episode 6 of Pluribus follow.
The premiere taps into body horror with victims violently convulsing as the infection begins to take hold, and not everyone survives the process. Over 800 million innocent people end up dead, including our lead's partner, Helen, whom Carol helplessly fights to save. That in itself is horrific enough, but the alien contagion at hand also unsettles on a deeper level.
We never get to see the true face of this alien threat because it wears the faces of regular people decorated with an identical smile plastered across their empty, lifeless expressions. The power of The Joined is immediately established as absolute, and the speed at which they take over (from our and Carol's perspective) drains any hope of resistance. Never mind the fact that everyone else seems to have given up fighting back anyway, mindlessly accepting what only Carol refuses to.
Green Living
As chilling as that sounds, none of this compares to the simple fact that The Joined have made no efforts to hide their ultimate goal, which is to assimilate Carol and the 12 other characters who are immune to the virus. Whether it takes them days, months or even years, The Joined calmly inform Carol that she will eventually succumb to their control once they discover how to bypass her immunity. The entire intellect of humanity combined is working on this problem around the clock.
There's an eerie sense of finality to this, an existential helplessness compounded by Carol's sheer loneliness in the wake of humanity's collapse and her own personal grief. The second episode leans into this aspect of the horror more sharply, dropping the outright scares in favour of a prolonged, unsettling discomfort. That is, until episode five.
The new normal remains anything but normal to Carol, who starts making videos for her fellow survivors in the hope that they might help her turn things back to the way they were. She's discovered that there is a chance to undo The Joining, even if she doesn't know what that entails just yet. And crucially, Carol has the space and freedom to investigate this now that The Joined have abandoned her city because they "need a little space" from her.
With all the time in the world on her hands, Carol soon discovers that every public trash can nearby is filled with empty milk cartons. Further investigation reveals that The Joined aren't consuming milk in these, however, but rather a "strange yellow liquid" that's hard to define.
Eventually, Carol's prodding leads her to a dog-food factory named Agri-jet that houses lots of leftover food and something far more disturbing wrapped in plastic. Is it human remains? Something alien? We don't know, not straight away, because Carol gasps in horror, and then the credits immediately roll in. It's not until the following episode that the truth is revealed in classic scary movie fashion.
Food for thought
Episode six begins with Carol running outside of the factory, overwhelmed by what she just saw. Still, she's determined to use her video camera and film the horrors hidden within to create concrete proof of what The Joined are really up to.
Viewed firsthand through the footage she films, we see Carol reveal human heads shrink-wrapped in plastic. There are tons of them, along with many other different body parts, too. "This is what this whole plant is being used for," says Carol. "Right under our noses." There's also a meat grinder the "size of a bus," but we don't get to see it. The implication is that this is the source of the yellow liquid that The Joined drink, presumably, to sustain their control somehow.
Something doesn't feel quite right, though. For a show so consistently surprising and off-kilter, this is the first time that Pluribus borders on predictable. Of course The Joined have been eating humans all along. They're every bit as sinister as their alien peers from stories of a similar fashion. Gilligan hasn't been afraid to reveal answers to some of the show's biggest questions early on, but doesn't this particular reveal — just two-thirds of the way through season one — transform Pluribus into a more traditional genre story?
In any other show, it would, but Pluribus is far too smart and deranged to slip into cliche so easily. It turns out that everything about this reveal, from its so-called predictability to the way it was shot like a found-footage horror film, is actually designed to subvert audience expectations further.
The opening credits kick in after Carol's factory visit, and then we're suddenly thrown into an LA hot tub party where Koumba, one of the few humans who remains Unjoined, is enjoying the company of a few naked women. The Joined is always on hand to make each survivor happy...
This horny bubble Koumba's fashioned in his own decadent version of the apocalypse is about to burst abruptly, though, when Carol arrives to tell him the truth. Except, Koumba already knows.
"Is this about them eating people?" asks Koumba, much to Carol's shock and horror. "It is troubling," he adds with a casual tone of voice that suggests anything but.
And just like that, Carol's urgency and the sheer horror of what we've discovered is turned on its head. How can Koumba be ok with this? Why didn't he tell Carol when he first found out? And why aren't their cannibal habits giving Koumba the ick in that hot tub?
The answer to this mystery is, of course, John Cena. No, really.
Killing with kindness
The former wrestler turned Peacemaker star leads a video The Joined have created to address questions regarding their "food supply." Except, this isn't really John Cena. It is the real actor who's been cast to play himself in this unsettling infomercial, but Cena the character has been subsumed into the collective group mind of The Joined, just like the rest of humanity.
As Cena explains, there is a limit to what The Joined can eat. Their inability to harm life in any form means they can't harvest wheat or corn or rice, let alone eat meat. With 7 billion mouths to feed, The Joined risk starvation. There's only so much leftover food, after all, only so many apples to be found fallen from a tree.
Cena goes on to explain that 8-12% of the liquid they create is comprised of HDP, aka human-derived protein, which is taken from the 100,000 people who naturally die each day. In eating their remains, The Joined cherish the memory of those who have fallen and appreciate their sacrifice.
"We're not that keen on it, but we're left with little choice," adds Cena at the end. Sounds quite reasonable, right? It's kind of understandable, especially when packaged by such a charming actor in a slickly produced video. Koumba is not "pleased with this," he admits. "None of us are." But it's a reality he must accept regardless, as must Carol because, let's face it, she has little other choice.
The result is a very different kind of horror than the one we were led to expect going into this episode. Because what starts out as a malevolent form of cannibalism, a plot to take over humanity and use it as an alien food source, is explained away with a logical calm that's perhaps even more horrifying in its banality. The use of statistics and acronyms to sell the idea of eating human flesh as a positive drains the emotion out of this reveal, just as The Joined have done to humanity as a whole.
There's also the expectation that we should accept this explanation as something justified and reasonable, which adds another layer to this. Forcing Carol to understand and even sympathise with these actions – "Cena didn’t mention most of the population will starve to death in the next ten years," says Koumba – means we too are being persuaded to do the same. In doing so, Pluribus toys with traditional notions of horror through an ethical and even existential lens, making us somewhat complicit in accepting The Joined and their actions moving forward.
The episode quickly moves on then, reverting the focus back to Carol's individual journey. First, her loneliness is magnified upon learning that the other survivors have chosen to leave her out of future meet-ups, and then hope suddenly arrives when she learns that consent must be given for The Joined to assimilate her. By the time episode six jumps to Manousos in Paraguay, we've all but forgotten that the alien virus is forcing innocent people to eat dead humans for sustenance.
And it's all thanks to John Cena. Or at least, his charming smile, even if it is identical to the one shared by 8 billion other people in this chilling version of what some might call utopia.
Pluribus is currently streaming on Apple TV. Never miss an episode with our Pluribus release schedule.
