“Pluribus” delivered plot twist after plot twist as Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) tried to figure out how to save the rest of humanity from an alien hive mind. But Apple TV and Sony executives had a plot twist of their own for creator Vince Gilligan. “Pluribus” Season 1 was no stranger to production changes, but this request drastically altered the Season 1 finale.
By the end of the season, Carol realizes that the Joined are experimenting with how to fold her into the hive mind using the eggs that she had frozen at a fertility clinic years before the series started. She responds by requesting they deliver an atomic bomb to her house without explaining why. It seems like Carol and her fellow survivor Manousos Oviedo (Carlos Manuel Vesga) will use it to stop the Joined. But the last episode almost had a very different ending.
“We had a much subtler ending. It was like a secret handshake between them, like her way of saying, ‘I’m with you,'” co-writer Gordon Smith told The Ringer. But Apple TV and Sony executives suggested to Gilligan that the “Pluribus” Season 1 finale needed to have a bigger, bombshell ending. Gilligan called it “a great note.”
Vince Giligan isn’t worried about paying off Pluribus Season 1 finale’s atom bomb
“Pluribus” Season 2 will have to address what Carol will do with the atom bomb, since it is literally just sitting on her driveway. The Season 1 finale is packed with plot twists, but this is the type of narrative problem that Vince Gilligan has been dealing with since he was on “Breaking Bad.” He infamously wrote a scene where Walter White (Bryan Cranston) had an M60 machine gun, without actually knowing why he had the weapon.
“I’m not as worried about paying off the atom bomb as I was the M60.” Gilligan also explained. “At this point in the process, we have more thoughts about the endgame of the series than we ever did on ‘Breaking Bad.'” Gilligan explained that the writing team would regularly come up with story beats, only to change them for “better ideas,” which is the same mentality he brings to the “Pluribus” writers’ room.
But getting all these ideas for “Pluribus” Season 2 onto the page is taking longer than the creator expected. “We work at the speed we work at, much like glaciers melt at the speed that they melt at,” he said in a separate conversation with The Hollywood Reporter. “I still want to do more things, but I go slower than I used to.” According go Gilligan, “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, it’s just the nature of the beast.”
