Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 26, 2025
When I covered Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul for another publication, my primary responsibility was writing multiple pieces each week on both series. I read every interview and listened to every podcast. What I loved most was Gilligan’s meticulous approach in the writers’ room. They spent six months breaking stories before filming began, and as each series progressed, those intervals grew longer.
What struck me most about their creative process was how deliberately they wrote themselves into narrative corners at the end of each season, then spent months figuring out how to escape. They did not plan far ahead. The endings of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul only took shape once the writers reconvened for their respective final seasons.
I suspect that for Pluribus, Gilligan has at least a loose roadmap. But he will not determine how to fill it in until the writers’ room convenes. He has said as much publicly. With no production start date announced and the team working in their “bunker,” expect at least eighteen months, and more likely two years, given Gilligan’s exacting production standards. Every detail matters, which is what makes his shows, Pluribus included, so absorbing and rewarding to watch.
Still, it is deflating to realize we may wait as long as two years after the show dropped a literal atom bomb in the finale before learning what happens next. More critically, that bomb was a late addition during filming, which means the show must account for months in the writers’ room, months of pre-production, months of filming, and the changes made along the way because, again, Gilligan does not plan far ahead. Given how intricately plotted these shows are, he can only focus on what is immediately in front of him: the next season. In a cultural environment where two years feels like five, I worry that interest will fade between seasons.
But that is a problem for future us. Present us has only the finale to analyze, and it seems clear from the episode’s events that episode eight’s “Charm Offensive” was one-sided. Carol may have fallen in love with Zosia, but Zosia was executing the hive mind’s strategy the entire time. Everything was manipulation, down to the specific memories she shared.
It is the same manipulation, I suspect, they used on Mr. Diabaté. They claim they will not act against Carol’s will, but it is all carefully worded evasion. Zosia admits that the Plurbs have harvested the eggs Carol and Helen collected and will use those stem cells for conversion, whether Carol consents or not. They have already converted Kusimayu. Carol’s conversion is only months away.
That is why Carol demands the Plurbs leave an atom bomb in her front yard at the episode’s end. It is an unmistakable signal to Manousos that she is ready for war against the hive mind to save humanity.
As many predicted, Carol and Manousos clash when he finally arrives. Carol, in love with Zosia, instinctively protects the hive mind. Manousos remains willing to do anything to convert them, even conducting dangerous experiments on the hive, as he did with Rick, that put everyone’s lives at risk. He has also discovered something crucial: a particular radio frequency calms the hive mind, and he wants to exploit that knowledge to convert them back.
Carol is initially reluctant and even hostile toward Manousos. But after a brief honeymoon with Zosia that ends with the revelation that the Plurbs will convert Carol “for her own good,” she has a change of heart. She realizes Zosia has been deceiving her all along.
How this will unfold, and who will convert whom first, remains an open question that will, unfortunately, take years in real time to answer. That is genuinely frustrating. I almost wish Gilligan and the writers had spent two years developing the entire series so it could unfold annually. No one wants to wait until 2030 or 2032 to find out whether Carol can save humanity, not when the fragility of our own existence already feels so precarious.
