The following fan theories or loose threads have been confirmed at this point
- The hive telepathy utilizes / is audible on RF frequency 8.613
- The hive are building a (giant?) antenna to pass the signal along
- The hive are using Carol's eggs to make stem cells, but it is taking a while
- Animals are not part of the hive
- The hive sleeps together in large groups to save energy
The following have been ambiguously confirmed (seems to be the case, but perhaps room for interpretation):
- The hive's behavior towards the survivors is a manipulation tactic tied to their imperative to spread the virus.
- Many human traits have been discarded by the hive, for example they don't produce art, and they don't "play"
- The hive can't forcibly extract stem cells from someone without their consent but they can produce them from material already extracted from that person.
The following questions remain unanswered:
- Can babies be joined? What happens if a member of the hive has a baby? How do the hive treat babies?
- What would happen if someone were to jam frequency 8.613? What would happen if you placed a plurb into a faraday cage or some other RF- proof environment?
- Can the joining be reversed? Is the person still inside there or have they been lost forever? The way the hive responds to this question implies that it can be reversed, but the results may not be a complete recovery of the person, or even desirable.
- Historical questions- how exactly did the hive beat the military? What happened to the president and his cabinet? Did any scientists figure out a cure before the hive won? (These things may not be a high priority to answer)
- What exactly does Carol plan to do with the atom bomb?
- Is there any possibility of other unknown survivors out there? Uncontacted tribes. People in bunkers. Things like that.
Let’s say you were able to stick an Other in a faraday cage and cut off their “communication” with the hive. Who’s to say the disconnected Other would suddenly be themselves (pre-joining)? The first scientist who got bit by the rat was suddenly devoid of her personality/individuality despite being the only human infected at first.
I don't think we need to say that. They'd be infected with the virus but unable to commune with the hive. It's one step of a two-step process: sever the tie, then cure the infection.
I like this. If Manousos is working on/already has a working signal jammer, the idea might be that they have to jam the signal and then the work begins to "cure" the signal-jammed Other.
I've just seen a lot of people here suggesting that just "jamming the signal" is what will "cure" the Others, but that'd leave kind of a weird plot hole given what we saw in Ep 1 with the initial infected.
I still think signal is needed for much more than just communication, the intro is a clue I think. The particles only organise themselves once the singing (signal) starts, and it continually pulses through them all even while they are organized into the word "Pluribus"
I think we can assume that being out of contact with the collective does not change their Plurbishness -- they simply get disconnected.
We have the example of the first infected Plurb. That is the same situation as one Plurb cut off from all the rest.
Also Zosia talks a bit about the individual Plurb's experience as being part of the collective, and we know that they do have one.
was that the initial infected? They must be right? But they got the people in space too somehow before anyone noticed.
Maybe in just confused and remembering wrong
The thing is that step two doesn't seem to be related to step one, although you can think of ways that step one might help (you can keep a test subject imprisoned for interrogation without being able to phone home for backup)
Like if you had the cure for the infection that would logically turn off the radio connection anyway
I think your first point is the crucial one. The only way to deliver a virus cure without backup getting called is to jam the comms. It might also mean dealing with a being who has only one individual's knowledge.
Problem is that the hivemind might realise that the test subject's signal has been broken and send people to the last location that their signal was working.
I don’t think they are actively infected by a virus for this entire time. More like the virus rewires the host to join a networked mind…. Then the body kills the virus as is usually the case.
I suppose they could be carrying around a virus, like herpes or HIV, but most viral infections get fought off by the host or they kill the host. So severing the connection might well “cure” the person while severed. But the person is now genetically altered to be a transmitter and receiver for the hive mind.
But who says the people are only connected to the hive on Earth? The hive came from space, I don't know how those waves work but since the Earth got the signal on their radars, maybe the people from other planets are connected to the hive on Earth too?
If that's the case then the first human infected was already connected to the hive somewhere else.
They'd be tied to laws of physics. A radio signal can't be faster than speed of light. The original signal travelled 600 light years, so the ping would be the double, over a millennium.
The virus's recipe was sent to earth before Columbus travelled to America.
I don't think the hive is connected to other planets, otherwise they'd have alien knowledge. In an episode they mention they don't know anything about the Kepler people. So we can say they don't have their knowledge and aren't connected to them
I think we already saw the second step - sodium pentathol
I think you'd get a local mini hive, like a bluetooth mesh network that syncs to the whole and downloads updates the next time it's back in wifi range.
But you can try to apply them truth serum without alerting the others, so you find the cure
If the seizures are the brain waves aligning/realigning with the planetary magnetosphere / plutooth carrier signal, which appears symptomatically identical for both joining and carols rage events, then we haven't seen an infected persons behavior without altered brain function.
That would at least allow for unjoining in some limited way, given what is currently known by carol/Manny.
Plutooth, love it lol
plutooth… fucking awesome
I don't think we know that the first infected was devoid of personality. We only saw her biological imperative drive in action.
Yeah I think it makes other changes beyond allowing the signal to be received.
That will make waking a plurb more interesting actually.
What frequency was the rna codons being broadcast on. 8.613? Maybe each member of the hive transmits and receives from 8.613
A disconnected plurb would just reset their behavior to day 0. They would act exactly as that first female scientist did in the lab in episode 1: immediately kiss the first person they see to try to spread the virus.
It's going to be Zosia, by the way, and she's going to try to kiss Carol, mirroring the kiss Zosia initiated in ep8.
When they hired the actress who plays Zosia they wanted someone who also speaks a language other than English. I assume this means that at some point Zosia will become unjoined, and no longer be able to speak English.
Edited to spell Zosia’s name correctly.
That is the question
They could also just die. Then the struggle would be convincing the hive to change their ways.
Carols atom bomb plan is probably just a deterrent to them trying to infect her. “I’d rather blow up the world than lose my autonomy”. Can she even activate it if she wanted to?
I can think of one other use for Carol's bomb.
A nuclear bomb detonated high in the atmosphere (or ideally, above the atmosphere) can be used to disrupt RF signals over a large area. This is called a "nuclear blackout". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_blackout
While I think it is probably unlikely that Carol is aware of this effect based on what we know about her so far, this might be something that Manousos would think of. The trick is, how would they get the bomb at the right height and detonate it.
Oooooh a nuclear EMP would be super fucking interesting...
I mean, the hive already gave her the bomb. Nothing would stop them from helping them transport it high enough to do the thing. Unless they suddenly grow a backbone.
I guess it would depend on if the plan would work or not, if it would work and they foresee her plan then they wouldn’t, otherwise it would make carol happy soooo
The opening shot of the episode looked like a rocket going into space. It wasn't, it was a plane, but could be foreshadowing.
I think that was the virus being brought to Peru for the young girl
Sandia crest outside of Albuquerque is super high up in the mountains. They can drive it right up to the top.
I’m guessing Carol just asked for it as a deterrent (probably has some plan to try and make it so turning her would cause some outside harm), but it’ll probably end up being used for an emp or something later.
The same way they carried the atom bomb to carols house
Yes, we know Manousous is a smart, skilled engineer.
That's why you don't just ask for the bomb. You ask for the required command and control authorization for it too. Now, maybe Carol doesn't know the exact thing to ask regarding that, but all she needs to say is, "Give me an atom bomb and everything I need to be able detonate it."
I think she's learned you have to be extremely pedantic when dealing with the hive. Like she said, they have all the world's lawyers in there too, and will gladly interpret requests in the way that benefits them the most.
She needs to be good at prompt engineering.
Well they can drive up to a mountain and drop it off the cliff no?
Nope. Even trying to detonate it with explosives likely wouldn't make it go critical. Modern warheads require very specific processes in the correct order to actually detonate.
That said, we know nothing about what sort of bomb she asked for or what they provided.
While any nuclear weapon in any arsenal today would have some sort of secure control mechanism over it (until the 1960s they didn't) it is not necessarily a U.S. weapon. It could be from any country that has them.
Im imaging a scene like the Machine gun guy and Walt in BB
"I've printed out some instructions for you on how to detonate it"
I could see value in rigging it up to detonate like a dead mans switch. If she doesn't do "X" every 12 hours it detonates. Killing her and any plurbs around her.
Essentially threatening to nullify their efforts and take out more than a few plurbs.
Relevant point with that machine gun:
Vince Gilligan wrote the machine gun into the plot without knowing how to use it. The end of the story came later.
The atom bomb might be the same. Nobody knows yet.
I'm going to say it's definitely the same, since this Variety article says they came with the atom bomb ending 2 days into filming the finale, based on a studio note.
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/pluribus-finale-explained-vince-gilligan-original-ending-1236616824/
I like this. Because I feel like Carol doesn't know what she will do with it either.
She just knows it's a very powerful device/weapon/threat. She is in the gathering resources and knowledge stage.
She will figure it out later.
It's certainly more narratively justifiable here than in BB. Walt absolutely had a plan and the writers not having one was a risk.
One nuclear bomb ain’t blowing up the world. And given that everyone left Albuquerque, it would only kill her and Manousos.
That is my assumption for why she got it. To keep the Plurbs from trying to rush and convert them.
I saw it as the worlds biggest Chekhov's Gun. They're gonna use it to blow up the giant antenna.
I am convinced the atom bomb is a metaphor - it’s actually something else that’s supposed to destroy them.
If they want to infect her, they can simply spray aerosol from drones. She would never know. I don't know why she needs an atomic bomb. They will not allow her to use it to destroy the antenna.
She could instruct Manousos to detonate the bomb if she's infected so that it kills them both before she joins.
This does assume that she meant a literal atomic bomb and not a metaphorical one. Could be her own personal version of a weapon of last resort, or a weapon of mass destruction vs specifically the joined, or just a way of fighting back that’s an absolute game changer and all that talk of an atomic bomb earlier in the season was all a misdirect to make us expect a literal atomic bomb. It still very well could be a literal one, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to find out next season that it isn’t.
That’s what I was thinking. Not an actual atomic bomb but something that will help them save the world.
I think it's more a warning of her resistance than a practical plan
It’s not a literal atom bomb, is it? I assumed it was a figurative one, such as a lab to work on a cure.
This is the 2nd comment I've seen that thinks a single bomb will "blow up the world" what's up with that?
she could use it as an EMP
She could use it to destroy the antenna they are building.
This is my assumption, maybe an attempt to stalemate the hives imperatives. If she had it wired to some sort of remote she keeps on her, if she feels like the hive is converting her she presses it. Destroying a massive amount of life and doing potentially worldwide damage from fallout depending on the size she got.
So the hive gets stuck between “We have to convert Carrol” and “If we convert Carrol we are responsible for killing billions of living creatures. (Trees ants people etc)
I would use It for destroy the big antenna at 99% of his finishing
If I am going to loose, Loose at big
Babies would join the moment they enter into the world, same like all the other bacteria and virus that get to them when they are born.
Wouldn’t they already be joined in the womb since whatever is in the mother’s body is in theirs?
I wonder if they would even have sex. Since sec is basically a creative act
I think all human needs have been turned utilitarian and practical. I don’t think the hive will have sex to amuse itself, only if it calculates that reproduction is needed. I’m guessing right now it isn’t because it can’t feed the number of bodies it has.
reproduction will probably never be needed. Unless they find a way to sustain themselves indefinitely. But since they don't eat any food and they depend on people dieing to sustain themselves, then creating more people will make them die even faster since it's just another mouth to feed.
I don't think they'd have sex, they don't care about anything at all. Plus, another mouth to feed would mean they'd die faster eventually due to food shortages. They just want to convert already existing people, not create more. Unless I'm not remembering correctly, in an episode they mention a lot of people died, but a lot of people were born too. But I'm sure that these pregnancies predated the joining, since only 2 months have passed.
Maybe, we don’t know. It’s unlikely though given how hard it is to get pass a placenta.
Would a baby survive the joining though?
I know this is focused on the sci fi elements/how the pluribus works but I'm really curious to learn more about Manousos. Why does he hate his mom? Why is he so isolated? He has this very extreme mindset of never taking anything for free, what convinced him of that? Why did it take so long for the hive to notice him (there's been a lot of speculation on this but we don't have exact answers)
I enjoy all the low-tech tools Manousos uses. Paper maps and foreign language guides on cassette tape. Library books on electrical engineering. Perhaps some of it is just to avoid being spied on by Los Otros, but it’s far more pleasing to observe him using physical tools than tapping on a laptop or using a phone.
He’s also very clever and quick-thinking.
I also like that they gave him a bit of a conspiratorial streak which helps explain some of his isolation and even the strained relationship with his mother.
And why did he start analyzing RF frequencies for anomalies? What gave him that idea?
Prob noticed every radio channel wasn’t working and had all the time in the world to find one signal that did in search of other humans still around. It just so happens this one signal is a link to how the hive communicates
Wasn't he just listening for other survivors?
He had no idea at that point that there were only 12 left, aside from himself. He also had no idea that it was perfectly safe for him to leave his home. Listening for radio transmissions was the best way to try to open a line of communication, until he got the tape from Carol. It was pure luck that he stumbled upon the channel the hive is using.
There’s a lot we don’t know about Manousos. He knows things about the hive that Carol doesn’t, and she knows things that he doesn’t. It’s like they each have pieces of a puzzle.
Yes, and we got a lot of Carol's backstory in season 1, I'm excited to learn more about Manousos
He’s said himself expressly that his mother is a bitch. What more is there to know?
lol yeah bad parenting isn’t exactly rare or that novel of a concept
All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Breaking Bad was an entire show where a large theme is how Walter is a bad father and it was pretty entertaining!
We do not know that Manousos hates his mom.
He confronts the Plurbs using her body and the fact that the whole "we all love you" vibe is NOT his mom makes him hate THEM not her.
He can tell easily that the new personality of the Plurbs is not that of his mother. Lots of people's mothers can be bitchy and yet they still love her.
The fact that it took 33 hours to be aware that he existed outside of the collective is curious and requires explanation. He seems like a loner from the start though. But how he observed the transformation unobserved by the collective is a mystery.
I don't think we know he was isolated. He wasn't somehow more isolated than the ISS. I think there is certainly something unique about his being discovered late, but what that is could be anything.
"Many human traits have been discarded by the hive, for example they don't produce art, and they don't "play" "
The hive mind is one mind. They have nothing to play with and they are already all ages. They also can't produce new art to consume because they are the sole producer. No excitement about it. They also have no other human imperative, not just this. They literally are only trying to retransmit the signal and convert the survivors.
That being said, was Zosia's excitement at the idea of new books genuine or part of the act? It could be that the hive still appreciates novel ideas and art from outside
So, the world indeed 'stopped spinning'.
No new things are being made - Like, assimilated John Cena is not working on, say, Peacemaker S03, or an assimilated George Martin is not writing any new books.
They're worker bees either in the food distribution chain or the giant antenna.
Our George Martin isn't writing any new books either
So he's already assimilated
too soon
Nothing new there then
Correct
But are they genuinely interested in new/outside art or was it an act
It's all an act. It's in the best interest of the hive to keep the survivors complacent and distracted while they find a way to infect them since upsetting them will cause the hive to go into shock.
Plus, manipulating the survivors is easy when you're working with the collective memories of the entire planet.
I think it's as genuine as anything else they say they feel. They do love her writing, they do love all the survivors, but they're not capable of not loving. It's part of their programming.
My perspective is that it's a pseudo-joining of the hive. The purpose of joining is to consolidate information(And also influenced by the drowning person analogy). They know Carol, but they aren't inside their head. Anyway to get closer to Carol's mind is probably viewed as ideal to them.
Could go either way I think. It makes sense that they might treasure external creativity as they have none. On the other hand the whole Kusimayo scene shows that they will go to any length of play-acting to convince a normal human to join.
But once they had the tailored virus for Kusimayo they surely would have infected her no matter what she said or did. Playing it out to the end was easiest I suppose.
It’s an act. Anything to distract Carol while they figure out how to infect her.
Statistically, about a quarter of the hive mind consists of children. I wonder how their personalities and memories affect the hive.
It doesn't seem like humanity actually has much influence on the hive. If it did, the hive definitely wouldn't have the "no killing" rule and it probably wouldn't be bending over backwards to appease the survivors. If it can suppress humanity's basic survival instincts, it can definitely suppress children's need for play
Being the producer of art doesnt mean it cant interest you. Thats what makes artists do what they do.
One thing to think about is that since they are unable to produce any food for themselves, they can't even gather it unless it has "died" naturally is that the virus leads to the extinction of the species it infects.
The one thing that I am unsure of since it was not brought up is whether they can collect or ingest single celled organisms. If they can't then extinction is inevitable -- all forms of life have to have a food source.
What struck me most about the intro to episode 9 is that they lack culture. As soon as the joining was done the community stripped every bit of culture away.
The culture was already gone by that point. The entire village scene, the chanting, the prayer, the gathering of vegetables for a feast, it was all an elaborate act to put Kusimayu at ease and help convince her that joining the hive was good.
And this scene was included to show that this is what Zosia has been doing with Carol.
It was all a performance to get her to join. They don’t care about religion. Their only want is total conquer & to spread the signal farther out.
Yup and then they all just packed up and left. That whole village was just a performance for Kusimayu specifically.
It also looked like they all left the village once she joined. Probably to “consolidate resources”. They must have stayed with her to make her happy.
Probably they all went to closest abandoned warehouse/school to lie or HDP factory
It didn't really surprise me. Culture is all about individualism. The hive is interconnected so you can't pick out certain groups. They don't need culture, they are their own living culture in a way.
The only scene I really wanted in the finale that was a pretty do-able ask is carol walking Manusos through her whiteboard of rules. I know the show is a slow burn but I thought we'd get some more oomph beyond a few answered questions.
Season 2 opener, maybe?
hell yeah, in 2 years we can see it
My wife and I waited that long between "SHE'S ALIVE!" and Mark S. running through the halls of Lumon and also finally learning what was happening with the goats.
big fan of Severance as well, i hated the wait but they really put out a great season 2
Some of this was answered in episode one.
The military stuff was vague but we know they targeted certain "special" people first. From episode two:
I think we can safely assume they were sent infected food or were recalled and infected.
Transcripts are from a site called Scraps From the Loft.
I think we can make safe assumptions regarding the president and high level officials. In episode one they talk about how their plan needed to be kicked off before they wanted to because the military figured it out. We see in the bar before the joining something about a crisis at an air force base on the tv as Helen and Carol talk. In real life emergency situations they get the president in the air for safety. My theory is the president and high level officials went on to Air Force One (there are two identical planes, the designation of the name is just given to the one the president is on) and it went down during the joining. Just a guess but that's what I think. Regardless of how exactly it happened, we know that the military figured out something was going on before the mass event of the joining, and a lot of the high level officials did not survive.
Although I don't know what the writers have in mind the many senior members being on Air Force One crashing seems unlikely as even (actually especially) in crises they do not have lots of top people in one vulnerable vehicle for this very reason.
One possibility is maybe they were killed by the military -- that this was the action that triggered the global conversion. Some one in the military chain of command discovered what was happening and the national command authority had been taken over and had them taken out.
How the global conversion event is carried out is hard to see. As presented in the show it seems everywhere all at once (as far as anyone in Albuquerque can tell). Yeah Carol sees planes flying in formation overhead, which we presume is spraying RNA virus, but you can't spray the entire world all at once.
My best guess for a workable explanation is that RNA was being deployed around the world by Plurbs through many means and had gotten essentially world wide distribution of material with plans to release it through a wide variety of methods, and had to put it into action suddenly. Still hard to see how isolated people over the globe could be hit within, say hours, instead of weeks. The virus does not normally spread through the air from person to person, it requires contact infection.
Would be interesting to see flashbacks to that in S2. But they probably won't show the president, it felt like the writers omitted it on purpose to not make some accidental political statement about what the president "should" look like.
To me it seems like they did infect the President and high level officials and the military figured it out and so considered the President compromised and killed them/started staging a coup until they were also converted.
Those answers raise more questions though.
Why would they not have targeted world leaders at the outset, or at least the few most powerful?
If lots of world leaders started suddenly having these short term collapses that would be hard to keep from being observed due to recording devices -- even converting everyone in their presence to keep it covered up would not be enough. But the US President plus his cabinet would be obvious candidates to keep the process going uninterrupted.
Even if they did not convert the president, why should quite a few senior members of the government died all at once? They could not have all been on some airplane where the pilot got converted in flight -- that makes no sense. Did the military kill them knowing that they were now no longer normal humans?
In regards to the atom bomb, I don't think she has a direct plan with it, it's more of an F-you to The Hive. Her way of showing resistance, a response to their betrayal, but in a symbolic sense more than an immediate threat. It's like when you break up with someone and you want to show them that you own them. Just a toxic, human thing to do, symbolizing her "break up" with The Hive (Zosia).
I think in the first episode when Carol saves a baby in a carrier from falling off a counter, she looks at it and seems kinda disturbed, so I think the baby was seizing along with the others. That’s how I interpreted it, but let me know what any of yall think.
You can actually see the carrier shaking, like a little baby is seizing inside (sorry for the imagery, but I confirmed it on my second rewatch).
Okay, then what if Carol asked Zoisa to give her the eggs they are working on? They basically do everything to please her, so if it's really what Carol wanted I think they would hand over the frozen eggs. And the study they did already.
I feel like this is still ambigious, since we didn't see her ask this or what their response would be. I think there are two possibilities, either they would comply because the desire to please overrides the desire to spread, or they would refuse, because the desire to spread overrides the desire to please.
I think the second one is implicit, but I missed a "Well, I had to try" moment.
I wish they would have shown her asking this. It seems like a very obvious question that Carol would have immediately asked.
definitely the latter. they DONT need your consent to turn you. why would they stop proceeding with engineering the virus if they don’t actually care about your consent? they’re just doing this to placate you till the time comes. makes you less resistant and wastes your time
It’s definitely a plot device to add a ticking clock. If they had a lifetime to solve the problem it would make the stakes kindah low.
I’m assuming they will give some explanation as to why she can’t go get her eggs back, otherwise it’s a pretty big plot hole
Not a big plot hole.
They won't tell her how to reverse the plurbing. When it comes to disrupting the plurb-plans they do refuse to cooperate.
It would be insanely lazy for the show to reveal later that they would’ve complied if she just asked correctly. She had made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t want to be infected.
They won’t take action that conflicts with their biological imperative. It’s like Asimov’s laws of robotics, there is a hierarchy of duties that constrains behavior.
But not causing harm can come before that biological imperative, hence them not just taking the stem cells from them by force.
Then maybe a better way to put it is they can’t take non-harmful action that violates that imperative. Harvesting stem cells with a needle from a person causes physical pajn. Withholding Carol’s eggs does not cause physical harm.
So the order of rules would seem to be:
1) cannot cause physical harm to a living being 2) must convert others 3) give non-joined what they want
It could work if you leave out the "inaction" clause that the laws of robotics had, because in the case of plurbs they definitely caused a lot of harm in order to spread the virus, even though (probably?) not directly. An Asimovian robot would never be able to do that without shutting down, but I can see the similarities. There's even some weird similarity in the way they are stressed by the unplurbed antagonizing them as robots would be under conflicting orders/priorities
They didn't need to, because they had the eggs as a Plan B. Plan A just would have been faster and more pleasant -- in the same way that they could have sprinted at Kusimaya and gassed her by force, but instead humored her with a cultural ritual.
Carol didnt ask Zosia if theyve used her eggs to make Zosia pregnant.
It's occurring me to me that the whole don't pick apples but eat them if they fell off the tree thing is metaphorical for her eggs. They couldn't take them from her, but they could use the ones removed from her already
How the hell is the military supposed to stop them? By the time they discovered what was happening, its likely that large swaths of the military were already infected
Great. Now I'm just imagining a whole army base of soldiers in camo kissing each other.
Again.
They probably would just spike the MREs or the food in the mess hall.
Here's a theory. The death of the president and many senior staff was the attempt to stop them which triggered the global conversion event.
If I was developing this I would write up a detailed history of the whole process so that what I showed on screen would have a detailed back up. Lots of shows don't do this even though it seems like obvious preparation.
Where is it confirmed that they’re actually building a huge radio broadcaster?
Zosia says this in episode 8. She says they are building an antenna but doesn't qualify it as huge so it may or may not be huge
Thanks for asking this! I missed it.
'Is the person still in there or have they been lost forever?'
I was thinking that if they get unplurbed, they either lose their memories or remember what happened to them and what they were doing while joined, but forget everyone else’s memories and thoughts. But now that you mention it, maybe they remain in a catatonic state and it takes some time for them to return to normal.
Narratively it’s a richer text if they remember what the hive made them do.
I’m hoping they turn someone back, to see that process and the discovery of what’s happened, if they’re mad they got turned back.. they did a wonderful job of opening up like 5 million story lines and questions.. well done, this is the first more complex show we’ve had in awhile (sorry, severance is similar but not nearly as good IMO)
Unpopular opinion I think but to me the most narratively interesting outcome is that they remember being in the hive and it is as blissful as the hive say it is.
Yes, that's the most interesting scenario
There’s some terrifying places they could take it: maybe they don’t forget everything that happens while they were joined, including all 7 billion other people’s thoughts and memories. Or maybe joining actually really does feel that good and once you’re unjoined you no longer have those “good chemicals” constantly rushing through your system and get terribly depressed and go through withdrawal.
Damn, imagine ~7 billion people going through withdrawals, there would countless violent deaths !
So apparently I'm the only one who immediately assumed that the "atom bomb" was figurative and not literal? Yes the literal atom bomb is the callback to earlier in the season. So obvious smokescreen for it being something else.
The atom bomb is obvious. She knows they are 1-3 months away from having her “cure” ready. She obviously said to them, give me a bomb. If you come near me I will blow it all up. So they can’t cure her.
As shown, all they have to do is blast aerosols in the sky and she will be turned. They dont have to physically get near her to turn her and there’s really nothing she can do to stop them from just dumping a bunch of plurb gas on her house.
The version that works on the immune won’t work in the air presumably since they said it was delicate and they had to carefully transport it to the remote village.
Or possibly since she was voluntarily joining, there was no need to produce it in large volume to spray over the village. They just took enough for one person, close up.
This was likely a hidden point of the village scene - to show us they have to get close.
She could ask them to build a giant bubble around her house with air filtration.
They would just blast the gas into the bubble lol. That actually makes it easier for them.
Double dead man trigger.
Theory: They will do something like that, and Carol will be turned. But by that point, her and Manousos will have worked out a theoritcal "cure" or a way to sever the tie (faraday cage, as alluded to by the books Manousos was reading at the end of this episode), so it will be up to Manousos to save her. Also, maybe Carol gives him permission in advance to do that, which makes the plurbs have to let him do it. Bonus theory: this will be the end of season 2, and as soon as he unjoins her, she declares that she knows the cure.
Yes but an atom bomb won’t blow up the entire world, just a portion of the city she lives in
I like your posts. One interesting examination is removing all human sentiment and re-analyzing the end result, not just the process. In that light it’s a hostile, spreading and goal oriented entity/event. We may be planet 1032 for all we know- they definitely have a process that’s somewhat honed, and adaptable to different planets/ecosystems.
End result: galactic Armageddon. All history, accomplishment and even sentient life is wiped out- forever.
In that light it’s hostile and vile.
Prediction for next season: They realize that the bomb won't do anything as they are alone in the city, but then Manousos learns from the books that the box can be used as a Faraday Cage, so a whole episode (you know, an eighth of the fucking season) would be them trying to unload the gigantic bomb and they trying to kidnap some plurb and trying to put them in the box.
Would a joined newborn baby plurb be able to speak fully developed sentences? How would mental development work
Do y’all think the plurbs ever get bored? I think they’re just trying to make Carol happy when they show excitement over a new book. The only thing on their minds at all times has to be ‘MUST SPREAD!!!’
I need some clarification on the Hive’s motive for converting the remaining immune individuals, and what happens once the concoction is completed. I’m assuming consent isn’t strictly required to apply it.
We know the Hive speaks highly of post-conversion life, seemingly to persuade Carol that it isn’t so bad and that it’s something she’ll eventually want. Kusimayu appears to have consented to her transformation—possibly because she genuinely wanted it, because her family encouraged it the way Zosia does with Carol, or because she realized it was her only option. Based on her actions in that scene, her choice seems willful.
In the hypothetical scenario where Carol’s concoction is finished and the Hive presents it to her, if she refuses, it seems likely she would be forced anyway. Is that the case?
It's been made pretty clear that they won't need her permission to turn her.
The question is how forceful they can be about it. Could they hold Carol down? Block her path?
They might still have to get close enough to spray it in her face nonviolently.
I think that if this were true, there would be no need to keep up the charade once Kusimiyu’s custom virus is made. Yet they do. If it were all insidious manipulation with the only goal being to spread, they could just make a huge batch and crop dust her. Same with placating Carol when they’re already working on her eggs.
the pluribus didn’t have to fight or “beat” the military. they said that the reason the mass joining had to be accelerated, via chemtrails/what we see onscreen in episode 1, was because the rest of the (american?) military found out about them. there was no time or place for any sort of conflict to occur before everyone was joined.
Regarding the faraday cage thing, it’s worth noting that nuclear explosions produce an electro-magnetic pulse that can knock out communication systems over huge areas.
Obviously, air-bursting a nuclear bomb would be a very dangerous way of trying to disrupt the hive mind’s telepathy, but I could see Carol saving it as a last resort.
But can they force her to breathe in the fumes to join her? I guess they can, since they were forcing people to join before by kissing them without consent
I’ll be real, there were some things that really frustrated me with this writing, and you people are gonna hear about it. (Disclaimer I still loved the show)
Carol or any of the humans never ONCE even questioned what made them uniquely impervious to the joining. Not a single ‘what do we have in common?’ at their first meeting… this would be probably the top 3 most important questions to ask if you’re trying to save humanity
How is nobody talking about the fucking CELL PHONE? I literally thought for the entire season this was taking place in some weird technologically ambiguous alternate universe where everything was modern but nobody had cell phones, until finally in the last episode Carol just conveniently remembers to use hers for translation… Why didn’t she use that to communicate with the non-English speaking humans in the first place? And maybe even more perplexing is why did every phone call happen on a landline? And don’t say because the hive abandoned cell phone service since they don’t need it, because the hive would have very swiftly got it operational if Carol wanted to make a call at any time. I really hope I’m missing something with this because it really seems like such a brazen oversight that would be way beneath Vince Gilligan
I’m sorry but the behavior of the other humans is just not realistic whatsoever. Maybe 1 or 2 of them would be hopelessly in denial or blissfully indulgent with it but the majority of any sizable group would absolutely be horrified and looking for answers like Carol and Manousos. Carol not having any help would have been more believable if there were only like 5 remaining humans, and one was willfully ignorant/tempted to join like Laxmi/the converted girl (one or the other), and one was the playboy. Then you have Manousos, and one other rational person establishing the majority. Maybe that last person dies somehow so it’s just Carol and Manousos now. Plot moves the same but it’s more believable
Manousos sucks. Not saying he’s badly written, because there are absolutely people who would be like that in this situation, but I think the viewer is tempted to feel like his choices are right and honorable, when really he is just prideful to the point of counterproductivity. He wastes months of valuable time traveling via his own devices (which almost gets himself killed) when that time could have been spent collaborating with a very like-minded Carol. Now Carol is in danger of getting joined against her will and who knows how much other irreversible damage has been done in that time. Good character, but I don’t think he’s the unassailable righteous one that this sub thinks he is and he sucks
They showed cell phones in the first episode. Helen is answering fan questions for Carol when she is turned. Later in the first episode they tell her all the cellular networks are down and to use a landline to contact the joined.
When you say not realistic behavior, it’s because you’ve never been through an actual disaster. You think people will all work together. It’s not. It’s ugly. I was in a terrible hurricane and flood a few years ago and saw raw humanity in crisis. People get illogical, steal, save themselves, and make the most erratic decisions. I think it’s actually really accurate
"I’m sorry but the behavior of the other humans is just not realistic whatsoever."
Does the hive mind look realistic to you?
You can't really say the behaviour of humans going through an extremely traumatic event is not realistic, especially with such an event.
Cell communication does not work, this was explicitly said in episode 1 which is why she has to use landlines. She used her cellphone in airplane mode (also said) when with Manuoso. We can argue about whether or not she’d be able to translate with an on device LLM or whatever, but there’s no issue here.
I KNOW! This drive me crazy too. The first time they met it was two days since the virus hit? Most of them were totally fine. Realistically, they wouldn't have even processed what was happening. Most would definitely be freaked out. I thought they were putting something in their food. But nope.
Carol is not a very pleasant person. But I feel like a huge percent of the world would react like her.
Something was wrong with the cell network at first. The Under Secretary of Agriculture (??) told Carol that on CSPAN. So she couldn't use them to communicate at first. Even if it was just down because the Hive wants to conserve energy, she wasn't about to ask them for anything beyond the basics at first.
And Carol doesn't seem to use a cellphone. When we see her with Helen, Helen has the phone. She used it to answer questions from fans and to look up book sales for Carol. So, maybe it just didn't occur to her the way it would to most.
Carol was using her phone to translate while in airplane mode, so it shouldn't have mattered that the towers are down. She could have downloaded the translator app sometime after the towers were fixed, but considering where she lives, I'd think it's likely she already had one on her phone.
I think it's important that they had all their loved ones around them pretending that everything was fine. Like we saw in the Peruvian village.
While Carol's partner died specifically as the result of Joining, so she had a cause to be bitter from the start, while the others were placated.
Actually we have seen other survivors only once. It might be that they actively discuss it, like Koumba already knew a lot about the virus on Carol's arrival. They just does not want to include two weird douchbags.
You are bringing up some good points, some I hadn’t considered yet.
…but the lack of important/relevant questions is really glaring.
Thank you for your thoughts! I like these questions a lot and would add just one more:
When C and M finally break the frequency (I’m confident they will), what if the minds in the hive are returned to the wrong bodies? I could see them pulling off a chaotic break-in to the frequency, “hacking” in, which breaks the connection but disrupts the re-assignment process. Right now their minds are in a cloud, but what is the link between a conscious mind and a physical body? I don’t think the aliens would care about stuff like that, or even plan for it, because no species has ever reversed the joining.
It would be a total mess. Like a modern-day Tower of Babel situation.
What about people that were in vegetative states or comas, if they got infected are they able to wake up and interact again normally?
I want to know about preborn e.g. are there abominations like in the Dune universe? And if so then they must never develop an independent identity and thus add nothing to the hive.
I think the atom bomb ends up being something used to destroy the antenna (just my theory), but definitely feels like something that will show up much later in the series.
btw: RF stands for radio frequency, so no need to say frequency again (sorry for the pedanticism)
This makes sense. I cant imagine gathering everyone on earth in that cul-de-sac and bombing them. It would have to be the antenna. But the idea or tool to kill them all would keep M on board
I still doubt this is the case. Yes they pretending, but not to trick them; rather, to make them as happy as they can be while they're disconnected. They have been honest in that regard. "Pretending" in order to gain their trust and to make them happy are not mutually exclusive. I bet they genuinely enjoy Carol's company, genuinely enjoy her books, genuinely enjoy her humor and even genuinely enjoy her sass.
They'd rather have all that they love about Carol inside with them, but they love it just the same.
One more question I have – when they were treating Manusos did they take anything from him to make stem cells
About the atom bomb, what I'm thinking is that she will use that as a deterrent against the hive by threatening to blow up the giant(?) antenna they are possibly building if and when they convert her. Which raises a lot of questions
Dead man switch? If she becomes joined there should be a protective measure by herself against herself to prevent herself from just deactivating it afrer joining. Maybe Manousos plays a key in that?
If they are building an antenna, what if it's in a different continent? Like halfway across the world. Would the Hive even transport the a-bomb anywhere near the antenna for Carol and Manny? Because from what they know of them for now, they can't possibly haul around something as huge as an a-bomb, especially across continents - not without the hive's help in carrying and in flying the thing
Barring these sort of plot holes, and some others I can't think of for now, I can see the writers have Carol use the a-bomb that way. An atom bomb can't really destroy a whole city just by itself, let alone the whole world, so there's gotta be something a tad more specific Carol and/or Manny would want to target that a-bomb towards. Even with the hive's collective effort and the world's resources in building the antenna that will possibly be huge and/or the size of a continent, who knows how long that would take. The hive might have everything in the world under control and under management, but what they don't have is time.
10 years, as stated in HDP (iirc), is the Hive's forseeable lifespan. Time is running out for the hive, they could possibly accomplish building the antenna within ten years, but if Carol blows it up at any critical juncture of the construction it could really set the Hive back. They'd just burn time in the weeks/monts/years that they will take to either make repairs ot start from scratch
> How do the hive treat babies?
I would argue this has been answered
Where has it been answered? I’m not sure what you’re referring to
I get the feeling the bomb might be (Breaking Bad spoiler)this show's ricin - teased and fiddled with throughout the series, only to be fully used in the very last episode.
“Imperative to spread the virus” - if you are interested about this, you can read Selfish Gene.
The book is not about a gene that makes people selfish, but a gene that favors anything (e.g. any behavior) that makes it spread further
A fly went by the screen when the Indian girl turned.
There was also a fly in the trash Manousos was digging through before licking the tuna can. He kind of swatted it away.
The did reference a fly towards the beginning of the series so I wonder what the fly means
My theory: the virus make the planet population ready for conquest. They can’t fight back, they can’t hurt and they have to obey any outside orders. That way when the invading force arrives they will have zero resistance. The other prime directive is to multiply and spread as far as possible. They need to spread the virus so more and more planets are ready for the harvest. The thing about not able to hurt even the plants is a brilliant way to make sure the planet resources are preserved until the conquerers arrive.
It is a perfect plan to get a new planet without having to fight and the mechanism is self replicating.
It seems obvious to me that the signal didn’t originate at Kepler 22b. It’s probably been floating around the galaxy/universe for millions if not billions of years.
We may never get an answer to that because it probably doesn’t matter to the story Vince wants to tell.
Still planting my flag in the “hive is not intentionally manipulative” hill.
Chekhov's atom bomb