One subtle detail in the finale I haven't seen mentioned: Carol only finds out about the plan with her eggs because the Hive slipped up. If Zosia hadn't mentioned how things were only going to get better for her, she probably never would have figured it out and they'd have converted her (probably when she was asleep or something). There's no calculated reason for Zosia to mention it, so I think she was entirely sincere in that moment in thinking that Carol would be happier after joining. It's one more demonstration of how the Hive genuinely thinks of themselves as benevolent, because otherwise, there's no reason they'd be that stupid.
lol her encounter with Manousos also led to discovering the motion sensor which planted the idea of her eggs in her mind, which led to the discovery of asking Zosia about it
Thats good writing.
For some reason reminded me of Jesse figuring out how ricin cigarette was stolen from him
Honestly same
Helen was secretly Huell the whole time
I love how the egg sensor wasn't contrived either. It wasn't just "remember the eggs!" it told us about Carol's alcohol problem and Helen not having complete faith in her to stay sober.
Manousos definitely did that intentionally. He’s truly a genius. His mind. Butterfly effect in motion.
Bravo Manousos
Bravonousos
Someone's seen Look Around You. One of the greatest things the British have ever produced.
Thanks, Hanks!
Thhanks!
I’m trying to make Bravonousos a thing, hope it catches on… like a virus from outer space
Thanks, ants.
Thants.
(And an obligatory 'isn't it evil to value a man the same as an ant?')
Brave mayonnaise sauce
Manousos is the hero we need but not the one we deserve
I love that he’s consistently even more pissed off than even Carol has been.
I wish I had the courage to tell off my mother Manousos-style.
No. He was genuinely looking for bugs, he didn’t do nothing intentionally. Stop overthinking this
This is clearly a joke.
That doesn't make any sense mate. How can Manousos know the bug is there and intentionally lead her to find it? Absurd idea..
Why would there be an insect there?
Yes. Exactly.
It’s truly incredible.
Chekov's frozen eggs.
It's not good writing because the egg explanation still doesn’t work. Bone-marrow immune RNA comes from hematopoietic cell lineages. Eggs don’t contain that information at any stage, so you can’t derive or model Carol’s immune response from them. They’re biologically unrelated systems.
Frozen eggs don’t contain the kind of information you’d need to tailor a virus to an existing person. Eggs only carry early developmental instructions and undifferentiated RNA meant to start an embryo, not the immune programs that actually determine how someone responds to infection.
The immune system is built later from hematopoietic cell lineages and shaped by development, environment, and regulation over time.
Bone-marrow immune behavior can’t be inferred from eggs because they belong to a completely different biological lineage. So studying frozen eggs wouldn’t tell you how Carol’s immune or nervous system resists the virus, only how a hypothetical new organism might begin developing
You could argue that the eggs would help to reach them what wouldn't work maybe. And that they would try a million different variations on Carol until they found what worked, using her eggs as a way to eliminate what wouldn't possibly work. The hive has infinite time on their hands.
But overall I'd say it's sloppy writing. They were very correct on needing bone marrow, but frozen eggs aren't the same thing at all and wouldn't work on the same way at all.
I assume the hive has made some medical advancements then
You can't override basic biology. The eggs don't contain the needed information. It comes later after the organism has hatched, so to speak, and been exposed to many environmental factors. Bone marrow does contain the necessary immune information. Eggs do not.
To put it another way, It’s like trying to understand how someone speaks now by studying the alphabet they learned as a child. The accent, habits, and fluency came later.
It’s like trying to debug a bug in a live app by looking at the installer file. The undeaured behavior comes from updates, patches, and runtime changes. Eggs are the installer. Bone marrow is the running system.
I mean you literally can override basic biology? The virus cannot exist. It also makes zero sense that an alien planet would know our biology to make a virus that only affects humans.
It’s sci-fi man
And one rat.
Genre: Science FICTION
Im with you. I would have preferred some other explanation instead of a sci-fi hand-wave, "we figured out how to use your eggs"
Is there like a way to make the eggs useful with the addition of Carol’s bodily fluid or anything? Zosia sleeps with her a lot, and maybe something can be collected?
There's intentionally really limited detail given on exactly how this 'virus' operates, or whether the resistance to it is driven by the adaptive immune system vs some other mechanism, including genetically hardwired ones that could potentially be gleaned from iPSC-derived hematopoietic or neural cells. Most of what we see in the show is not consistent with traditional viral infection and pathogenesis - it's much more analogous to a neurotoxin.
Not to say there's not room to quibble with the show's science, but this particular straw is an odd one to break the camel's back.
The issue isn’t that the show leaves details vague, it’s that it isn’t vague at the specific moment that matters. The hive explicitly says they need bone marrow to overcome Carol’s resistance. That’s a concrete, biological claim. Once you introduce that specificity, you can’t then wave it away by saying “maybe it’s not immune, maybe it’s neural, maybe it’s something else.” If it were purely neurotoxic or purely genetic, bone marrow would be an odd and unnecessary thing to single out at all.
And invoking iPSC-derived cells doesn’t really help, because those still wouldn’t be equivalent to Carol’s functioning adult systems.
Reprogrammed cells don’t recreate the regulatory state of an existing organism, especially not the integrated immune neural behavior the show is clearly pointing to. The problem isn’t that the science is incompletez it’s that the show sets up one mechanism (bone marrow-based resistance) and then resolves it with a completely different biological category (eggs) that doesn’t actually address the mechanism it named.
Once the show explicitly says “bone marrow,” it’s no longer vague. We know the give can't lie.
That anchors the resistance to the virus in a specific biological system, and eggs or generic stem cells don’t substitute for that. You can’t claim intentional vagueness after introducing that level of specificity.
But bone marrow HSCs don't contain the complete set of biological and immunological information you're ascribing to them - they don't have much more information than eggs in that regard. If you transplant someone's HSCs into a new recipient (as with a bone marrow transplant) that new immune system is going to be quite different than the donor's, exactly because of the contingent environmental and epigenetic factors you highlighted.
It seems quite plausible - and quite in keeping with the text of the show - that all the hive mind needed was a source of reprogrammable stem cells to make iPSCs for optimization of the virus/toxin. But again, there's just not enough detail to know.
I agree HSCs don’t encode a person’s entire immune history, but that actually strengthens my point. If HSCs are already too context-dependent and environmentally shaped to fully reproduce Carol’s resistance, then eggs help even less. Eggs lack both the differentiated immune lineage and the lived regulatory context. (The eggs haven't "hatched" and lived life so to speak)
And if the hive truly only needed reprogrammable stem cells for generic optimization via iPSCs, then there’s no reason Carol herself would be special at all.
They could use anyone’s cells. The show can’t simultaneously imply that specificity matters enough to require invasive extraction from her body, while also treating her eggs in a freezer as an interchangeable substitute. That’s the inconsistency I’m pointing to. But maybe season 2 will fill in the gaps in a way that makes sense.
The thought here is that there's something specific about the genetic polymorphisms / variants within each of the resistant individuals that wouldn't be captured by just anyone's iPSCs - you need to derive them from the individual for so you can design / generate new variants of the virus/toxin specific for overcoming resistance mechanisms encoded that person's genome.
Again, I think that model makes more sense than an immune-mediated one - if that was the case the hive mind would be collecting serum from survivors to purify antibodies, harvesting tissue for TCR/BCR sequencing, etc. HSCs have basically nothing except the bare blueprint of immune system instructions.
I understand what you're saying, the resistance to the virus could be encoded in Carol’s genome rather than being an active immune response, and that any source of her reprogrammable stem cells could, in theory, allow the hive to model and overcome those genetic variants.
In that framework, eggs aren’t special because they’re reproductive, but because they still contain her underlying genetic blueprint.
The problem is that eggs describe who Carol could have been, not who she is now. If the resistance is present-tense and operational in her adult body, then substituting eggs isn’t a clever workaround, it’s a category error. Aka bad writing.
You’re switching from an embodied, active state to a developmental starting point without explaining how that jump preserves the relevant information. Again. Bad writing.
And that jump from needing invasive extraction of bone marrow to "eggs are good enough" matters because the show explicitly anchors the problem for the hive, in how to get Carol's key to unlock her immunity, n invasive, body-derived extraction.
Emphasizing hip injections and the need to collect cells directly from the individual signals that the state of the cells, not just their DNA sequence, is important. If eggs were sufficient all along, that framing becomes unnecessary and misleading.
The show defines the problem in one biological domain and resolves it in another without doing the work to connect them. It's writers who half understood what they were writing about imo.
To summarize you're saying the resistance to the virus is potentially genome-encoded, static, not dependent on immune memory, exposure, or adult physiology and recoverable via reprogrammable stem cells (iPSCs).
Once you accept that, then the only thing that matters is Carol’s DNA sequence. And if all you need is her DNA, then bone marrow is not required, eggs are not required, invasive extraction by drilling into her hip and syphoning out bone marrow is not required at all.
A cheek swab, skin biopsy, hair follicle, blood draw, or discarded tissue would all contain the same relevant information. They could get what they needed from a band aid or Carol's trash. And again. If true, they wouldn't need eggs. Or stem cells.
I can't help but land over and over on inconsistent writing. Aka bad writing. Once you establish stem cells are needed, you've painted yourself into a bio medical corner.
I think you don't realize This Is fiction and not a medical documental
Thank you from all of the people who aren't microbiologists.
I think your assumption that their immunity has anything at all to do with the actual immune system is not supported whatsoever, and also not terribly likely.
All we know is they need stem cells. That’s it. Stem cells can be derived from egg cells by a variety of methods.
The show explicitly says they need bone marrow, not just generic stem cells. Bone marrow is relevant because it reflects differentiated immune and regulatory lineages, not because it’s a vague “stem cell source.” Eggs are germline cells and don’t contain that information, so treating them as interchangeable doesn’t hold up.
Even if you assume they only needed generic stem cells, the egg explanation still doesn’t work. An unfertilized egg isn’t a generic stem cell, it’s a highly specialized germ cell loaded with RNA for early embryonic development.
To get actual stem cells from it, you’d have to fertilize it and grow an embryo, at which point you’re no longer studying Carol’s cells but a different organism’s.
And if truly generic stem cells were sufficient, then there’d be no reason they’d need her eggs specifically. The story can’t have it both ways: either specificity matters, in which case eggs don’t contain the right information, or specificity doesn’t matter, in which case her eggs are irrelevant.
It's sloppy writing unfortunately.
I like your funny words magic man, but Koumba never says they specifically need bone marrow. Watch the episode again. He says it needs to be tailored to their individual stem cells, which must be collected from their bodies. “Apparently, that involves sticking a large needle into the bone of the hip”. Bone marrow contains stem cells. It has nothing to do with the immune system. The only reason they told him they would need bone marrow from him is because that is the only feasible way they can get them from him.
Yes, it’s possible to derive patient matched stem cells from unfertilized eggs.
https://www.genengnews.com/news/bioidentical-human-stem-cells-derived-from-unfertilized-eggs/
You seem to be wrong and a little overconfident, unfortunately.
Also, I’d just like to say that I really don’t like categorizing writing like this as “sloppy” just because it doesn’t meet your bar for scientific accuracy (which again, can’t stress this enough, you seem to be 100% wrong about and are now just seemingly trying to find more holes to poke so you can be right). I don’t have a nice way of saying this, that’s fucking stupid and I cannot imagine what it’s like to be someone in your life following a show with you while you nitpick shit like this as “sloppy”.
So as a layman, they have to do it from the bone marrow of a male, but they can circumvent this female eggs? I think VG would checked this out as there were various nods in episode one to “The twilight zone episode third from the sun” and some of its errors. The hive only needs to get it right once doesn’t it.
Hey, I don't know anything about biology, so just a stupid question.
If the hive fertilized the egg and created a baby, would Carol's baby help in achieving the Hive's goal?
Thanks!
Ya know it called science fiction, right? The lightsabers in star wars dont work either.
You also can't inhale smoke from a metal canister and mind meld with a virus sent from a planet 640 light years away. But lets nitpick about stem cells for an eternity.
Is there nothing in stem cells that they could need to override a genetic reason for immunity that isn’t from the immune system? Like I think you’re boxing in a bit too much here.
No, that’s not good writing. If you freeze your eggs, you don’t need some event to remind you that you have your eggs frozen. That scene was written intentionally to remind the audience that she has her eggs frozen so that at the scene in the end it wouldn’t come as a surprise for the audience. Stop overthinking this
Exactly. Its called foreshadowing. Read a book sometime, you'll learn about it.
I also think alcohol is going to play a part in the story. Like maybe she drank and during the donation phase and have “corrupted” the eggs so that the stem cells aren’t fully effective or lead to some side effect.
At this rate I half expect manny to be infected first.
There’s no way they get Carol before Manny.
Okay, maybe they do because Vince likes unexpected twists. And a Plurbed Rhea Seehorn would be fun.
But I just think Carol being the last immune alive is her destiny.
I think they may have taken Manny’s cells while he was in hospital?
Probably his blood, maybe some skin cells. But I doubt they got his stem cells, because that would have required going above and beyond his immediate medical treatment, and harmed him without his consent. Which is to say... he certainly is in some level of danger, since you can't really get stem cells from egg cells, but they seem to have some workarounds for that, so blood or skin cells might be sufficient for them. Fortunately, it seems that they have some good lines of defense: screaming at the Hive, and the ultimate failsafe, the nuke Carol requested.
I think the same!
There was that book on the counter, “and then there was one”
Wasn’t it “And Then There Were None?”
Nah they set him up with the radio frequency and he was on the process of saving that dude on the couch, he'll be around next season
Well, "E pluribus unum"... out of many, one.
Oh yeah, she froze the eggs a long time ago. She wouldn’t remember it if the hive wouldn’t mention it to her. Damn!
Plus it reminded us that Helen never loved Carol the way Carol wanted to be loved, which repeats itself with Zosia, once when Zosia insists the hive mind loves Manousos the same as her, and again when it all but tells her it will infect her without her consent because it "loves" her.
Interesting - “Helen never loved carol the way carol wanted to be loved” - what makes you say that?
She wasn't honest with her, tried to control her without her knowledge, manipulated her, tried to push her boundaries in uncomfortable ways Carol suffered because she loved her, etc.
I think being concerned with your partner’s alcoholism is a totally normal thing and actually represents the love Helen had for her.
I never said Helen didn't love her; I said she didn't love Carol the way Carol wanted to be loved. They had a lot together, but they also had flaws in the relationship, cracks they took pains to show us, so these later betrayals would push Carol in new and unexpected ways.
I'm gonna need you to say more bc it seems more like Carol had a genuine alcohol addiction that put their relationship in a fragile state and she wanted to know if Carol took drinking more seriously than their future family...
Nah, her behavior is pretty inline with people in relationships with addicts who can’t leave for whatever reason, trying to bring normalcy and calm to their lives, and having to do it surreptitiously because you don’t want to have that argument again for the 1,000th time.
Well, yeah Carol would love an enabler. What we know of Helen, she was good for Carol and regulated her. It may not be what she wanted but what she needed - someone to let her sink into her addiction and stick around for the ride down would have been very bad for Carol.
I think you may have missed some of the subtext of that scene.
Helen loves Carol so much she will go out of her way to protect Carol and Carol's eggs, even in secret.
The Zosia Hive concept of love is a twisted inversion of this. They go out of their way in get Carol's eggs secretely to make her one of them. Once she is joined, the whole facade of love goes down.
Futhermore, unlike real love, there is no exclusivity in the relationship. They love Carol just as equally as any unjoined human they want to join to their hive.
Nah, this is the old, conservative majority imposing its worldview on the minority. It makes me glad I'm not in a relationship with manipulative control freaks, with their weird ideas about love. No offense, but "unlike real love, there is no exclusivity in the relationship" is gross. I guess non-monogamous people never experience "real love," where you get spied on and controlled and lied to and manipulated. Sounds awesome.
I think it reminded Carol of how imperfect her marriage with Helen was, so she wanted escapism with Zosia.
I understand the escapism, but I find that a bit out of character for Carol.
The Hive is perfect—no individuality. Carol wants things to go back to normal, which would make things imperfect because Humans are flawed.
Maybe it stung that Helen did something behind Carol’s back without her knowing—but for me I took that as a reminder that the only person who truly loved and cared about Carol was gone—imperfection and all.
I agree
I think that was more for us, the audience, since that's the first we hear about the eggs. For Carol, the eggs were always there.
Her frozen eggs were first mentioned in episode 3 in the flashback to Helen and Carol in the ice hotel in Norway.
We heard about the eggs way earlier in the season when Carol is in the ice hotel with her manager GF.
I suppose to elaborate, I meant it helped her process the idea of her eggs being used to get her stem cells,
Carol did bring it up much earlier with Helen at the ice hotel as a joke on S01E03
"I could've saved that hundred grand and frozen my eggs right here, yolks and all."
7 years (~2600 days) before time 00:00
Yes, the reason for Zosia to mention it was enthusiasm. She genuinely believes being in the hive is so much better. They were talking about the happiness hormones in the body, and it was a segue that just flowed.
I’m curious how it feels for the hive to experience those chemicals they were talking about… sometimes people describe an overload of happy chemicals as euphoric but the hive certainly doesn’t seem deliriously happy. Their level of happy is their normal. So I’m wondering if serotonin to them is like what potassium is to us and it’s just the initial shock of going from human->hive that makes you super happy and then it just plateaus from there.
When we imagine someone who say only experiences suffering, would you say because they never experienced a good feeling that they consider the suffering to be normal and mundane? I think if you only experienced good feelings it would not be as if you reach a new baseline. The law of diminishing returns does not apply here.
It also humanized the others somewhat, as their mistake was made due to enthusiasm and a desire to include Carol es Turca.
That's true. One thing we have to remember is scale of time. For each day of their honeymoon, they probably spent 12 or more hours together. For each hour they probably said hundreds of words to each other. Scale that out over 10-11 days. Dozens and dozens of conversations. My point is they had so many conversations where Zosia didn't screw up and say anything wrong. Because of the economy of storytelling, we only saw the plot relevant conversation.
Do you think they ate eggs for breakfast?
Avocado toast
Throughout the series we have seen the hive struggle with Theory of Mind -- i.e. the social-cognitive ability to understand that other people have their own distinct beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions, which can differ from your own. The hive has an almost toddler-like Theory of Mind.
This makes sense though, since a hivemind where everyone is connected would normally have little use for Theory of Mind.
They also talk in the Behind the Scenes about the challenge of acting like a being that doesn't mirror the person they are communicating with due to lack of empathy (exact wording). Which is an ability directly connected to theory of mind. In the hive it seems completely lacking and even when they "evolved", I think it's not theory of mind developing but rather the "I'm a human" mask.
I remember pondering about this in the first few episodes because the way hive communicates reminded me of how I communicate as an autistic person (I'm a hive hater™ but unfortunately I share toddler-level theory of mind with them 💀).
Bravo Vince 🤯
Don't forget the hive made mistakes before - I think it was episode 2 when they cut down the power to her house and called to apologize for it. I think it says they are not perfect either
Zosia might have calculated (mistakenly) that this moment—a moment in which Carol is feeling extremely happy to be "connected" to the hive—is a prime opportunity to convert Carol psychologically, from anti-joining to pro-joining. Think of a fundamentalist evangelical seeking the right moment to ask if you'd consider inviting Jesus into your heart.
Yes, the hive can make Carol join even without her consent (or at least that's what they're leading us to believe). But it would be far easier and faster if Carol cooperated willingly—maybe so much easier and faster that Zosia thinks it's worth the risk of broaching the issue the way she does, and failing the way she does.
And just like many fundamentalist evangelicals, once they convert you their job is done and they are done with you. Good analogy for the Hive. Sure YOU are now part of them, but YOU no longer really exist as you.
There is no separation from Zosia and the other pod people. We is Us.
Yeah I agree with you on that, I just used the name in the post for clarity.
Thats why it was so funny for Carol to take Zosia. Manny is like okay i'll just ask another one of them.
Carol knows that academically, but it's not an emotional reality to her. That's one of those human things that Carol is doing, where she is clinging to the notion of distinct bodies harboring distinct identities. Irrational behavior for the sake of emotional comfort is pretty much human 101.
We get it. This comment doesn’t have to be made every time someone mentions an individual character. It’s done solely for clarity.
The hubris of the self righteous. Missionaries… “You will be happier once we destabilize your government and install a democratic puppet”… Etc etc Never once considering there is any other way than their pov
Delirium is probably the right word to describe how they act. They are so blinded by the Joy and Love, that everything else becomes meaningless. For me the Hive seems like one big Drug anecdote.
The way that Zosia talks about the "happy chemicals" makes me think that their feeling of happiness is just the virus releasing a bunch of chemicals and messing with their sense of empathy (which is why they can't pick apples).
It's not a real feeling, it's like being high on drugs, it's a form of mind control that the virus uses to spread itself.
If someone were to be unjoined, they would probably suffer from withdrawal just like an opiate addict.
The last episode just made me think that they are smart zombies being controlled by the virus through some form of neurotransmitter hacking (which, as a side effect, makes them unable to lie and pick apples). The only purpose is spreading
I posted something similar in another Thread, I think you are very much correct, thats why I made that comparisson. Its going to be fun seeing which way they want to go, but I agree with you its most likely going to be the Virus just messing with the Brain Chemicals. A higher Intelligence controlling everything seems too outlandish for this Series.
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The way that Zosia talks about the "happy chemicals" makes me think that their feeling of happiness is just the virus releasing a bunch of chemicals and messing with their sense of empathy (which is why they can't pick apples).
It's not a real feeling, it's like being high on drugs, it's a form of mind control that the virus uses to spread itself.
If someone were to be unjoined, they would probably suffer from withdrawal just like an opiate addict.
The last episode just made me think that they are smart zombies being controlled by the virus through some form of neurotransmitter hacking (which, as a side effect, makes them unable to lie and pick apples). The only purpose is spreading
Are they genuinely happier, or is it part of the programming?
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It’s not genuine if it’s just programming though.
[deleted]
Coke isn’t real happiness, it’s just the feeling. It isn’t “earned.”
[deleted]
So you understand my stance that it’s a facade. Not sure why that’s so hard to understand.
There’s no they left to feel anything.
[deleted]
Ok, touché.
So if they’re not there, how can they possibly be happy?
From my comment on a removed thread:
Well, the Plurbs have the chemicals Zosia listed (at the ski resort?) coursing through their bodies. Maybe as well as instigating 'joining', the virus ramps up production of them, in a chemical accompaniment to joining? That possibly doesn't go away.
I do feel like this is supposed to be one of the philosophical conundrums of the show, and there's a longstanding debate about what "happiness" actually means. On the one hand it could be "eudaimonia," in the Aristotlian/Greek sense. This is what America is influenced by to say that pursuing "happiness" is a God-given right. But "eudaimonia," translated as "happiness," would literally mean "Good-daimon," where a "daimon" is a Greek being that serves as a medium between the gods and humans, and every human has their own personal daimon. So it kind of means your daimon is serving you well and transmitting the messages of the gods to you, letting you behave with justice and virtue and so on. This is where Socrates' daimon comes from I believe. But a key part of this is rationality and thought, less so straight up feeling. You wouldn't be able to take a drug and become eudaimonic, you'd have to use reason or insight or habit to get there. I do not get the sense that the hive is in reality eudaimonic.
On the other hand happiness could simply be a type of pleasure, in which case you should be able to take a drug or do physical things in order to feel happy. I get the sense the hive really is very happy in this sense of the word.
Zosia lists the chemicals in the brain causing them to be happy - they are basically high all the time. We're also "programmed" to be happy about things but the hive doesn't need any triggers for this, it also doesn't feel negative emotions. We would be very alarmed about the starvation situation for example but I believe they can't because the virus is causing constant stream of serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.
Outside of the initial conversion, the Plurbs never smile unless they’re next to an uninfected individual.
Methinks that points to programming, and their ulterior motive.
There would be no more Carol.
The Hive's whole goal with the survivors is to do everything they can to make them as happy as possible. The Hive believe that they are height of true happiness, so the best way of making the survivors "happy" is to assimilate them to become one of them. Until they can do that, doing whatever they want is the next best thing.
That's why I think the Hive will actively refuse most requests to not join (i.e. "please leave my eggs alone") since the happiness that would come from joining them overrides whatever happiness you get of still existing individually.
I've never gotten the impression their niceness is genuine. It's all manipulation as far as I'm concerned.
They also need to be nice because they can’t cope with one single survivor getting irate with them.
Oh they were 1000% manipulating her. They'll do anything to achieve their goal of "making her happy" even if it means role-playing a lover
Do you generally mistrust niceness?
I do.
Yes agreed. And the straight lied, I mean by omission but this was the most blatant way they've lied yet. Working on her eggs while lying that they need her consent via stem cell retrieval...
Yup.
A little Sondheim:
'You're so nice
You're not good
You're not bad
You're just nice
I'm not good
I'm not nice
I'm just right
I'm the Witch
You're the world... '
Last Midnight
Into The Woods
The last 5 lines could apply to Carol and/or Manousos.
There is no Zosia. Is just the Hive.
The Hive got exited by it's own plan to make Carol part of it and accidentally messed up. Ofc. Is Carol would've asked earlier. The Hive would respond, but it wanted to be a secret.
This is something I think people overlook when assuming The Joined are not human, and that they're just an alien entity puppeting bodies.
I mean, they could just be very good at it...but Zosia has moments like this all throughout her interactions with Carol that are incredibly natural and organic. She stutters, she jokes, she drops fun facts. Again, it's still a toss up as to whether that's just an incredibly smart "thing" putting on an act to seem human, but based on everything else the show has tried to tell us, I think it's an example of them not being perfect robots when it comes to how they think and act. They still have flaws.
The mango ice cream scene in 8 supports this. Zosia seemed very human recalling that memory. Her expressions were more animated and it sounded like her accent was slightly thicker. It makes me suspect the unjoined person is just beneath the surface in each hive member, which might make breaking them free easier (something S2 will probably focus on).
at the diner things were going okay for a while but the hive, being emotionally immature, took it one step too far by importing the old waitress and broke the spell
Zosia clumsily starting the pro-plurbing sales pitch after Carol talks about happiness is, on one hand, a kind of character-defining repetition, which the show likes to do
but there is a tiny bit of me that wonders if Zosia has had a tiny bit of herself wake up, and somehow influenced the Zosia-node of the hivemind to pull the ripcord "accidentally" on their honeymooning, to snap Carol out of her fantasy and give her a little time to get out ahead of the forcible-joining plan they have for her
i'm almost certainly overthinking and wildly speculating, of course
You overthink it. The hive is making mistakes.
Like that “Bond villain” at the poker table breaking immersion and applauding instead of being upset.
For something that has difficulty lying, it must be an effort to play act.
That’t why sometimes, usually during stress or high emotions, you hear Zosia use “we” instead of “I”. People are like this, in conflict, they dumb down, they revert to a more basic version, to a more instinctual one.
i generally agree but i also feel like this show enjoys planting details that are sometimes seeds
Of course, there was a bomb and a conversation about an atom bomb early in the season. That’s a seed
Or they're just not capable of perfectly calculating how to handle interpersonal conflict, just like any human. We all do things that we think will make someone like us, but we have no way of knowing if they'll work.
we know they aren't good at the interpersonal stuff, what i'm speculating was that the ski lodge conversation was a stealth moment of "letting her win on purpose" on Zosia's part
again, i know it's probably not, but this is absolutely the kind of show to take a seemingly insignificant detail and reveal it as an important plot point many episodes later so i'm holding out a 1% chance that it is (so i can gloat about it next season if it happens)
It’s probably overthinking, but I love it because I wish that it could’ve been a real connection between Zosia and Carol that would help save the world. The actresses say on videos online that there isn’t emotional manipulation going on. But that is what’s happening whether they are intending it or not, Carol is susceptible to the virus and it’s the virus that’s developing these ways to infect people.
i love having the actors talking about their work but sometimes they lie! (also sometimes they aren't fully clued in to what the writers intend, or the writers change their plans, etc)
i don't think the hive is evil, but i do think this episode has set them up in their most duplicitous light, both in Peru and at the ski lodge (like when Zosia is leaning toward Carol to talk about the happiness of the joined but her head is framed within the fireplace in the background and she looks like she's Zooming from Hell)
but i agree with you, i'm very warm to the idea that there's a little molecule of independent Zosia in there who grabbed the steering wheel momentarily for Carol's benefit (even if i'm overreaching)
Zosia was just doing what the hive always does: hype up the experience of joining
Carol could/should have been aware of their potential to harvest her stem cells from her eggs long ago. It’s definitely been speculated here many times.
So I don’t think it’s a mistake on Zosia’s part
It just shows hive is not manipulative calculating entity like some make it to be.
Why Carol didn’t ask where are her eggs?
They would probably just refuse to answer. For other questions that was enough for Carol to draw an inference, but it wouldn't for this.
Technically speaking we don't know if she hasn't asked.
Exactly. They can’t lie, so Carol should ask them where they are, and take me to them (since they will do anything she asks). Take a propane torch with her, destroy them. Threat eliminated.
They would probably just refuse to answer. For other questions that was enough for Carol to draw an inference, but it wouldn't for this.
No they don't do everything she asks. They refuse to not convert her, for instance. They often do not answer her questions. You do watch the series, don't you?
Did the episode conclude with the implication that they planned to convert her without her consent? Or did they have her eggs and could convert her but only if she consented?
They needed her stem cells to convert her, and the only way to get the stem cells at first was to harvest them from her body, which was invasive enough to require her consent. But by the finale they had figured out how to get the cells from her frozen eggs, so they could have converted her that way without her consent.
Without her consent. They gave a timeline. They have also converted mostly everyone without "consent"
They intend to convert her without her consent and they’ve said so a number of times.
Right, this changes the calculus. The hive are openly lying. Who knows if anything they've said is true now
You’re just misunderstanding what they needed consent for. They just needed it for an invasive surgery, they never needed consent to turn
THEY muddied the waters and misled Carol by saying they needed her express consent in the Vegas episode. They tried to love bomb her in the season finale into agreeing, which you could argue is or isn't consent, but it's certainly manipulation. Their biological imperative overrules any other guidelines they may have is my point.
In the first episode they forcibly try to turn her, it stands to reason if they could, they would by now.
While the hive has the collective knowledge of humanity, it itself has the intelligence of an an amoeba.
It lacks a moral compass, curiosity and any meaningful drive to improve.
It has a single biological imperative - to reproduce and increase its numbers.
Like I said, it might as well be a virus or a plankton.
🎯🎯. Thank you. I’ve been saying this in other threads. They are ‘wired’ to do only do one thing.
Why didn't Carol ask Zosia for her eggs back?
Why not also ask them to not convert her while she's at that.
Maybe because they would say no?
I don’t think it’s clear where the line of “biological imperative” is drawn. Carol requesting the eggs is only indirectly against the imperative, which may be enough to keep them from refusing.
Would someone please explain how eggs outside her body would convert her to the hive? Thank you!!