Pluribus Season-Finale Recap: The Last Temptation of Carol

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This week’s episode premiered early and is now streaming on Apple TV.

What makes the story of Pluribus interesting is that it’s an alien invasion story without traditional aliens or an invasion, as we typically think of it. The transforming force, referred to as “the Others,” doesn’t physically alter people like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Instead, it’s a subtle, almost undetectable signal or virus. After the initial shock of nearly everyone on Earth becoming part of a single, unified consciousness – all wearing the same serene smile – it’s difficult to see the Others as malicious or even as outsiders. They’re actually quite friendly, fulfilling desires and offering a vision of a peaceful, harmonious world, even if it can’t last. Essentially, they present a compelling case – who wouldn’t want happiness?

Despite their seemingly helpful exterior, there’s a disturbing undercurrent to the Others, and the season finale immediately highlights this. The episode revisits Kusimayu, a young Indigenous Peruvian woman from the Andes and one of the few remaining immune survivors. We’ve seen the Others offering survival to others, but only if they willingly undergo a procedure. Kusimayu’s decision to accept makes sense; she’s young and easily influenced, and her culture prioritizes community over independence. Unlike Carol, she doesn’t distrust people, and she likely feels isolated from her village, making the offer appealing.

What follows is deeply unsettling. The young woman’s initiation is initially a beautiful, traditional ceremony, filled with singing in the Quechua language. But as soon as she breathes in a strange vapor and her eyes roll back, the singing stops. She then smiles, joining the others in quickly dismantling their camp – extinguishing the fire, releasing the animals, and moving on. In an instant, this entire Indigenous culture vanishes, absorbed into the uniformity of the dominant group. While we readily condemn actions like deforestation or forced displacement, this cultural erasure happens subtly, appearing as a peaceful and effortless transition.

Being around other people who’ve adapted to the Others has deeply changed Carol, who previously felt like she was fighting for humanity alone. She’d expected to be happy when Manousos, after a difficult journey from Paraguay, finally came to find her, but she wasn’t. Surprisingly, she finds his strictness and distrust just as irritating as other survivors found her. It seems there’s a range of ways people deal with the Others: Koumba embraces a life of luxury, living like a secret agent in Elvis’s old suite, while Manousos refuses any help from them, believing they’ve taken over the world. Carol is now somewhere between these two extremes.

This episode, which could be titled “The Last Temptation of Carol,” shows her briefly considering a peaceful, happy life before ultimately choosing to make a difficult sacrifice for the sake of others. The film The Last Temptation of Christ dedicates around 40 minutes to showing Jesus imagining a normal life with a wife and family – about the length of a typical TV episode. Manousos arrives at Carol’s house at a particularly bad moment, interrupting a pleasant visit with Zosia. Carol is annoyed by this unwelcome stranger who won’t even come inside. It might seem odd that she’s so resistant to Manousos, especially after urging others to join the fight, but her feelings have become more complex. She may now better understand why others were drawn to comforts like Air Force One trips and familiar meals, rather than feeling guilty about abandoning humanity.

Honestly, Carol is clearly torn between Manousos and her own instincts, and it’s fascinating to watch. Once they start actually communicating – the translation app is a brilliant and often hilarious touch – you see them cautiously begin to work together. First, it’s about bug-sweeping her house, then trying to figure out more about those mysterious ‘Others’. But when Manousos gets a little too eager – trying to basically shock one of the Others into submission and separate ‘Rick’ from the Joining – it seems like Carol is trying to stop him. Her reaction, complete with a shotgun blast, feels totally real, but then she waves off Zosia’s question about where Manousos is and reveals he’s chilling in the trunk of her Rolls-Royce! That makes you wonder just how much of this was a joint operation. It’s also pretty significant that Manousos’s incredibly dangerous plan – something that could have wiped out countless beings – was announced beforehand, giving the Others like Zosia time to brace themselves. It’s a really clever detail that makes you question everything.

Even though Manousos assures Carol that things can be fixed, she still flees with Zosia and the others. Manousos challenges her: “Do you want to save the world, or focus on love?” Carol takes time to consider this. We see Carol and Zosia traveling, enjoying idyllic moments like lounging by the pool, relaxing in a fancy hotel, and cozying up by a fire at a ski resort – it feels like a commercial for a travel rewards card. This pursuit of happiness almost overwhelms her. She tells Zosia she feels flooded with good emotions, and admits she’s afraid the feeling will disappear, but secretly hopes it won’t.

Okay, so things get really creepy with Zosia. She basically tells Carol she’ll be even better off if she joins this group, ‘The Others,’ but it quickly becomes clear they don’t really care what Carol wants. They’re after her frozen eggs – the ones she saved hoping to have a baby someday – and Zosia implies they’ll get them within a month or so, whether Carol agrees or not. The way Zosia talks is super manipulative. Carol points out she wouldn’t let this happen if she cared about her, and Zosia flips it, saying they have to do this because they love her – specifically, ‘I love you.’ But it’s weird, because Zosia keeps switching identities. It’s like Carol is so desperate for connection she’s imagining Zosia as a specific person, but it’s actually… John Cena? A gynecologist? Some guy named Davis Taffler from the Department of Agriculture? It’s totally unsettling and makes you realize Carol’s projecting everything onto this person.

Carol’s dramatic return home by helicopter, carrying an unknown object underneath, provides a fitting end to the season. She simply tells Manousos, “You win,” and adds, “We saved the world.” He’s intrigued by what she’s carrying – it’s much more significant than a simple explosive. If the first season felt like a story about hidden replacements, the next one might be a full-scale battle.

Mizzenmasts:

It’s unfortunate that Pity Kusimayu’s goat isn’t receiving the same care and comfort that Bear Jordan is currently getting.

The contrast between Manousos’s ambulance and Carol’s Rolls-Royce is quite striking and immediately hints at the conflict that will unfold.

They were arguing about where they were talking – in the ambulance or at the house. It seems like Carol and Manousos are both very set in their ways, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they continue to clash next season, just like the characters in the story of the North-Going Zax and the South-Going Zax.

It was smart of Manousos to wonder why the Others returned to Carol after being gone for 40 days, but it’s also fair to ask why they left in the first place. After Manousos experiments on them, they have to leave town again, but it seemed like they were trying to repeat whatever happened with Carol.

If you were a young adult who occasionally overdid it while watching DVDs, you probably remember waking up to the Golden Girls DVD menu playing on repeat.

It’s tough for Carol to process being told “We love you the same as him,” which makes it surprising she agrees to spend time with Zosia again. People generally need to feel loved in a more direct and individualized way.

The show has such a complex story that people often overlook its impressive visual style. However, a particular shot – showing Manousos watching Carol drive away at night, with distant car lights fading into the Albuquerque skyline – is truly remarkable.

Zosia shares a similar charming and quirky personality to the character Janet from The Good Place, often dropping interesting and unexpected facts – like the surprising origins of empathy in zebra fish.

One of the things that really struck me in this film was the book the character Carol was reading by the pool – Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. It’s a classic sci-fi novel, and for good reason. The story follows an ambassador trying to convince the people of a frozen planet to join a galactic alliance. What’s particularly interesting is that the inhabitants of this planet are all nonbinary, and their society is completely free of prejudice – a really forward-thinking concept woven right into the narrative.

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2025-12-24 09:03