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This will change how you watch Pluribus

Pluribus episode 6 led me to a disturbing new theory about Apple’s sci-fi show

Image: Apple TV

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What is the point of the hivemind in Pluribus? So far, the show hasn’t offered much of an answer beyond simply “Hivemind good.” Meanwhile, protagonist Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) is much more interested in undoing “the Joining” than figuring out why it happened in the first place.

It’s almost as if we’re not really supposed to care what the hivemind’s end goal is — if it even has one. (Gilligan has also confirmed he doesn’t know exactly where the show is ultimately headed, so he may be leaving things intentionally vague.) However, one detail from Pluribus episode 6 has me thinking the series’ endgame could be much darker than I ever imagined…

[**Ed. note: **Spoilers ahead for Pluribus episode 6.]

Image: Apple TV

To quickly recap some of Pluribus’ recent shocking reveals: At the end of episode 5, Carol discovers the hivemind is storing dead human corpses in a factory, where they’re being processed and consumed. In episode 6, she takes the information to her fellow non-hivemind survivors, only to learn that they already know. Turns out, the hivemind is so peaceful they can’t even harvest fruits, vegetables, or grains, let alone kill animals. So they’ve taken to eating any nutrient sources that are already available to them — including the roughly 900 million humans who died during the chaos of the initial mass Joining.

This news is delivered with yet another twist: Even with all those corpses on the menu, most of the hivemind will still die of starvation within a decade if it can’t come up with a solution. (Is lab-grown meat not an option?)

This seems like a huge oversight! After all, if some alien intelligence created the hivemind in the first place, then beamed its recipe across the universe, shouldn’t they have taken the whole starvation thing into consideration? Why spread the hivemind program if it’s only going to wipe out whoever receives it?

Unless that was the purpose all along…

Hivemind John Cena explains cannibalism in a video recorded for CarolImage: Apple

Think about it. What is the point of the hivemind, anyway? Maybe the hivemind recipe isn’t a gift from outer space at all, but a weapon. Maybe some alien species decided humanity poses a threat to the rest of the universe and decided to do something about it. Transforming humankind into a hivemind that starves itself to death is a pretty clever way to do just that.

To be fair, there are some holes in my theory. For one thing, it’s not like everyone on Earth is going to die, just “most” of humanity. It’s also possible that the alien hivemind behind the original signal doesn’t even consider non-hiveminds to be intelligent, meaning it wouldn’t care about what happens to humankind. Or that the goal isn’t to wipe out humanity but to save the dolphins or some other endangered species. And even if this theory is true, what’s next? A full-scale invasion of Earth? Or will the aliens move on to their next target and leave any surviving humans to scrape by on their own?

The best point of comparison here may be another science fiction story: The Three Body Problem, a trilogy of books written by Liu Cixin and adapted into a Netflix series by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. In the second book, The Dark Forest, humanity figures out that the universe is actually chock full of intelligent civilizations all constantly hiding from each other and trying to wipe each other out. This theory, also called Dark Forest, helps explain why alien life has never visited Earth.

Scientists at the Very Large Array pick up the hivemind recipe from an extraterrestrial signal in Pluribus episode 1Image: Apple

In the books, Dark Forest theory is ultimately used as deterrence against an alien invasion; an armed device threatens to expose the location of both of their home planets to the entire universe if the invaders don’t permanently retreat. However, when that device is eventually triggered in a last-ditch attempt to save the Earth, it ultimately dooms humanity, leading to our destruction by a third-unnamed extraterrestrial civilization that sends a weapon to destroy many years later.

Is that what’s happening in Pluribus? It might seem like a stretch, but for the time being, the Dark Forest theory makes about as much sense to me as any other explanation of the hivemind’s ultimate goal.

Pluribus episodes 1-6 are streaming on Apple TV. New episodes air weekly each Friday.