Pluribus 1.09 (Season Finale)
Dec. 24th, 2025 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which Buffy Summers already knew that the hardest thing in this world is how to live in it, Carol.
Gilligan and his staff being masters in the opening teaser scenes is nothing new, but this one from thie finale is a devastating mini story by itself and simultanously a take down of the Hivemind's arguments in a way it wouldn't understand. In it, Kusimayu, the young Peruvian girl last seen in episode 2 or 3 with her family (all except for her assimilated), who already back then expressed the wish to be assimiliated as well, joins the Hive. Now outwardly, nothing violent happened, and it's not like the Hive was/is lying to Kusimayu on this her last day as an invidiual - not in the sense of consciously telling an untruth. And yet at the same time - like I said, devastating. It turns out that maintaining Kusimayu's village and family was exactly the same thing for them lying playacting Koumba's James Bond fantasies - or in the last episode Carol's memory of her favourite diner where she started to write. Because the moment Kusimayu becomes one with the Hive, the chanting, the indivual touching, it all stops. Everyone, including now her after she's "freed" her animals, leaves with the same bland smile. The village, the culture, it's all gone, wiped out not by physical force or evil intent but because the Hive is incapable of seeing anything better than the Joining and sees no value in what was beyond making the remaining invidiuals comfortable with it. (This also prepares Carol's realisations late in this episode about the nature of her relationship with Zosia.)
The initial Manousos and Carol encounters are as awkward (and entertaining) as expected, though not dangerous until Manousos, having been assured by Carol that the Others can't lie, proves he can be a little bit flexible after all, abandons his "no talking to the Hive mind unless to say no" rule and interviews Zosia. He's not responding as hostile to the news Carol is essentially romancing the Hive as I expected; instead, it's Carol who at first is horrified when being told by Zosia that "we love him like we love you", because that underlines the quintessential difference between how the Hive defines love and how not just Carol but presumably most of the audience does. Carol, despite knowing what the Hive is, nonetheless instinctively sees her relationship with Zosia in terms of romance; they got to know each other, she's not just fallen in love with Zosia's body but with what she thought was a person within the Hive. Romance by usual definitiion means Y and X love each other more than they do everyone else (family relations aside). And the Hive, after all its initial missteps with Carol in thefirst half of the season, certainly without lying learned how to play into this idea of a relationships, it learned to use what Carol does and doesn't like in conversation, etc. But to the Hive, there is no higher biological and thus emotional imperative than to spread the Joining, and all the way back in episode 2 Zosia already said to Carol that they cannot choose between the remaining individuals. They're all equallly beloved - as future Hive members in need of conversion.
The next blow comes when Manousos experiments on another of the Others and incidentally not just finds out what he wants to know (communication between Hive members functions indeed on the radio frequency he discovered) but what I've been wondering: the adverse reaction of Hive members seems to be triggered not by hostile feelings (otherwise how come none of the assimilated beings showed problems in the earlier encounters with Manousos when he was dripping with loathing for them) but seemingly by the sound of aggressive shouting (no matter the actual intent of the person doing the shouting). This triggers not just a temporary breakdown but another big exit from Albluquerque, and Carol, unable to stand the idea of another complete isolation and still desperate to believe that what she and Zosia have is truly (mutual) love, decides to go with her.
This results in a ten day honeymoon (for Carol) until reality finally catches up with her when Zosia/the Hive makes the mistake of responding to Carol's statement of being happy that she'll soon be even happier, and Carol, who is in romantic delusion but not stupid, hears the iimplication in this - and finally figures out what fans already guessed, that the Hive used the lie of omission tactic when reassuring her they'd never put a needle in her to extract stem cells. Sure they won't. They don't need to. They have the eggs from when Carol and Helen had them frozen. And they will use them, no matter what Carol wants, not despite but because they love her and want what's best for her. Just like her mother with the conversion camp.
It's another absolutely devastating scene in its quiet intensity, and superbly acted by both participants. I had thought Carol's emotional rock bottom to be the last but one episode before this finale, bult no, turns out it's this one, where she first picks Zosia and her relationship with her despite being aware on some level she's deluding herself much as Lakshmi is with her son, and then gets disillusioned for good here - and not because the Hive is secretly a Muwhaahaaa villain who doesn't love her at all, but because the Hive's idea of love is the Joining and anything else is just preparing the indivuals and making them comfortable before the Joining can get achieved.
And then we get not only Carol's return to Manousos but a pay off for her atom bomb questions half a season ago. Presumably as a deterrent for the Hive so they won't drag her towards assimilation in a month or so when they have solved the last medical problems? I also haven't forgotten Koumba has the nuclear football. (Can't see Koumba voluntarily joining the Hive, btw, though Lakhschmi might. But Koumba likes his creature comforts too much, and he knows that once he's one of the Hive, he'll be busy building an antenna, not playing out Bond fantasies.) But it general, this is the end to a superb season which wasn't like anything else on tv this year. Well done, Gilligan and friends. Superbly done!
Gilligan and his staff being masters in the opening teaser scenes is nothing new, but this one from thie finale is a devastating mini story by itself and simultanously a take down of the Hivemind's arguments in a way it wouldn't understand. In it, Kusimayu, the young Peruvian girl last seen in episode 2 or 3 with her family (all except for her assimilated), who already back then expressed the wish to be assimiliated as well, joins the Hive. Now outwardly, nothing violent happened, and it's not like the Hive was/is lying to Kusimayu on this her last day as an invidiual - not in the sense of consciously telling an untruth. And yet at the same time - like I said, devastating. It turns out that maintaining Kusimayu's village and family was exactly the same thing for them lying playacting Koumba's James Bond fantasies - or in the last episode Carol's memory of her favourite diner where she started to write. Because the moment Kusimayu becomes one with the Hive, the chanting, the indivual touching, it all stops. Everyone, including now her after she's "freed" her animals, leaves with the same bland smile. The village, the culture, it's all gone, wiped out not by physical force or evil intent but because the Hive is incapable of seeing anything better than the Joining and sees no value in what was beyond making the remaining invidiuals comfortable with it. (This also prepares Carol's realisations late in this episode about the nature of her relationship with Zosia.)
The initial Manousos and Carol encounters are as awkward (and entertaining) as expected, though not dangerous until Manousos, having been assured by Carol that the Others can't lie, proves he can be a little bit flexible after all, abandons his "no talking to the Hive mind unless to say no" rule and interviews Zosia. He's not responding as hostile to the news Carol is essentially romancing the Hive as I expected; instead, it's Carol who at first is horrified when being told by Zosia that "we love him like we love you", because that underlines the quintessential difference between how the Hive defines love and how not just Carol but presumably most of the audience does. Carol, despite knowing what the Hive is, nonetheless instinctively sees her relationship with Zosia in terms of romance; they got to know each other, she's not just fallen in love with Zosia's body but with what she thought was a person within the Hive. Romance by usual definitiion means Y and X love each other more than they do everyone else (family relations aside). And the Hive, after all its initial missteps with Carol in thefirst half of the season, certainly without lying learned how to play into this idea of a relationships, it learned to use what Carol does and doesn't like in conversation, etc. But to the Hive, there is no higher biological and thus emotional imperative than to spread the Joining, and all the way back in episode 2 Zosia already said to Carol that they cannot choose between the remaining individuals. They're all equallly beloved - as future Hive members in need of conversion.
The next blow comes when Manousos experiments on another of the Others and incidentally not just finds out what he wants to know (communication between Hive members functions indeed on the radio frequency he discovered) but what I've been wondering: the adverse reaction of Hive members seems to be triggered not by hostile feelings (otherwise how come none of the assimilated beings showed problems in the earlier encounters with Manousos when he was dripping with loathing for them) but seemingly by the sound of aggressive shouting (no matter the actual intent of the person doing the shouting). This triggers not just a temporary breakdown but another big exit from Albluquerque, and Carol, unable to stand the idea of another complete isolation and still desperate to believe that what she and Zosia have is truly (mutual) love, decides to go with her.
This results in a ten day honeymoon (for Carol) until reality finally catches up with her when Zosia/the Hive makes the mistake of responding to Carol's statement of being happy that she'll soon be even happier, and Carol, who is in romantic delusion but not stupid, hears the iimplication in this - and finally figures out what fans already guessed, that the Hive used the lie of omission tactic when reassuring her they'd never put a needle in her to extract stem cells. Sure they won't. They don't need to. They have the eggs from when Carol and Helen had them frozen. And they will use them, no matter what Carol wants, not despite but because they love her and want what's best for her. Just like her mother with the conversion camp.
It's another absolutely devastating scene in its quiet intensity, and superbly acted by both participants. I had thought Carol's emotional rock bottom to be the last but one episode before this finale, bult no, turns out it's this one, where she first picks Zosia and her relationship with her despite being aware on some level she's deluding herself much as Lakshmi is with her son, and then gets disillusioned for good here - and not because the Hive is secretly a Muwhaahaaa villain who doesn't love her at all, but because the Hive's idea of love is the Joining and anything else is just preparing the indivuals and making them comfortable before the Joining can get achieved.
And then we get not only Carol's return to Manousos but a pay off for her atom bomb questions half a season ago. Presumably as a deterrent for the Hive so they won't drag her towards assimilation in a month or so when they have solved the last medical problems? I also haven't forgotten Koumba has the nuclear football. (Can't see Koumba voluntarily joining the Hive, btw, though Lakhschmi might. But Koumba likes his creature comforts too much, and he knows that once he's one of the Hive, he'll be busy building an antenna, not playing out Bond fantasies.) But it general, this is the end to a superb season which wasn't like anything else on tv this year. Well done, Gilligan and friends. Superbly done!
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Date: 2025-12-24 02:28 pm (UTC)And god, Manousos is such a good character! Can't wait to spend more time with him in s2.