I have a disturbing new Pluribus theory that will change how you watch the show

[ad_1] What's the level of the hivemind in Pluribus? To date, the present hasn’t supplied a lot of a solution past merely “Hivemind good.” In the meantime, protagonist Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) is way more taken with undoing “the Becoming a member of” than determining why it occurred within the first place.

It’s virtually as if we’re probably not purported to care what the hivemind’s finish purpose is — if it even has one. (Gilligan has additionally confirmed he doesn’t know precisely the place the present is in the end headed, so he could also be leaving issues deliberately imprecise.) Nonetheless, one element from Pluribus episode 6 has me pondering the sequence’ endgame may very well be a lot darker than I ever imagined…

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

<img width="1650" height="928" loading="lazy" decoding="async" alt="A screenshot from Pluribus episode 2 featuring Rhea Seehorn as Carol Sturka. She drinks from a wine glass, surrounded by her fellow immunes and a gaggle of hiveminds." data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/pluribus-episode-2-pirate-lady.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" src="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/pluribus-episode-2-pirate-lady.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" class="img-brightness-opt-out"/> Picture: Apple TV To rapidly recap a few of Pluribus’ latest surprising reveals: On the finish of episode 5, Carol discovers the hivemind is storing lifeless human corpses in a manufacturing unit, the place they’re being processed and consumed. In episode 6, she takes the data to her fellow non-hivemind survivors, solely to be taught that they already know. Seems, the hivemind is so peaceable they'll’t even harvest fruits, greens, or grains, not to mention kill animals. So that they’ve taken to consuming any nutrient sources which are already obtainable to them — together with the roughly 900 million people who died in the course of the chaos of the preliminary mass Becoming a member of.

This information is delivered with yet one more twist: Even with all these corpses on the menu, a lot of the hivemind will nonetheless die of hunger inside a decade if it could’t provide you with an answer. (Is lab-grown meat not an possibility?)

This looks like an enormous oversight! In any case, if some alien intelligence created the hivemind within the first place, then beamed its recipe throughout the universe, shouldn’t they've taken the entire hunger factor into consideration? Why unfold the hivemind program if it’s solely going to wipe out whoever receives it?

Except that was the aim all alongside…

<div class="responsive-img image-expandable img-article-item" style="padding-bottom:57.142857142857%" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/john-cena-1.jpg" data-img-desc=""Hivemind John Cena explains cannibalism in a video recorded for Carol"" data-modal-id="single-image-modal" data-modal-container-id="single-image-modal-container" data-img-caption=""Image: Apple""> Hivemind John Cena explains cannibalism in a video recorded for Carol Picture: Apple Give it some thought. What's the level of the hivemind, anyway? Possibly the hivemind recipe isn’t a present from outer house in any respect, however a weapon. Possibly some alien species determined humanity poses a menace to the remainder of the universe and determined to do one thing about it. Remodeling humankind right into a hivemind that starves itself to demise is a reasonably intelligent technique to just do that.

To be truthful, there are some holes in my principle. For one factor, it’s not like everybody on Earth goes to die, simply “most” of humanity. It’s additionally doable that the alien hivemind behind the unique sign doesn’t even contemplate non-hiveminds to be clever, which means it wouldn’t care about what occurs to humankind. Or that the purpose isn’t to wipe out humanity however to avoid wasting the dolphins or another endangered species. And even when this principle is true, what’s subsequent? A full-scale invasion of Earth? Or will the aliens transfer on to their subsequent goal and depart any surviving people to scrape by on their very own?

The perfect level of comparability right here could also be one other science fiction story: The Three Physique Drawback, a trilogy of books written by Liu Cixin and tailored right into a Netflix sequence by Sport of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Within the second e-book, The Darkish Forest, humanity figures out that the universe is definitely chock stuffed with clever civilizations all continually hiding from one another and attempting to wipe one another out. This principle, additionally referred to as Darkish Forest, helps clarify why alien life has by no means visited Earth.

<div class="responsive-img image-expandable img-article-item" style="padding-bottom:50.173490631506%" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/pluribus-very-large-sattelite-array.jpg" data-img-desc=""Scientists at the Very Large Array pick up the hivemind recipe from an extraterrestrial signal in Pluribus episode 1"" data-modal-id="single-image-modal" data-modal-container-id="single-image-modal-container" data-img-caption=""Image: Apple""> <img width="1650" height="828" loading="lazy" decoding="async" alt="pluribus very large sattelite array" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/pluribus-very-large-sattelite-array.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" src="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/pluribus-very-large-sattelite-array.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" class="img-brightness-opt-out"/> Scientists on the Very Giant Array choose up the hivemind recipe from an extraterrestrial sign in Pluribus episode 1 Picture: Apple Within the books, Darkish Forest principle is in the end used as deterrence in opposition to an alien invasion; an armed machine threatens to show the situation of each of their house planets to all the universe if the invaders don’t completely retreat. Nonetheless, when that machine is ultimately triggered in a last-ditch try to avoid wasting the Earth, it in the end dooms humanity, resulting in our destruction by a third-unnamed extraterrestrial civilization that sends a weapon to destroy a few years later.

Is that what’s taking place in Pluribus? It would look like a stretch, however in the interim, the Darkish Forest principle makes about as a lot sense to me as some other rationalization of the hivemind’s final purpose.