Can a collective consciousness truly find resonance in art? While perhaps not the most urgent enigma posed by the conclusion of Pluribus Season 1, it is a question that lingers long after the credits roll on Vince Gilligan’s surreal sci-fi odyssey. If creative expression is a hallmark of the human condition, what happens to that spark when the individual is subsumed by the whole?
Throughout the series, the hivemind displays a peculiar fascination with Carol (Rhea Seehorn), one of the rare “immune” individuals who avoided the psychic convergence that bound seven billion people into a single, shared mind. This fixation manifests in their adoration of Carol’s Wycaro novels—a series of romantic fantasies she writes with a shrug of indifference.
When Carol embarks on a new manuscript, the collective erupts in celebration, yet their relationship with culture remains shallow. When Carol pilfers a Georgia O’Keeffe original from a desolate museum to decorate her home, the hivemind offers polite praise but shows zero interest in the preservation of the world’s artistic heritage. To them, a masterpiece is just another object in a world they no longer feel the need to curate.
Does the hivemind actually experience the sublime, or is their “appreciation” merely a data point? To uncover the logic behind this high-concept premise, we spoke with Gilligan, his creative team, and the series’ stars.
The Architects: Vince Gilligan, Gordon Smith, and Alison Tatlock
In a conversation with Polygon, the creative leads of Pluribus suggested a somewhat cynical reality regarding the collective’s aesthetic taste.
Vince Gilligan: I suspect they can appreciate a canvas, but their perspective is entirely flattened. To the hivemind, the Mona Lisa carries the same weight as a kitschy roadside painting of a matador. They find beauty in a sunset on the Grand Canyon, but they likely find equal beauty in a pile of refuse. When your appreciation is universal and undiscriminating, does the concept of ‘art’ even exist anymore?
“If Carol torched every masterpiece on the planet, I’m not sure they’d even mourn the loss.”
Gordon Smith: Our appreciation as humans requires focus—filtering out the noise to center on the subject. For them, there is no noise; everything is equally fascinating. I’m not sure they have the capacity for the specific kind of attention art demands.
Alison Tatlock: They’ve stopped producing it entirely. They aren’t archivists because they don’t value the physical. Every brushstroke ever recorded is already stored within their shared memory. That’s why they don’t care if Carol walks out of a museum with an O’Keeffe; the physical object is redundant when the data is internal.
Gilligan: Exactly. If Carol torched every masterpiece on the planet, I’m not sure they’d even mourn the loss. They have the blueprint in their brains. Why does the physical matter?
The Observer: Karolina Wydra
Karolina Wydra portrays Zosia, the hivemind’s designated liaison to Carol. Her perspective offers a slightly more optimistic view of the collective’s inner life.
Karolina Wydra: I think they genuinely adore art because they contain the souls of every great artist who ever lived. They have the poets, the directors, and the painters within them. The tragedy is that they can no longer innovate. They rely on the “old schoolers”—the unabsorbed—to provide a spark of something new. When Carol writes even a few pages, it’s a moment of genuine rapture for them because it’s a perspective they can no longer generate on their own.
The Outsider: Rhea Seehorn
Finally, Rhea Seehorn suggests that the hivemind’s lack of artistic depth says more about the nature of human awe than the technology itself.
Rhea Seehorn: You could argue that if something brings joy, the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art is irrelevant. In that sense, the hivemind is the ultimate audience. But real appreciation usually involves a sense of wonder—the realization that another human can do something you cannot. I am in awe of a violinist because I can’t play the violin. If everyone can do everything, awe disappears. You can’t be impressed by a miracle if you already know how the trick is done.
Pluribus Season 1 is currently available for streaming on Apple TV+.
Source: Polygon
